Work out licence cost in cloud instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.
Per-core licensing is charged on physical cores, which on hyperthreaded instances is half the vCPU count — a distinction worth tens of thousands a year. Per-socket models are cheaper still on large instances but many vendors have abandoned them precisely because core counts grew. Licence cost frequently exceeds the compute cost it runs on.
Licence units
physical cores = ceil(vCPUs / 2); units = vCPUs, physical cores, or ceil(cores / cores per socket) depending on the model; cost = units x price
Sometimes. Some vendors count vCPUs regardless of hyperthreading in public cloud, which effectively doubles the cost. Check the vendor's cloud-specific terms rather than the on-premises ones.
Consolidate onto fewer, larger instances where per-socket licensing applies, use licence-included instance pricing where it is cheaper, and migrate to open-source alternatives where feasible.