Flexed license

Last published : Sep 25, 2026
Important:
File-based licensing system (also referred to as manually managed entitlements), traditionally used for activating various on-premises components, will be End of Life (EOL) on April 15, 2026. License Activation Service (LAS) is the next generation technology for product activations across the suite of Citrix products. LAS will be the only way to activate and license NetScaler instances after April 15, 2026, supporting NetScaler Flexed licenses (CPL/UHMC), legacy NetScaler Pooled licenses, and NetScaler Fixed term Bandwidth licenses. To remain supported, your NetScaler and NetScaler Console deployments must be on a LAS compatible version.
The minimum required NetScaler versions that are LAS compatible are:
  • NetScaler ADCs: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x, 13.1-37.246 (FIPS), 14.1-66.68 (FIPS)
  • NetScaler SVM: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x
  • NetScaler Console Service: Supported from early September 2025.
  • NetScaler Console on-prem: 14.1-51.x
    Note: LAS support for Console on-prem is from release 14.1-51.x onwards. However, file-based licensing is deprecated as of April 15 2026 from Console on-prem releases 14.1-51.x onwards and 13.1-60.x onwards. If you upgrade to Console on-prem release 14.1-51.x or release 13.1-60.x or later, you can continue using file-based licensing until 15th April 2026. However you must upgrade to Console on-prem release 14.1-51.x or later, and switch to LAS before 15th April 2026 because Console on-prem 13.1 does not support LAS.
All the other forms of legacy NetScaler licenses such as Pooled vCPU, CICO, perpetual will not be supported with LAS. NetScaler instances leveraging perpetual licenses without an active maintenance will become unlicensed upon upgrade to the above mentioned software versions.
LAS based licenses may not be available to customers where prohibited by law or regulations.
If you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care. Citrix may limit or suspend your Citrix Maintenance for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements don’t apply where prohibited by law or regulation.
NetScaler Flexed licensing is the new licensing framework aimed at simplifying the license management process. Your Flexed license includes software instance licenses (VPX/CPX/BLX, SDX, MPX, and VPX FIPS) and bandwidth capacity licenses. You must apply the Flexed license on NetScaler Console service or NetScaler ADM on-prem. You must also apply the MPX Z-Cap and SDX Z-Cap license on NetScaler MPX and NetScaler SDX hardware respectively. You can then allocate them across all NetScaler form factors deployed in cloud or on-prem.
Las-based licensing - When using LAS-based licensing, your flexed entitlements are automatically pulled into the NetScaler Console service and displayed in the user interface.
Manually managed entitlements (file-based licensing):
When using manually managed entitlements (file-based licensing), perform the following steps:
  1. Apply the Flexed license to your NetScaler Console service or your NetScaler Console On-prem.
  2. Apply the specific MPX Z-Cap and SDX Z-Cap licenses to your NetScaler MPX™ and SDX hardware, respectively.
  3. Once the licenses are applied, you can allocate them across all NetScaler form factors, regardless of whether they are deployed in the cloud or on-premises.
A Flexed license also offers analytics for unlimited virtual servers.
If you had Pooled licenses earlier and bought a Flexed license, you can view your license details in the Flexed license dashboard. The combined bandwidth and instances appear in the Flexed license dashboard.
Bandwidth license typically includes only the Premium edition unless you had a Pooled Standard or Advanced license earlier, in which case Standard, Advanced, and Premium editions appear in the Flexed license dashboard.
Flexed and Pooled bandwidth and instance licenses
For more details see the Flexed license dashboard.
You can use Flexed licensing to maximize bandwidth utilization by ensuring the necessary bandwidth allocation to an instance and not more than its need. Increase or decrease the bandwidth allocated to an instance at run time without affecting the traffic.

Zero-capacity hardware

When managed through NetScaler Flexed licensing, MPX and SDX instances are referred to as “zero-capacity hardware” because these instances cannot function until they check resources out of the bandwidth pool. Thus, these platforms are also referred to as MPX-Z, and SDX-Z appliances.
Zero-capacity hardware requires a Z-cap license to check out bandwidth from the common pool.
Note:
  • The zero capacity license installation works the same way as other NetScaler local licenses. For more information about how to obtain and install a zero capacity license, see Licensing guide for NetScaler.
  • When using LAS-based licensing, you do not need to apply Z-Cap licenses.

Manage and install Z-cap licenses

You must install a Z-cap license manually, by using the hardware serial number or the license access code. After a Z-cap license is installed, it is locked to the hardware and cannot be shared across {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} hardware instances on demand. However, you can manually move the Z-cap license to another {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} hardware instance.
{{page.netscaler-mpx-short}} instances running the {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} software release 11.1 build 54.14 or later and {{page.netscaler-sdx-short}} instances running 11.1 build 58.13 or later support {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} Flexed licensing. For more information, see Tables 1 and 2 in Minimum and maximum capacity for Flexed and Pooled licensing.

Standalone {{page.netscaler-vpx-short}} instances

{{page.netscaler-vpx-short}} instances running {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} software release 11.1 Build 54.14 and later on the following hypervisors support Flexed licenses:
  • VMware ESX 6.0
  • Citrix Hypervisor™
  • Linux KVM
{{page.netscaler-vpx-short}} instances running {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} software release 12.0 Build 51.24 and later on the following hypervisors and cloud platforms support Flexed licensing:
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • AWS
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud
{{page.netscaler-vpx-short}} instances running {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} software release 13.0 and 13.1 (all versions) on the following hypervisors and cloud platforms support Flexed licensing:
  • VMware ESX 6.0
  • Citrix Hypervisor
  • Linux KVM
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • AWS
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud

Standalone {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances

{{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances deployed on a Docker host support Flexed licensing. Unlike zero-capacity hardware, {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} does not require a Z-cap license. A single {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instance consuming up to 1 Gbps throughput checks-out only 1 instance and no bandwidth from the license pool. For example, consider that you have 20 {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances with a 20 Gbps bandwidth pool. If one of the {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances consumes 500 Mbps throughput, the bandwidth pool remains 20 Gbps for the remaining 19 {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances.
If the same {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instance starts to consume 1500 Mbps throughput, the bandwidth pool has 19.5 Gbps for the remaining 19 {{page.netscaler-cpx-short}} instances.
For Flexed licensing, you can add more bandwidth only in multiples of 10 Mbps.

Standalone {{page.netscaler-blx-short}} instances

{{page.netscaler-blx-short}} instances support Flexed licensing. A {{page.netscaler-blx-short}} instance does not require a Z-cap license. To process traffic, a {{page.netscaler-blx-short}} instance must check out bandwidth and an instance license from the pool.

Bandwidth Pool

The bandwidth pool is the total bandwidth that can be shared by {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} instances, both physical and virtual. The bandwidth pool comprises a pool for the Premium software edition. If you shift from Pooled to Flexed licensing, you might find a mix of Standard, Advanced, and Premium software editions. A given {{page.citrix-adc-generic}} MPX/VPX/CPX/BLX instance cannot have bandwidth from different pools checked out concurrently. The bandwidth pool from which it can check out bandwidth depends on its software edition for which it is licensed.

Instance pool

There are three types of software instance pools:
  • VPX/CPX/BLX software instance
  • MPX software instance (same pool applies for MPX FIPS)
  • SDX software instance (same pool applies for SDX FIPS)
  • VPX FIPS software instance
When checked out from the pool, a license unlocks the software instance's resources, including CPUs/PEs, SSL cores, packets per second, and bandwidth.