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Licensing

The Oracle Diagnostics Pack Cost, and What You Get Without It

3 November 2026

The Oracle Diagnostics Pack is the license behind AWR, ASH and ADDM, and it is not in the Enterprise Edition price. Oracle's Technology Global Price List puts it at $7,500 per processor, list, and the Tuning Pack, which requires it, at $5,000 more, plus 22% a year for support on both. On Standard Edition 2 neither can be bought at all. This page gives the arithmetic for one server and for five, what the licensing manual says the pack covers and what stays outside it, and how Scops gives you session history, top SQL, plan changes and the warning before the trouble on any edition, with no pack, for $499 a database a year.

The list price

ItemPer processor, listSupport, each yearLicensing manual
Oracle Diagnostics Pack$7,500$1,650 (22%)Enterprise Edition: "Extra cost option". Standard Edition 2: not available.
Oracle Tuning Pack$5,000$1,100 (22%)"Extra cost option, also requires Oracle Diagnostics Pack".
Both packs$12,500$2,750Per processor of every database that uses them.

The figures are Oracle's Technology Global Price List of 15 September 2026, list price in US dollars. The packs are licensed like the database they run on: by processor, or by Named User Plus with a minimum of 25 named users per processor, and the license has to match the Enterprise Edition license of the database in count and metric. Support is 22% of the net license fee a year, and it is the part that never stops.

What a processor is

A processor license is not a socket and not a core. Oracle's Processor Core Factor Table assigns a factor to each processor family, 0.5 for the Intel Xeon and AMD processors in almost every x86 server, and the licenses are cores times the factor, rounded up. A two-socket server with 8 cores per socket is 16 cores, which is 8 processor licenses, and every option and pack on that server is bought 8 times. The License page of Scops counts the same way, cores times 0.5 for Enterprise Edition and sockets for Standard Edition 2, for every server it monitors.

One server, five servers

EstateDiagnostics PackBoth packsScops Professional
One server, 16 cores, 8 processor licenses$60,000, then $13,200 a year$100,000, then $22,000 a year$499 a year for the database on it
Five such servers, one database each$300,000, then $66,000 a year$500,000, then $110,000 a year$2,257 a year for the five
The five over five years$630,000$1,050,000$11,285

The Scops column is the public price: Professional is $499 per database a year, each further database 5% less than the one before, and the Community edition is free for two databases. The Oracle columns are list price with no discount, which is where every negotiation starts, and the support line is what the estate pays every year after the first for as long as the packs are installed.

What the pack covers

The Database Licensing Information User Manual is the reference, and it is specific. For 19c it puts these under the Diagnostics Pack: V$ACTIVE_SESSION_HISTORY and its underlying table X$ASH; all DBA_HIST_ views, with six exceptions (DBA_HIST_SNAPSHOT, DBA_HIST_DATABASE_INSTANCE, DBA_HIST_SNAP_ERROR, DBA_HIST_SEG_STAT, DBA_HIST_SEG_STAT_OBJ and DBA_HIST_UNDOSTAT); DBMS_WORKLOAD_REPOSITORY, DBMS_ADDM and DBMS_ADVISOR when it runs ADDM; and the reports, awrrpt.sql, ashrpt.sql and addmrpt.sql, along with Performance Hub and ASH Analytics in Enterprise Manager. The Tuning Pack, which "also requires Oracle Diagnostics Pack", covers SQL Tuning Advisor, SQL Access Advisor, Automatic SQL Tuning, SQL Profiles and Real-time SQL and PL/SQL Monitoring, which is V$SQL_MONITOR and V$SQL_PLAN_MONITOR. The manual applies this to any way of reaching them: a hand-written query against V$ACTIVE_SESSION_HISTORY counts the same as opening the report. One line in the same table is worth knowing by heart: "SQL Plan Management does not require a license for Oracle Diagnostics Pack or Oracle Tuning Pack", so a SQL plan baseline that pins a good plan is free on every Enterprise Edition database.

