Sparx EA Licensing Guide: User Types, Concurrent vs Named, Team Sizing

Getting Sparx EA licensing right is mostly a question of two decisions: which edition each architect needs, and whether they draw on a Named licence or a shared Concurrent pool. Get those two right and the rest of the bill of materials falls into place. Get them wrong and you either block people from working or pay for capacity that sits idle.

One thing to set straight up front: Sparx Systems sells every licence directly. Sparx Services does not resell them and takes no margin on the sale. What we do is work out exactly what your deployment needs and hand you a bill of materials to purchase against. That keeps our advice honest, because we have nothing to gain from over-licensing you.

The four Sparx EA client editions

Each edition is a superset of the one below it, so the question is rarely "which features" and more "how far up the stack does this architect need to be."

Professional

The entry point. Professional is a full UML modeling environment that also covers ArchiMate, BPMN, SysML, entity-relationship and database modeling, plus code engineering and standard report generation.

Who it suits: individual architects and small teams who need solid modeling without enterprise repository or framework features.

What it lacks: shared DBMS repositories, and the built-in enterprise frameworks and systems-engineering tooling that arrive in the higher editions.

Corporate

Corporate is the first edition built for teams. Its defining addition is the ability to host the shared model repository on a range of database management systems — SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and others — alongside the security and collaboration features that come with multi-architect work.

Who it suits: EA teams running a shared repository and doing serious governance — review, baselining, and several architects working the same domain.

Unified

Unified builds on Corporate by adding the built-in enterprise frameworks — TOGAF, Zachman, UAF and UPDM — together with broader meta-model support and the model patterns that go with them. This is the edition many enterprise EA practices actually want, because it pairs the shared repository with the framework scaffolding most programs run on.

Who it suits: enterprise architecture practices standardizing on a named framework who want the patterns and meta-model support out of the box.

Ultimate

Ultimate bundles everything in the other three editions and adds the complete systems-engineering and simulation toolset — executable models, advanced SysML and UPDM, and the full scripting and engineering capability.

Who it suits: practices working across EA and systems engineering, defense and complex-systems organizations, and teams doing formal model-based systems engineering (MBSE) alongside traditional EA.

A note on custom metamodels: authoring bespoke MDG Technology profiles — for domain-specific notations or extended metamodels — needs the higher editions. If your practice plans to develop its own profiles, make sure the architects doing that work are licensed for an edition that supports it.

Named vs Concurrent licences

This is the choice that drives the most cost, and it comes down to a single trade-off: guaranteed availability for one person, or a smaller shared pool that flexes across many.

How many licences do you need?

For Named licences the math is trivial: count the people who need guaranteed access. Concurrent pools take a little more thought, because you are sizing for simultaneous peak rather than total headcount.

Team size (total EA practitioners)	Recommended Concurrent pool
5–10 architects	60–70% of total (e.g. 6–7 for a team of 10)
10–25 architects	50–60% of total (e.g. 12–15 for a team of 25)
25–50 architects	40–50% of total (e.g. 15–25 for a team of 50)
50+ architects	Usage analysis required — Sparx Services can advise

Treat these as starting points, not rules. Actual simultaneous peak depends on working patterns, time zones — a team spread across regions peaks lower — and whether part-time contributors are in the count.

Occasional and read-only access

Stakeholders, programme managers, and reviewers who only need to read the repository do not need EA client licences at all if they use WebEA, the browser interface included with Pro Cloud Server. WebEA access is covered by the PCS licence, so a wide audience of viewers adds nothing to your client-licence count.

Pro Cloud Server licences

PCS is licensed separately from EA client licences, and both are required — neither replaces the other. EA client licences are what architects use to model; the PCS licence entitles you to run the server that brokers connections, manages the Concurrent pool, and serves WebEA. PCS has its own tiering, and the right tier depends on your concurrent user count and how many repositories it hosts.

Sparx Services sizes the PCS requirement as part of the deployment bill of materials, based on your planned concurrent load and repository layout. For a fuller picture of what PCS does and why most enterprise deployments need it, see What is Sparx EA Pro Cloud Server.

AI and connectivity add-ons

If your roadmap includes connecting the repository to AI or BI systems, those connectivity layers carry their own licences on top of the EA client and PCS stack. They are scoped by deployment model and the number of users who need that access, and — like everything else — purchased through Sparx Systems. We fold any such add-on into the bill of materials only when it is genuinely in scope for your deployment, so you are not paying for capability you have not committed to.

Building the full bill of materials

A complete licence bill of materials for a typical enterprise deployment comes down to a short, ordered list:

1. Sparx EA client licences — edition (Professional / Corporate / Unified / Ultimate) and count (Named, or Concurrent pool size).
2. Pro Cloud Server licence — tier and concurrent-connection capacity.
3. Connectivity add-ons — only where AI or BI integration is in scope.

Sparx Services produces this bill of materials as part of the Configure the Solution engagement scoping. It is delivered as a recommendation document: your organization buys directly from Sparx Systems against it. Because we take no commission or margin on licence sales, our only interest is that your deployment is correctly licensed — neither under-licensed, which blocks people from working, nor over-licensed, which wastes budget.

Frequently asked questions