Licenses

Your Invicti Platform license determines how many targets you can set up for scanning. The total number of targets permitted is a combination of purchased FQDN targets and allowed target variations.

Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) are a key component of Invicti's licensing model. Each unique FQDN scanned counts against your licensed target allocation.

This document explains the nuances of how licensing works in Invicti Platform.

What is an FQDN?

A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is the complete address of a specific system or host on the internet or within a network. It uniquely identifies a resource by combining:

• Hostname – The name of the specific server or system (e.g., www, api, or mail)
• Domain name – The registered domain associated with your organization (e.g., example.com)

When combined, these form the FQDN, such as www.example.com.

Why are FQDNs not freed upon deletion?

When you delete a target from your Invicti portal, the associated FQDN is not immediately released back into your license pool. This is intentional and governed by the licensing policy, which is designed to:

• Prevent license circumvention by repeatedly deleting and re-adding targets to bypass target limits
• Ensure predictable usage and billing over the subscription period
  

Key points:

• FQDNs are retained until the end of your subscription period (i.e., license anniversary)
• Deleting a target only removes it from your dashboard—it does not reset license usage
• Targets (FQDNs) are tracked even after deletion
  

License behavior differences

Full (Commercial) license

• You are allocated a fixed number of FQDNs per year (e.g., 10 FQDNs for a 10-target license)
• You may temporarily reach up to ~120% of your quota, but you cannot exceed that limit. Overuse within the allowed range is monitored and flagged for review
• Retired FQDNs are freed only at yearly anniversary of the start of your license
• UI may not reflect exact usage due to retention of deleted targets (e.g., showing 3/10 instead of 10/10 if 7 were deleted)
  

POC (Proof of Concept) license

• Hard limits are enforced: exceeding FQDN quota results in a blocking error
• No grace allowance beyond your quota
• If you receive a “Max FQDNs reached” error, this is expected behavior under a POC license

Exceptions for demo or testing

Demo targets or internal QA environments (e.g., temporary subdomains) may need flexibility. If your organization requires exceptions:

• Contact support and request adjustments for demo targets
• In some cases, your POC license can be swapped for a Full license to remove hard FQDN limits
  

Best practices

• Plan FQDN usage across environments (dev, staging, prod) to avoid hitting limits prematurely
• Tag and document test/demo targets for internal tracking
• Use target editing rather than deletion/re-creation to preserve your license allocation
• Request FQDN resets during renewal if prior targets are no longer in use