What stays outside it

V$SESSION, V$SESSION_EVENT, V$SESSION_WAIT_HISTORY, V$SYSTEM_EVENT, V$SYSSTAT, V$SQL, V$SQLSTATS and V$SQL_PLAN are not on the manual's lists, and neither is Statspack. They are the whole picture of the database at this moment: every session, what it waits on, every statement with its plan and its figures since it was loaded. What they lack is history. A V$ view is now; the question at nine in the morning is what happened at three, and a tool that keeps its own history from these views answers it without a pack. That is what Scops does: every session sampled every 5 seconds, the SQL figures every 10 minutes, into a repository of its own, from a read-only account that needs only CREATE SESSION and SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE.

Where you stand today

The default on Enterprise Edition is permissive. CONTROL_MANAGEMENT_PACK_ACCESS defaults to DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING on Enterprise Edition and to NONE on every other edition, so an Enterprise Edition database without a pack license is open to pack features until someone closes it:

SHOW PARAMETER control_management_pack_access
ALTER SYSTEM SET control_management_pack_access = 'NONE' SCOPE = BOTH;

The values are NONE, DIAGNOSTIC and DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING, and the parameter cannot be changed from inside a pluggable database. What the database has recorded about its own use:

SELECT name, detected_usages, currently_used,
       first_usage_date, last_usage_date, last_sample_date
FROM   dba_feature_usage_statistics
WHERE  name LIKE '%AWR%'
   OR  name LIKE '%Workload Repository%'
   OR  name LIKE '%ADDM%'
   OR  name LIKE '%Active Session History%'
ORDER  BY name;

The view is filled by weekly samples, so a use today shows up later, and it does not record every pack feature, so zero usages is not proof. The License page of Scops reads this view from every database, lists each pack and option a database has used with its first and last use, flags any new use in the last 90 days as Needs Attention, and counts the processor licenses each one implies, so new exposure is a line on a screen rather than a surprise in an audit. Scops itself never uses a pack unless you turn on the switch and confirm the license; the one feature that would, automatic plan fix with SQL profiles, waits behind it.

The way without the pack

Everything a DBA opens the pack for has an answer in Scops that touches no pack view. Session history by wait class, statement and user is the Activity chart, from the 5-second samples. Top SQL by CPU, reads and elapsed time, with the plan and the figures per execution, is the SQL page, from V$SQL and V$SQL_PLAN. A plan that changed is a finding with the old plan and the new one, from the 10-minute history Scops keeps. The warning before the trouble is Radar Engine, 75+ detectors on tablespaces, backups, standbys, jobs, accounts, waits and statements, which Enterprise Manager does not have at any price. Scops AI reads all of it with 40+ agentic tools. All of it works the same on Standard Edition 2, where the pack cannot be licensed, and on Enterprise Edition, where it no longer has to be.

Questions

How much does the Oracle Diagnostics Pack cost?
$7,500 per processor at list price on Oracle's Technology Global Price List, plus 22% a year for support, so $1,650 a year per processor. A 16-core x86 server is 8 processor licenses at core factor 0.5: $60,000 and then $13,200 a year.

Is the Diagnostics Pack included with Enterprise Edition?
No. The Database Licensing Information User Manual lists it as an "Extra cost option" for Enterprise Edition, and it is not available for Standard Edition 2 at all. Enterprise Edition databases still ship with CONTROL_MANAGEMENT_PACK_ACCESS set to DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING, so the features are open until the parameter is set to NONE.

Can I buy the Tuning Pack without the Diagnostics Pack?
No. The manual's note on the Tuning Pack says it "also requires Oracle Diagnostics Pack", so the two together are $12,500 per processor list, plus $2,750 a year.

Can I use AWR or ASH on Standard Edition 2?
No. The manual's feature table marks both packs as not available on Standard Edition 2, so there is no license to buy. Session history on Standard Edition comes from sampling V$SESSION yourself, or from a tool that does it for you.

How do I see Oracle session history without the Diagnostics Pack?
Sample V$SESSION on a short interval into a table of your own, or use Scops, which samples every session every 5 seconds and every statement every 10 minutes on any edition, keeps the history, and adds the detectors and the AI on top, for $499 a database a year.

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