Here you'll find information on our different licensing options, links to help, tools and other resources
We're updating our licensing to offer a better user experience and provide more control over the licenses you own.
The new ‘Login-Based Licensing' model is completely optional and retains the flexibility of our existing licensing, with the added benefits of accessing and managing your licence entitlement from the cloud. Customers who switch to the new model can access their licence anywhere and can easily switch from working from the office or working from home, or even roam for 30 days.
If you are not ready to make the switch, no problem. Our existing licensing models are not changing and no changes are required.
If you are ready to make the switch and move to login based licences, you can get started by using the Migration Request Form.
For Team Login Licences, once the licences have been migrated, you can invite your users to use your pool of licences using the web dashboard. You can bulk import all your users to make the process even easier. Your users will receive an email to validate their email address and create a Foundry.com account if they don’t already have one.
The Foundry Licensing Tools User Guide tells you everything you need to know about licensing Foundry products. You can also see tutorials on our licensing tools on the Foundry Licensing learn page.
The License Help section of the Support Portal contains lots of useful information about licensing and what to do if you encounter a problem. If you cannot find the information you are looking for then please raise a support ticket through the Support Portal to contact the Support team.
The Licensing Tools page contains instructions and download links for the Foundry Licensing Utility (FLU). The Foundry Licensing Utility is used to:
Foundry’s Maintenance Plan gives you exclusive access to both technical support and beta programs, where your voice helps to shape the future of our products.
Whilst your maintenance plan is active, you can run the latest major and minor releases of the application to get access to new features and bug fixes.
The Maintenance Plan is subject to renewal, typically on an annual basis.
When you purchase a permanent license, you are able to run any versions of the application that are released before the end date of your maintenance contract - this is the “maintenance date”. In practice, the maintenance date is the version limit of the license.
Permanent licenses do not expire, you will always be able to run versions of the application that were released before the maintenance date of the license. If you do not renew your maintenance then you won’t be able to run versions released after the maintenance date.
Your first purchase of a permanent license comes with a maintenance plan, typically of 1 year.
As an example, when purchasing a permanent license on 1st July 2019 we would issue a permanent license with a maintenance date of 1st July 2020. The license will show this maintenance date as 2020.0701. With this license you can forever run any versions of the application that were released before 1st July 2020.
With a rental license you can use the application for the duration of the rental period, typically 1, 2 or 3 quarters of a year. When the rental period is over the license expires and you can no longer use the application.
A rental license includes a maintenance plan for the duration of the rental.
As an example, when purchasing a rental license for 2 quarters starting on 1st July 2019 we would issue a license that expires on 1st January 2020. With this license you can run any version of the application that has a release date lower than 1st January 2020. After 1st January 2020 the application will not be licensed.
A System ID uniquely identifies a machine. When a license is created it is locked to the System ID and the license can only be installed on that machine. For most license purchases we require a System ID.
You do not need to provide the System ID for log-in licenses.
For more information click here.
An activation key is a short line of characters which is used to generate a license after purchase. They are provided for node-locked, floating licenses and login licenses. They can be activated using the application's Licensing dialog or online using the Activate a Product page here.
Login FAQ
We are rolling out login-based licensing one-by-one to all Foundry products. Nuke, Modo and Mari are currently available, and Katana and Flix will be added in future. Please look out for future announcements about our remaining products.
Your perpetual license rights are unchanged by migrating to login-based licensing.
For simplicity of future license management, we ask customers to migrate all interactive licenses of a particular product (e.g. all Nuke / NukeX / Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer) to login-based at once, rather than operate a mixed estate. Migrating render licenses is optional. If you have particular reasons you need to operate a mixed model please contact your sales representative.
You are permitted to switch back to offline licensing if you experience issues or your circumstances change meaning offline licensing is more suitable.
It may be possible for some customers to trial before migrating. Please contact your sales representative to discuss your needs.
Yes, it should be possible to access login-based licensing globally. However use of your products outside your home country is still governed by the same rules described in our End User Licensing Agreement.
Yes. Individual licenses can be activated on up to two machines at a time. Team users can sign in and use licenses on multiple machines, up to the maximum number of concurrent licenses that team owns.
Yes, every user will need to create a foundry.com account. This should take less than 5 minutes and simply requires the user to provide and authenticate a chosen email address.
No, the administrator simply needs a foundry.com account, which is free to obtain.
An individual is a single foundry.com account user. Individual licenses are only accessible and usable by a single account.
A Team is a representation of a company within the login licensing system. Team licenses are usable by any user within the team.
Yes, admins can use the Team Admin dashboard to create groups of different users and assign licenses to different groups.
Information on how to use the Team Admin dashboard is available in the Licensing Online Help and on the Support Portal.
Not ready or have more questions? That’s fine, the new licensing model is optional and you can request to migrate your license at any time, or simply continue as you are. Below you will find the answer to some common questions. For our full Q&A, please click here
