White Paper · Oracle Cloud

Oracle BYOL on AWS and Azure: how the authorized-cloud rule doubles your licence count

Bringing your own Oracle licences to AWS and Azure looks like a cost win — until Oracle's cloud-counting rule strips the core factor and makes every two vCPUs a full Processor licence. This paper shows exactly how Oracle BYOL on AWS and Azure is counted in 2026, and the buyer-side moves that stop you paying twice.

By the Oracle Licensing Experts Advisory Team · Reviewed by the OLE Oracle Licensing Practice · Independent, buyer-side advisory — former Oracle insiders.

Read Time: 19 Minutes Published: 2024 Last Updated: June 2026
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Bottom Line

Oracle BYOL on AWS and Azure is governed by Oracle's "authorized cloud environment" policy, which counts two vCPUs as one Processor licence when hyper-threading is on and explicitly switches off the Core Factor Table. The 0.5 Intel factor you rely on for on-premises Database Enterprise Edition disappears, so the same workload needs roughly twice the licences in the cloud — and the rule lives in a policy document Oracle can rewrite, not in your contract.

This paper explains how Oracle counts BYOL on AWS and Azure in 2026, why the lost core factor doubles your cost, where Oracle Database@AWS and Oracle Database@Azure change the maths, and the buyer-side sequence that right-sizes the licence count before you migrate. Every figure carries a source and a date.

Key takeaways