TeamCity On-Premises 2022.10 Help

Licensing Policy

Pricing and new licenses/upgrades purchase are available via the official web site. If you have any questions on the licensing terms, obtaining or upgrading license key and related, please contact JetBrains sales department.
You can review TeamCity license agreement on the official website or in the footer of the installed TeamCity server web UI.

Licensing Overview

JetBrains offers several licensing options that allow you to scale TeamCity to your needs.
This section illustrates the main differences between the TeamCity server editions and provides general information on the TeamCity Build Agent license.

In general, to use TeamCity for production (Enterprise edition), you need to own one server license. In addition, you can acquire an indefinite number of build agent licenses, depending on how many builds you want to run in parallel.

For detailed information, refer to the sections below.

Professional Server

Enterprise Server

No license key is required, free

A license key is required, price options

100 build configurations

Unlimited number of build configurations

Full access to all product features

Free 1-year subscription to upgrades

Support via community forum

Priority support for the supported releases

3 build agents included, buy more as necessary

From 3 to 100 build agents included, buy more as necessary

If you need more build agents that are included with your TeamCity server edition, you can purchase additional build agent licenses.

Build Agent License

Connects 1 additional build agent

If using Professional edition, adds 10 additional build configurations

A license key is required, price options

Editions

There are two editions of TeamCity: Professional and Enterprise.
The editions are equal in all the features except for the maximum number of build configurations allowed.
The same TeamCity distribution and installation are used for both editions. You can switch to the Enterprise edition by entering the appropriate license key. All the data is preserved when the edition is switched.

The current edition in use is noted in the footer of every TeamCity web UI page and on on the Administration > Licenses page as well as in teamcity-server.log on the server startup.

The Professional edition does not require any license key and can be used free of charge. The only functional difference from the Enterprise edition is a limitation of the maximum number of build configurations. The limit is 100 build configurations. It can be extended by 10 with each agent license key added. You can install several servers with the Professional license.

The Enterprise edition requires a license key, has no limit on the number of build configurations and entitles you to TeamCity support from JetBrains for the maintenance period of the license, provided you use a recent TeamCity version.

Each TeamCity edition comes bundled with 3 or more build agents. To use more agents than the bundled number, separate build agent license keys can be entered. Additional agents can be added to both editions.

Besides the Professional and Enterprise licenses, there are two more license types:

  • Evaluation — has an expiration date and provides an unlimited number of agents and build configurations. To obtain the evaluation license, use the link on TeamCity download page. The evaluation license can be obtained only once for each major TeamCity version. A second evaluation license key from the site is not accepted by the same major version of TeamCity server. If you need to extend/repeat the evaluation, please contact our sales department.

  • Open Source — this is a special type of license granted for open source projects, it is time-based, and provides an unlimited number of agents. Refer to the details on this page.

The TeamCity Licensing Policy does not impose any limitations on the number of instances for any of the IDE plugins or Notifiers.

Number of Build Configurations

The Enterprise edition has no limit on the number of build configurations.

The Professional edition allows 100 build configurations per server. Each build agent license key gives you 10 more build configurations in Professional edition in addition to one more agent. All build configurations are counted (i.e. including those in archived projects).

Number of Agents

TeamCity Professional edition comes bundled with 3 build agents. More build agents can be added by purchasing additional agent license keys.

A server license key might include more agent licenses than the default 3. The number of agents stated for the server license on jetbrains.com site notes the total number of agents which will be available. Separate agent license keys can be used with either TeamCity edition (Enterprise and Professional). For more information about purchasing agent licenses, refer to the product page.

The number of agent licenses limits the number of agents which can be authorized in TeamCity. The license keys are not bound to specific agents, they just limit the maximum number of functional agents. The licensing makes no difference between local (installed on the TeamCity server machine) and remote agents.
When there are more authorized agents than the valid agent licenses available, the server stops to start any builds and displays a warning message to all users in the web browser.

Managing Licenses

You can enter new license keys and review the currently used ones (including the license issue date and maintenance period) on the Administration > Licenses page of the TeamCity web UI. By default, only users with the System Administrator role can access the page. Adding or removing licenses on the page is applied immediately.

A single license can only be used on a single running TeamCity server at any given time. Running secondary TeamCity nodes in addition to the main node does not require a separate license at this time.

If you create a copy of the server and run two servers at the same time, you should ensure each license key is used on a single server only. You can use the Evaluation (limited time) license to run a server for testing/non-production purposes. The licenses are not bound to a specific server instance, machine, and so on. The only limitation is that a license cannot be used on several servers at the same time.

