# What licences does Azure Virtual Desktop actually require?

_Updated 2026-09-10. Canonical page: https://rugged.sh/learn/avd-licensing-requirements/_

**Question:** What licences do I need for Azure Virtual Desktop?

**Short answer:** For Windows 10 or 11 Enterprise and Enterprise multi-session session hosts, each user needs one of Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, F3, Business Premium or Student Use Benefit, Windows Enterprise E3 or E5, Windows Education A3 or A5, or Windows VDA per user. Windows Server session hosts are licensed differently: they need RDS Client Access Licences with Software Assurance, or RDS User Subscription Licences. If your licence entitles you to AVD you do not install a separate one, and Azure consumption for the session host VMs and storage is billed on top either way.

## The entitlement list, as Microsoft publishes it

Microsoft's prerequisites page lists the licensing methods per operating system for internal commercial purposes. This is the table to check a client against before quoting anything.

_Session host operating system and the licences that entitle internal commercial use_

| Session host OS | Licensing method |
| --- | --- |
| Windows 11 Enterprise, Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session | Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, F3, Business Premium, Student Use Benefit; Windows Enterprise E3 or E5; Windows Education A3 or A5; Windows VDA per user |
| Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, 2025 | RDS Client Access Licence with Software Assurance, per user or per device; or RDS User Subscription Licences |

> **Business Premium counts.** Microsoft 365 Business Premium is on the entitlement list, which matters because it is the licence a large share of small-business MSP clients already hold. Many are entitled to AVD without buying anything new.

## External users are a different model

The entitlements above cover internal commercial purposes. Microsoft's definition of internal is wider than it sounds: it includes external vendors and contractors, as long as they are doing work for your organization. A contractor using a client's AVD desktop to do that client's work needs an ordinary eligible licence, not per-user access pricing, and Microsoft says so directly with a worked example.

Per-user access pricing is for the other case: selling access to your own customers, such as delivering a SaaS application through AVD. It is enabled by enrolling an Azure subscription rather than by assigning user licences, it charges only for users who connect at least once in the billing period, and it grants access rights to AVD and FSLogix only, not to Office or Defender.

Per-user access pricing is not available for Windows Server session hosts. If the plan is to stream a Windows Server hosted application to a customer's customers, that combination is not supported.

## What you pay on top

The licence is entitlement, not infrastructure. The session host VMs, their managed disks, profile storage and any networking are ordinary Azure consumption and are billed as such. That is the part autoscaling reduces and the part licensing does not.

Microsoft also notes that if your licence entitles you to use AVD, you do not need to install or apply a separate licence, but you do need to make sure the Windows licence used on session hosts is correctly applied in Azure and the operating system is activated.

## The things that are not licences but block deployments anyway

Several prerequisites are commonly mistaken for licensing problems when a deployment fails.

- **Resource provider registration:** Microsoft.DesktopVirtualization must be registered on the subscription. Registering it requires the */register/action operation, included in Contributor or Owner.
- **Identity:** Entra ID always authenticates AVD users. Session hosts join the same Entra tenant, or an AD DS or Entra Domain Services domain. Personal Microsoft accounts are not supported.
- **Unsupported host configurations:** 32-bit operating systems, N, KN and LTSC editions, ultra disks as the OS disk, ephemeral OS disks, virtual machine scale sets and Arm64 VMs are all unsupported for session hosts.
- **The domain join account:** Microsoft states the account used for joining a domain cannot have MFA enabled. This one surfaces late, during host deployment, and looks like a credential failure.

## Checking entitlement across a fleet

For a single client this is a spreadsheet exercise. Across thirty tenants it is the kind of thing that quietly drifts as licences are reassigned. rugged.sh reads each customer tenant's subscribed SKUs and per-user licence assignments through app-only access, so you can answer who holds what without opening a portal per client. It reads the assignments; deciding whether a given SKU entitles a given user to AVD is still your call against the table above.

## Questions and answers

**Does Microsoft 365 Business Premium include Azure Virtual Desktop?**

Yes, for internal commercial use. Microsoft lists Business Premium among the licensing methods that entitle a user to Windows 10 and 11 Enterprise and Enterprise multi-session session hosts, alongside Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, F3 and Student Use Benefit.

**Do I need an RDS CAL for Azure Virtual Desktop?**

Only for Windows Server session hosts. Those require an RDS Client Access Licence with Software Assurance, per user or per device, or RDS User Subscription Licences. Windows 10 and 11 Enterprise session hosts use the Microsoft 365 or Windows subscription entitlements instead.

**Is there a separate charge for the Azure Virtual Desktop service?**

You pay for the Azure resources the deployment uses: session host VMs, managed disks, profile storage and networking. If your licence entitles you to AVD, Microsoft states you do not need to install or apply a separate licence, but the Windows licence must be correctly applied in Azure and the OS activated.

**Can I serve AVD desktops to my clients' external customers?**

Only if they are genuinely your customers rather than people doing your work. Microsoft counts external vendors and contractors serving your organization as internal, so they need an ordinary eligible licence. Selling access to your own customers is external commercial use, handled through per-user access pricing on an enrolled Azure subscription, which is not available for Windows Server session hosts.

## Sources

- Microsoft Learn: Prerequisites for Azure Virtual Desktop (operating systems and licenses): https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/virtual-desktop/prerequisites (read 2026-09-10)
- Microsoft Learn: Licensing Azure Virtual Desktop: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/virtual-desktop/licensing (read 2026-09-10)

## Related

- Deploying Azure Virtual Desktop for a client, start to finish: https://rugged.sh/learn/deploy-avd-for-a-client/
- Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop: which one for which client: https://rugged.sh/learn/windows-365-vs-azure-virtual-desktop/
- Where the money actually goes in an Azure Virtual Desktop estate: https://rugged.sh/learn/avd-cost-optimization/

_Published by rugged.sh, a multi-tenant control plane MSPs use to deploy and scale AVD and Windows 365 and to manage Microsoft 365 configuration across customer tenants. Priced per customer tenant, not per user (Microsoft 365 management: $10/tenant/month; Azure (AVD / Windows 365): $50/tenant/month; Microsoft 365 + Azure: $60/tenant/month), with a free tier for 1 tenant and 5 users. https://rugged.sh/_