Salesforce Licenses Overview

To enable specific Salesforce functionality for your users, you must choose one user license for each user. To enable more functionality, you can assign permission set licenses and feature licenses to your users or purchase usage-based entitlements for your organization.

For example, to view contracts, a user must have the Read permission on contracts. To assign a given permission to a user, that user’s license (or licenses) must support the permission. Multiple licenses can support a single permission.

Think of permissions as locks and licenses as rings of keys. Before you can assign users a specific permission, they must have a license that includes the key to unlock that permission. Although every user must have exactly one user license, you can assign one or more permission-set licenses or feature licenses to incrementally unlock more permissions.

Continuing our example, the Salesforce user license includes the key to unlock the Read permission on contracts. The Chatter Free user license doesn’t. If you try to assign that permission to a Chatter Free user, you get an error message.

Check your remaining licenses-

From Setup, enter Company Information in the Quick Find box, then select Company Information.
See the User Licenses related list.

Salesforce provides these types of licenses and usage-based entitlements.

User Licenses
A user license determines the baseline of features that the user can access. Every user must have exactly one user license. You assign user permissions for data access through a profile and optionally one or more permission sets.
Permission Set Licenses
Permission set licenses entitle users to access additional features not included in their assigned user license. Users can be assigned any number of permission-set licenses.
Feature Licenses Overview
A feature license entitles a user to access an additional feature that isn’t included with his or her user license, such as Marketing or WDC. Users can be assigned any number of feature licenses.
Usage-Based Entitlements
A usage-based entitlement is a limited resource that your organization can use on a periodic basis. For example, the allowed number of monthly logins to a Partner Community or the record limit for Data.com list users are usage-based entitlements.

User Licenses: A user license determines the baseline of features that the user can access. Every user must have exactly one user license. You assign user permissions for data access through a profile and optionally one or more permission sets.

User licenses offered by Salesforce include:

Standard User Licenses
Chatter User Licenses
Experience Cloud User Licenses
Service Cloud Portal User Licenses
Sites and Site.com User Licenses

Permission Set Licenses: Permission set licenses entitle users to access additional features not included in their assigned user license. Users can be assigned any number of permission-set licenses.

For example, you previously assigned a user a Salesforce Platform user license, which entitled the user to the objects and functionality required for the user’s day-to-day tasks. You now want this user to have access to Lightning console apps, which aren’t included in their user license. You purchase and assign a Lightning Console permission set license to the user, which allows them to be granted the Lightning Console User permission. After you grant this user this permission via a permission set, the user can use Lightning Console apps.

Permission set licenses and permission sets have different purposes.

Permission-set licenses extend the functionality of user licenses. With permission-set licenses, you can assign more permissions to users than their user license supports.
Permission sets extend users’ functional access without changing their profiles.

Feature Licenses Overview: A feature license entitles a user to access an additional feature that isn’t included with his or her user license, such as Marketing or WDC. Users can be assigned any number of feature licenses.

Depending on the features that are enabled for your organization, you might be able to assign more than one type of feature license to your users. To purchase feature licenses, contact your Salesforce account representative.

Usage-Based Entitlements: A usage-based entitlement is a limited resource that your organization can use periodically. For example, the allowed number of monthly logins to a Partner Community or the record limit for Data.com list users are usage-based entitlements.
Some entitlements are persistent. These entitlements give your Salesforce org a set number of the resource, and the amount allowed doesn’t change unless your contract changes. For example, if your company purchases monthly subscriptions for 50 members to access a Partner Community, you can assign up to 50 individuals the ability to log into the community as many times as they want.