Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) is open source under the AGPLv3 and fully usable with no license costs. There is no per-core fee, no cap on VMs, containers or cluster nodes, and no time lock. The only optional costs are the subscription tiers, which unlock the more stable enterprise repository and technical ticket support from Basic upwards. They are billed per occupied CPU socket per year and, in 2026, range from 120 euros (Community) to 1,100 euros (Premium) per socket. What Proxmox actually costs in practice is therefore driven not by licenses but by hardware, operations and backup. For platform fundamentals, see What is Proxmox.
Subscriptions via WZ-IT and operations at a fixed price: As an Authorized Reseller of Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, WZ-IT supplies the Proxmox subscription at the vendor's list price and operates Proxmox under a Proxmox maintenance contract from €179.90 net per node per month. Book an initial consultation.
Is Proxmox free? Open source with no license costs, commercial use included
Proxmox VE is owned by the Austrian company Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH and is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). In concrete terms:
- The software is free, permanently and at full feature scope.
- There is no limit on the number of CPUs, cores, RAM, virtual machines or containers.
- Features such as high availability (HA), live migration, snapshots, the built-in firewall and clustering are included at no extra cost.
- Updates are available free of charge through the no-subscription repository.
There is no stripped-down "free edition" with locked features. The feature set is identical with and without a subscription. The difference lies solely in the update repository you use and in the support you receive.
Commercial use is free as well: the AGPLv3 permits it explicitly, with no additional fee. Companies may run Proxmox VE and PBS in production, even entirely without a subscription. There is no clause restricting business or commercial use. The subscription is a support and stability offering, not a usage license.
The Proxmox VE subscription: tiers and prices
The optional subscription is billed per physical CPU socket that is occupied on the motherboard and actually in use, not per core. The billing period is one year from purchase. All prices are net prices in euros (as of October 2026, per the official Proxmox price list).
| Tier | Price per socket/year | Support tickets | Response time | Repository |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community | 120 euros | Community support | - | Enterprise repo |
| Basic | 370 euros | 3 per year | 1 business day | Enterprise repo |
| Standard | 550 euros | 10 per year | 4 hours | Enterprise repo |
| Premium | 1,100 euros | unlimited | 2 hours | Enterprise repo |
A server with two occupied sockets therefore needs two subscriptions. Important for clusters: every node must hold the same subscription level so that repository and support stay consistent. Standard and Premium add remote support over SSH and offline activation of the subscription key for air-gapped environments.
On support hours: from 19 October 2026 Premium includes round-the-clock (24/7) ticket support, and Standard follows by the end of 2026, in both cases for existing customers too. Basic stays on business hours, in Europe Monday to Friday 07:00 to 17:00 CET/CEST on Austrian business days (Proxmox pricing page, press release of 2 September 2026). Response times are guaranteed first responses to critical requests within the applicable support hours.
Get the subscription through WZ-IT: As a reseller of Proxmox Server Solutions we supply the subscription at the vendor's list price, invoiced in euros. Prices for 1, 2 and 4 CPUs and enquiry: Buy a Proxmox subscription.
Free or subscription: the difference is the repository
Whether you pay or not mainly decides which package repository Proxmox pulls its updates from:
- No-subscription repository (free): Current packages that are already stable but tested less extensively than the enterprise variant. Good for homelabs, test environments and experienced teams that roll out updates in a controlled way.
- Enterprise repository (subscription required): The repository Proxmox recommends for production. The packages are tested especially thoroughly and are considered the most stable update source.
Without a subscription, a notice dialog ("No valid subscription") appears when you log in to the web interface. This is not a feature lock, only a reminder. How to handle it cleanly is covered in Remove the subscription notice. For production systems, however, the enterprise repository is the proper path rather than just suppressing the message. Prerequisites and risks of running without a subscription are covered in Running Proxmox without a subscription.
Proxmox Backup Server: free or subscription? Prices
Yes. Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) is a standalone solution for deduplicated, incremental and encrypted backups, and it is also licensed under the AGPLv3. It is free to use and has its own subscription, separate from Proxmox VE. PBS is billed not per socket but per backup server per year, with unlimited storage capacity and an unlimited number of backup clients.
| Tier | Price per server/year | Support tickets | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | 560 euros | Community support | - |
| Basic | 1,120 euros | 5 per year | 1 business day |
| Standard | 2,240 euros | 15 per year | 4 hours |
| Premium | 4,480 euros | unlimited | 2 hours |
The same principle applies: PBS runs at full feature scope without a subscription. All PBS subscription tiers unlock the enterprise repository. Community includes community support; Basic, Standard and Premium provide technical vendor ticket support (as of October 2026, PBS price list). Fundamentals and how it works: What is Proxmox Backup Server (PBS)?. Setup and operation of a PBS server: Proxmox Backup Server.
