Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Guide

Microsoft SQL Server is a fully-featured relational database system whose primary function is to store and retrieve data requested by other system applications. There are several different Microsoft SQL Server version and editions, each engineered to meet different demands and workloads. There are also different licensing options structured for different business needs. In this guide, our certified Microsoft suppliers here at Trusted Tech Team cover some of the most common types of licensing for today’s top SQL Server versions. We also cover what’s new in SQL Server 2019. Learn more below, and shop SQL Server versions new and old here.



Licensing Types

Standard + CAL Model:

The most affordable model recommended for smaller businesses looking to license 1 - 30 users or devices.

Click here to read more about Microsoft SQL CAL requirements

  • Comes with 1 Administrative Access Point to set up SQL database.
  • Requires additional CAL license for each USER or DEVICE accessing the server.

Standard Per Core:

For companies with larger amounts of Users or Devices or who need to host Web-facing applications. Recommended if you have 30+ Users or Devices.

  • Each license is sold per a 2 Core Package.
  • Microsoft requires a minimum of 4 Cores to be licensed to be in compliance.

Enterprise Per Core:

For companies that need maximum scalability, security, and availability.

  • Only sold Per Core in 2 Core Packages.
  • Unlimited number of Cores and Users can be licensed.

What's New in SQL 2019

Big Data Clusters

Break down data silos

Gain insights from all your data by querying across your entire data estate—SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Oracle, Teradata, HDFS, and others—without moving or replicating the data.

Manage both structured and unstructured data

Build a shared data lake by combining both structured and unstructured data in SQL Server and accessing the data using either T-SQL or Spark.

AI across all your data

Big Data Clusters provide all the tools and systems to ingest, store, and prepare data for analysis, as well as to train, store, and operationalize machine learning models.


Choice of Language & Platform

Run SQL Server anywhere

Use SQL Server with Windows and Linux containers, plus deploy and manage your deployments using Kubernetes.


Unrivaled performance

#1 on the market

Get record-breaking performance on Windows and Linux. SQL Server consistently leads across the TPC-E OLTP workload, TPC-H data warehousing workload, and real-world application performance benchmarks.

Intelligent database capabilities

Upgrade and modernize your SQL Server database on-premises, in the cloud, and at the edge. Database compatibility certification eliminates the risk of application incompatibility. Use in-memory database capabilities such as persistent memory support and memory-optimized tempdb to improve performance for your mission critical workloads.


Strongest in Data Security

Fewest vulnerabilities for nine years

Protect data at rest and in motion with a database that has the fewest vulnerabilities of any major platform for nine years running in the National Institute of Standards and Technologies National Vulnerabilities Database.

Built-in security and compliance

Use built-in features for data classification, data protection, and monitoring and alerts. SQL Server 2019 monitors, identifies, and provides alerts on suspicious activity—even identifying and remediating security gaps and misconfigurations.

Always encrypted data enclaves

Encrypt sensitive data and execute rich computations on encrypted data, plus enable customized data access based on role with complex row filtering.


High Availability

Maximum availability

Gain mission-critical uptime, fast failover, and improved TCO using cloud disaster recovery replicas and always on availability groups.

Accelerated database recovery

Greatly improves database availability by enabling fast and consistent database recovery regardless of the number or size of active transactions.

End-to-end Mobile BI

Self-service BI on any device

Explore visual data and quickly discover patterns to make better, faster decisions with Power BI Report Server, which is included with your SQL Server Software Assurance license.

Connect all your data

Combine data from almost any source using the extensive connector library and new transformations in SSAS tabular models.

Visual data exploration

Find the answers behind the data with visual data exploration and interactive analysis of data lakes data using SQL Server BI tools.


Deploy on Azure

Highly Scalable Cloud Services

Build highly scalable cloud services on Azure, and get a unified SQL platform built on the industry-leading performance of SQL Server—for limitless scalability, intelligent performance, and built-in security. Migrate to Azure without redesigning your apps and improve the performance of your existing applications.