How licensing works

A user needs a license to use a Google service. For example, a user must have a license for Google Workspace before they can use Gmail, Google Drive, or any other Google Workspace tool. A user can have a license for more than one service. Multiple users can’t share a single Google Workspace license, even if they don’t use all of the tools.

This article contains general licensing information that applies to all Google services managed in your Google Admin console. For licensing information specific to Cloud Identity, go to How licensing works for Cloud Identity.

Site-based and user-based licenses

For some Google services, such as Android, licenses are site-based. When you sign up for the service, every user in your organization automatically gets a license, even if they already have a license for a different service. You don’t need to assign site-based licenses.

For other Google services, such as Google Workspace, licensing is user-based. For these services, a user needs to be assigned a license to use the service. For details, see the next section on assigning user-based licenses.

Assigning user-based licenses

If you purchased only one Google service that has user-based licensing, all of your users get a license for that service by default. You don’t need to assign licenses.

You need to assign licenses if one of these statements applies:

• You purchased more than one user-based Google service, such as Google Workspace and Google Voice. For services that include additional services, a user only needs a license for the parent service. For example, a license for Google Workspace gives a user access to Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, and all the other services included with Google Workspace.
• You purchased multiple subscriptions of the same service, such as different editions of Google Workspace.

You can assign licenses to individual users, to everyone in an organizational unit, or to everyone in your organization.

If your subscription is on the Annual Plan, you can only assign as many licenses as you purchased, including any of the automatic or manual methods described below. If you try to manually assign more licenses than you purchased, you’ll get an error message and the licenses won’t be assigned. In that case, you need to delete users or get more licenses.

Ways you can assign user-based licenses

You can assign licenses automatically or manually.

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Reducing licenses

You can reduce licenses for a paid service such as Google Workspace to lower your monthly payment. You can also reduce licenses you don’t need for a free service.

• If your subscription is on the Annual Plan—You can reduce licenses only when it’s time to renew your contract. For details, go to Reduce user licenses.
• If your subscription is on the Flexible Plan or your Google service has site-based licensing—You don’t reduce licenses directly. Instead, you can delete users whenever you want, and those users’ licenses are removed from your account. For details, go to Delete or remove a user from your organization.