Proxmox Mail Gateway (PMG) has its own subscription, billed per host per year (as of October 2026, PMG price list):
| Tier | Price per host/year | Support tickets | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | 190 euros | Community support | - |
| Basic | 540 euros | 5 per year | 1 business day |
| Standard | 1,260 euros | 15 per year | 4 hours |
| Premium | 1,900 euros | unlimited | 2 hours |
Features and use cases are covered in What is Proxmox Mail Gateway.
Which subscription does a company need?
The vendor classifies the tiers in its price list as follows: Community unlocks the enterprise repository but includes no ticket support and is intended for environments outside production (home labs, training environments, evaluation clusters, non-critical workloads). Basic is the baseline protection for smaller production environments, Standard is aimed at established IT teams, Premium at business-critical infrastructure. The rule of thumb:
- Homelab, test, development: the no-subscription repository is enough, free of charge; if you want the enterprise repository without support, choose Community.
- Production systems: Basic at the very least (370 euros per socket and year, 3 tickets per year, response within one business day).
- Business-critical systems with an SLA requirement: Standard or Premium, depending on the response time and ticket volume you want.
Because every node in a cluster must hold the same level, the chosen tier applies to the whole cluster. WZ-IT operates environments regardless of subscription tier, including Community or no subscription. For production systems we recommend Basic, Standard or Premium. The current release line is Proxmox VE 9, with 9.2 (May 2026) as the latest release, based on Debian 13 "Trixie"; for long-term stable operation, tested updates from the enterprise repository are the decisive benefit of a subscription.
Example calculation for a cluster with 3 nodes and 2 occupied sockets each (6 subscriptions). It is plain arithmetic from the list prices (net, per year), without assumptions about hardware or operations:
| Tier | PVE subscription (6 sockets) | PBS server (1 server) |
|---|---|---|
| Community | 720 euros | 560 euros |
| Basic | 2,220 euros | 1,120 euros |
| Standard | 3,300 euros | 2,240 euros |
| Premium | 6,600 euros | 4,480 euros |
The total cost of ownership (TCO)
License costs are the smallest line item with Proxmox. The realistic total cost is made up of these blocks:
- Hardware: servers (CPU sockets, RAM, NVMe/SSD), networking and ideally several nodes for high availability; sizing is covered in Proxmox hardware requirements and sizing. Alternatively rented dedicated servers, for example at Hetzner, with fixed monthly costs instead of capital expenditure; providers at a glance: Proxmox hosting providers compared.
- Subscription (optional): 120 to 1,100 euros per socket per year for Proxmox VE, plus from 560 euros per year for PBS if desired.
- Backup and storage: a PBS server plus offsite storage for 3-2-1 backups. Storage capacity is the recurring item that is often underestimated.
- Guest system licenses: the Proxmox subscription concerns the hypervisor. Licenses for Windows Server and other commercial guest operating systems come on top; the specifics under Proxmox are covered in Licensing Windows Server on Proxmox.
- Operations and staff: setup, patch management, monitoring, updates and disaster recovery. Over the years this block dominates the TCO, regardless of the software.
Compared with per-core models such as VMware vSphere after the Broadcom change, Proxmox is at its strongest where many cores run per socket: the subscription stays socket-based and does not scale with the core count. The full comparison is in Proxmox vs VMware.
Proxmox for public authorities and municipalities brings together architecture, migration and operations for public institutions.
Operations and support
The software is free; reliable operation is the real investment. We design, run and maintain Proxmox environments in production for customers - including monitoring, updates and PBS backups, with or without an enterprise subscription. Depending on your starting point there are three routes:
- Get the subscription: WZ-IT is an Authorized Reseller of Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH and supplies the subscription at the vendor's list price, invoiced in euros: Buy a Proxmox subscription.
- One-off help on a time-and-effort basis: Proxmox support costs 120 euros net per hour, with no ongoing contract.
- Ongoing operations: Managed Proxmox takes over operations transparently from €179.90 net per node per month; the Proxmox maintenance contract describes scope and maintenance cycle.
For an overview of all services, see Proxmox and private cloud. We are happy to discuss your project in a free initial consultation.
Review scope using the Proxmox maintenance contract checklist.
