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Can same BC SaaS tenant have Premium and Essential License

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Posted on by Isuru

A customer requested to have both Premium and Essential licenses. Because some customers works on production related operations and some are working on finance ralated only. We said, one tenant can have either Premium or Essential.

If the customer wants to have both licenses, how to proceed?

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Yi Yong 2,719 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hello,

It must be of different environment.

You can't mix licence in the same environment.

PS: One tenant can have multiple environments.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/administration/tenant-admin-center-manage-access#assign-essentials-and-premium-licenses-across-environments

In summary, if you are asking if you can have some users with Premium and some with Essential working on the same company, then no.

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Tech-Lucky 1,288 Moderator on at

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No, it is not possible to have both Essential and Premium licenses together for the same production environment in Business Central. If you have such a requirement, you can consider using Team Member licenses. These are limited in functionality but still allow the creation of sales and purchase documents, and they can be combined with any other license type.

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Sumit Singh

11,795 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Yes, a customer can have both Premium and Essential licenses in the same tenant in Business Central ERP—but not within the same environment. Here's how it works and how you can proceed:

What’s Allowed

Mixing Premium and Essential licenses is now supported within the same Azure Active Directory (AAD) tenant.
However, you cannot mix Premium and Essential users in the same Business Central environment.

How to Implement Mixed Licensing

To support both types of users (e.g., production users needing Premium and finance users needing only Essential), follow these steps:

1. Create Separate Environments

Deploy two separate Business Central environments under the same tenant:
- One for Premium users (e.g., production operations).
- One for Essential users (e.g., finance-only operations).

2. Use Microsoft Entra (AAD) Security Groups

Create security groups in Microsoft Entra ID:
- One group for Premium users.
- One group for Essential users.
Assign these groups to the respective environments in the Business Central Admin Center.

3. Sync Users via Security Groups

Use the “Update users from Microsoft 365” option in each environment, but only after assigning the correct security group.
This ensures that only the appropriate license type users are synced to each environment[3].

4. Set “User Experience” in Company Information

In each company within an environment, set the User Experience field to match the license type:
- Premium for environments with Premium users.
- Essential for environments with Essential users.
Users with Essential licenses cannot access Premium environments, and vice versa [2].

Example Setup

Environment	License Type	Modules Available	Users
`Production`	Premium	Manufacturing, Service Mgmt	Production team
`Finance`	Essential	Finance, Sales, Purchase	Finance team

References
[1] How to mix Business Central Essential and Premium licenses ... - Companial
[2] Solved: how does mixed licenses work in BC - Dynamics 365 Community
[3] How to deploy different type of users in a separate environments, on ...
Note: This response was created in collaboration with Microsoft Copilot to ensure clarity and completeness. I hope it helps to some extent.
Mark the Answer as Verified if this is Helpful.

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Ben Baxter 7,062 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Yes, the TENANT ("Environment") can have a mix. However, a COMPANY using the PREMIUM experience can only have Premium Users access the company. If there are multiple companies, any company using the ESSENTIALS experience can be accessed by either Essentials or Premium Users.

Essentials licensed Users CANNOT access a Manufacturing (Premium) related company.

Hope this helps clear it up.

Best Regards,

Ben Baxter

Accent Software Inc

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Khushbu Rajvi. 22,413 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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A single Business Central SaaS tenant can have both Essentials and Premium licenses, but they must be assigned to separate environments. Premium users can access an Essentials environment (without Premium features), but Essentials users cannot access a Premium environment.

Manage Access to Environment - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

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YUN ZHU 100,694 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi, Yes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/ui-experiences?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

Thanks.

ZHU

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Suresh Kulla 50,278 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Yes, you can have both licenses in the same tenant. You will assign the license to each user accordingly, and they will have the limited functionality in the database based on your license assignment. There is some restriction and more information in the below link

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2024wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/use-premium-license-log-into-environment-essentials-licenses

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Sohail Ahmed 11,175 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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you can’t mix Essential and Premium in the same environment. A tenant can only run in one license type.

If the customer needs both, they’ll need to set up a separate environment with the other license.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/administration/tenant-admin-center-manage-access#assign-essentials-and-premium-licenses-across-environments

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