Oracle Java Licensing in 2026: Why Every Employee Now Counts — and What to Do Before the Audit Letter Arrives

If your organisation runs Java — and almost every organisation does, often in places nobody has inventoried — 2026 is the year the question stops being theoretical. Two things converge this autumn: Oracle’s audit teams have moved Java from occasional email enquiries to formal reviews, and the free update window for Oracle JDK 21, the version most teams standardised on, closes in September 2026. This article lays out what Oracle actually charges, which Java is still free, and the four realistic paths — with numbers, because that is where the surprises are.

What changed in 2023

Until January 2023, Java SE subscriptions were priced like other Oracle software: per processor for servers, per named user for desktops. You paid for the machines that ran Java. Oracle then replaced both metrics with the Java SE Universal Subscription, priced per employee, per month, for the entire organisation.

The list price is tiered by headcount:

The word that does the damage is employee. Oracle’s definition counts all full-time, part-time and temporary employees plus the equivalent staff of your agents, contractors, outsourcers and consultants who support your internal business operations — regardless of whether they have ever seen a Java process. A 200-person Slovak company with Java on three application servers pays 200 × 15 × 12 = USD 36,000 a year at list. A 999-person company pays USD 179,820. At 12,000 employees the bill is USD 1.19 million a year, whether Java runs on ten servers or a thousand.

Two structural consequences follow. First, you cannot buy a partial subscription — one Oracle JDK in production means the whole headcount is licensable. Second, the price rises with the company, not with usage, so it behaves like a payroll tax on a piece of infrastructure.

Which Java is actually free

Oracle ships the same JDK under two very different licences, and the version decides which one you have.

• Java 8 from update 211 (April 2019), Java 11, and later updates of Java 17 are distributed under the OTN licence. OTN permits personal use, development and testing. It does not permit internal business operations or production. Running Java 8u2xx on a server that does anything for the business requires a subscription — and has since 2019, which is why audit findings reach back several years.
• Java 17 was free for production under the No-Fee Terms and Conditions (NFTC) until September 2024; updates after that date are OTN again.
• Java 21 is free under NFTC until September 2026 — this month. Subsequent 21 updates move to OTN. If you stay on Oracle JDK 21 and keep patching after that, you are back in subscription territory.
• Java 25 (September 2025) is free under NFTC until September 2028, when the next LTS arrives and the cycle repeats.

The pattern is deliberate: the latest LTS is free, and staying current is the price of staying free. Organisations that treat a Java version as something you install once and leave for six years — which is most of them — fall out of the free window without noticing.

Why the letters are coming now

Oracle’s licensing organisation (GLAS) has, over the past two years, made Java a primary audit target rather than an add-on to database reviews. The typical sequence starts softly — an email from a “Java licensing” contact asking for a call to “understand your usage” — and hardens into a formal audit notice under the audit clause of whatever Oracle agreement you hold. The data Oracle asks for is simple: your total employee count, not your Java inventory, because under the employee metric the inventory only determines whether you owe anything, not how much.

Findings are commonly calculated back to 2019 for Java 8 and to the end of each NFTC window for newer versions, at list price. The cheapest position to be in when the email arrives is to already know exactly where Oracle JDK runs, under which licence, and to have a decision on record.

Your four options

1. Subscribe. Straightforward, and the right answer if you genuinely need Oracle-specific support, Oracle’s advanced management tooling, or are contractually required to run Oracle JDK. Negotiate: the tiers are list prices, multi-year commitments and bundling with other Oracle spend move them, and an audit-driven purchase is the most expensive kind.

2. Move to OpenJDK builds. Oracle JDK and the OpenJDK builds from Eclipse Temurin, Amazon Corretto, Azul, Microsoft and Red Hat pass the same compatibility kit and run the same bytecode. For the large majority of workloads the migration is a change of installer and a regression test, not a rewrite. The work is in the inventory — finding every JDK on servers, containers, build agents and developer laptops — not in the code.

3. Stay on Oracle JDK, but on the free LTS with a real upgrade cadence. Oracle JDK 25 is free for production until 2028. If your teams can move LTS-to-LTS every two to three years, you can remain on Oracle’s build at no cost. Be honest about whether you will actually do that; the organisations that fell out of the Java 17 and 21 windows all intended to upgrade.

4. Run Java on OCI. Oracle makes Java SE — including the subscription’s enterprise features — available at no additional cost on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For workloads you are moving to OCI anyway, the Java licence question disappears with the migration. This does not license the laptops and on-premises servers left behind, so it is usually combined with option 2 for everything else.

For most organisations the answer is a combination: OpenJDK on-premises and in other clouds, Oracle JDK where it is free (OCI or the current LTS), and a subscription only if a specific, documented need survives that analysis.

What to do this quarter

1. Inventory everything. Servers, VMs, containers, CI runners, developer machines, and Java embedded in third-party software. Tools exist for this; a script that reads java -version across the estate is a fine start.
2. Classify each instance: vendor build (Oracle vs OpenJDK), version, licence in force (NFTC / OTN / restricted-use inside another Oracle product), and business purpose.
3. Count your employees the way Oracle will — including contractors and outsourced staff supporting operations — and price the subscription honestly. That number is your benchmark for every other option.
4. Decide per workload, write the decision down with a date, and execute the removals or migrations. A documented, dated position is what turns an audit into a short conversation.
5. Do not answer the first email with data. Acknowledge it, take the time the agreement gives you, and prepare. A friendly “usage call” is discovery, not customer service.

Common questions

Is Oracle Java free for commercial use? Only the current LTS, for a limited window: Java 21 until September 2026, Java 25 until September 2028. Java 8 (from 8u211), 11 and post-2024 updates of 17 require a subscription for production.

How is the subscription priced? Per employee per month, from USD 15 (up to 999 employees) down to USD 5.25 (40,000–49,999), counting all staff plus contractors supporting operations — not Java users.

Can we license only the servers that need Java? No. One Oracle JDK in production makes the whole headcount licensable. The real choice is whether to keep any Oracle JDK outside OCI at all.

Nevdom helps organisations in Slovakia and the EU inventory their Java estate, price the realistic options, and negotiate or replace Oracle Java before an audit sets the terms. Get in touch — the first conversation is free.

Related reading: How to prepare for an Oracle LMS audit in 2026 · Oracle Licensing & OCI: the questions we hear most · Soft vs hard partitioning.

Prices are Oracle’s published list prices in USD as of September 2026 and change with Oracle’s price list; licence terms reflect Oracle’s published NFTC and OTN terms. This is general information, not legal advice.