Hey all, hope you’re having a great day if you’re reading this! As the title suggests, here is what we count as a user seat and I’m sharing the definition directly from the key definitions which are in the docs licensing overview page:
A seat is consumed by each active Studio user. A user is a Studio user if they have at least one policy with App Access or Admin Access enabled. (See Studio Users for the full criteria.)
API-only users do not count toward your seat limit.
These are users created and managed in Directus who never access the Data Studio and reach your data only through the REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, or SDK APIs. Common examples:
- End users of your application, whether they register themselves through your frontend or you create their accounts for them.
- Service accounts and integrations that authenticate with a static token.
These users do not consume a seat, regardless of how many exist, provided no policy grants them app access. Conversely, any user whose policy grants app access consumes a seat, whether or not they ever log in.
Seats measure Studio access, not the size of your user base.
A project with 2 content editors and 50,000 registered application users consumes 2 seats. Only accounts that can access the Data Studio are counted.
You can send invitations even after reaching your seat limit. However, you cannot activate a user beyond the limit. To activate a pending user, either increase your seat count or free a seat by removing app access from an existing user.
We hope this helps and if you have any questions or feedback, let us know! Thanks all, Beth