When you already own license(s) and buy more licenses, you can request JetBrains sales to make the new licenses co-termed with those already purchased, so that all the licenses have equal maintenance expiration date. The cost of the licenses is then lowered proportionally.
When buying many licenses, you are welcome to contact our sales for available volume discounts.

Valid TeamCity Versions

TeamCity licenses are perpetual for the TeamCity versions they cover. This means that you can run a covered TeamCity version with existing licenses for unlimited time and the licenses will stay valid for this TeamCity version.
Each TeamCity license (including Enterprise Server and Agent) has a maintenance period (generally 1 year). The license key is valid for any version of TeamCity released before the license purchase as well as for any version released within the maintenance period. Licenses valid for the major release (changes in the first two release numbers) are also considered valid for the corresponding minor (bugfix) updates (changes in the third release number).

The set of valid licenses defines if the server works in Enterprise mode and how many agents can run builds on the server. Agent licenses are not bound to specific agents and are only used to determine the maximum number of authorized agents.

Before you upgrade to a newer TeamCity version, check the validity of the existing licenses with the new version.
If the new TeamCity server effective release date is not covered by the maintenance period of some of the licenses, the corresponding licenses will not be valid with the TeamCity version and would need a renew. Generally, license renew costs about 50% of the new license price in case the new license date is the same as the end of maintenance of the license being renewed.

When a new version is available, TeamCity displays a notification in the web UI and warns you if any of your license keys are incompatible with this new version. A notification on the new TeamCity version is also displayed in the Global Configuration Items of the Server Health report, visible to system administrators. System administrators can use the link in the "Some Licenses are incompatible" message to quickly navigate to the Licenses page, where all incompatible licenses will have a warning icon. The information about the license keys installed on your server is secure as it is not sent over the Internet.

Regular upgrades are highly recommended not only because each new release includes a lot of improvements and new features, but also as this is the only way to run a supported version with the latest security patch level.

Note that TeamCity email support covers only the recent TeamCity versions and can be provided only to customers with not expired maintenance period of the enterprise server license.

License Expiration

If an Enterprise license key is removed from the server, or an evaluation license expires, or a TeamCity server is upgraded to a version released out of the maintenance window of the available Enterprise license, TeamCity automatically switches to the Professional mode.

If the number of build configurations or the number of authorized agents exceeds the limits imposed by the valid licenses, the server stops to start any builds (pauses the build queue) and displays a warning message to all users in the web browser.

Build Agent Licenses work the same way as the Server Licenses. If you upgrade the server to the version which is not covered by the agent license maintenance window, then this agent license will expire.

Once sufficient valid license keys are entered which cover the server configuration, the builds begin to be started again.

Ways to Obtain a License

The following ways to switch your server into the Enterprise mode exist:

Upgrading From Previous Versions

Upgrading from TeamCity 5.x and later

Each license has a maintenance period (typically one year since the purchase date). The license is suitable for any TeamCity version released within the maintenance period. Please check the maintenance period of your licenses before upgrading.

Upgrading from TeamCity 4.x to TeamCity 5.0 and later

Licenses for previous versions of TeamCity needs upgrading, see details at Licensing and Upgrade section on the official site.

Upgrading from TeamCity 3.x to TeamCity 4.0

Owners of TeamCity 3.x Enterprise Server Licenses upgrade to TeamCity 4.x Enterprise Edition free of charge. TeamCity 3.x Build Agent Licenses are compatible with both Professional and Enterprise editions of TeamCity 4.0.

Upgrading from TeamCity 1.x-2.x to TeamCity 4.0

Any TeamCity 1.x-2.x license purchased before December, 05, 2008 can be used as one TeamCity 4.0 Build Agent license for both Professional and Enterprise editions of TeamCity 4.0. Additionally, TeamCity 1.x-2.x customers qualify for one TeamCity Enterprise Server License free of charge. To request your Enterprise Server License, please contact sales department with one of your TeamCity 1.x-2.x licenses.

Upgrading with IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 License Key

Any IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 license purchased between July 12, 2006 and January 15, 2007 can be used as one TeamCity 4.0 Build Agent license. Additionally, IntelliJ IDEA customers with such licenses qualify for one TeamCity Enterprise Server license free of charge.
To check TeamCity upgrade availability for your IntelliJ IDEA licenses and to request your Enterprise Server license, please contact sales department with one of your IntelliJ IDEA licenses purchased within the above period.

Copyright and Trademark Notice

The software described in this documentation is furnished under a software license agreement. JetBrains, IntelliJ, IntelliJ IDEA, YouTrack, and TeamCity are trademarks or registered trademarks of JetBrains, s.r.o. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Mac, Mac OS, macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

Last modified: 04 August 2022