Secure AI Billing Definitions

This page is the authoritative source for the commercial terms behind Delinea Securing AI. It defines the three things that determine what a customer is billed.

This feature is part of the Secure AI offering. If it is not enabled for your organization and you would like it to be, please contact your StrongDM/Delinea representative for more information.

1. Active Agent

Definition. An Active Agent is an AI agent running in the customer's environment, whether on an end user's own machine or in infrastructure the customer controls, that during the measurement period either connected to a protected resource through the Delinea runtime authorization proxy, or retrieved a credential from the Delinea vault, and generated an audit log record.

Scope.

• Securing AI covers agents running in the customer's environment: agents on end-user machines (the endpoint), such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Codex on a user's laptop, which is the most common case, and autonomous agents the customer builds and hosts. A hosted agent shared by many users is not supported today. Agents hosted by a SaaS vendor, such as Microsoft Copilot, Salesforce Agentforce or ServiceNow, are out of scope. Customer-hosted equivalents are in preview.

• Securing AI attaches to Delinea Platform Standard, Platinum or Enterprise. It is not available on Delinea Platform Essentials.

• Deterministic, non-AI workload automation running under a Secret Server application account is not an Active Agent. See the vault boundary below.

The vault boundary. Securing AI licenses AI agent access. Deterministic, non-AI automation running under a Secret Server application account is not an Active Agent and is not licensed as one.

Fair use. Non-human access under a licensed human account is expected to stay within reasonable bounds. As a guideline, Delinea considers up to 20 non-human connections per licensed IT or Admin account to be reasonable use. Sustained access materially beyond that indicates agent activity that should be licensed, either through Securing AI or through additional human licences.

This is a fair-use guideline, not a metered cap. It lives in product documentation, which the MSLA already incorporates, and exists to give Delinea something to point at if abuse is detected rather than to produce an invoice. There is no vault-side telemetry and no vault fingerprinting today, so it is guidance rather than something Delinea measures. Existing customers are unaffected. Nothing here creates a retrospective obligation, and the published Secret Server SDK for DevOps documentation continues to state that application accounts are not counted for licensing purposes.

What it is not.

• Not a registered agent. Registering agents is unrestricted. You license the agents that act.

• Not an attempt. An agent that tries to reach a resource it has no access to is not active. Access counts, not attempts.

• Not a session. One agent that connects a hundred times in a day is one Active Agent.

• Not a human entitlement. An Active Agent license does not grant human privileged access.

Counting rules.

• A developer or admin who accesses a resource directly through any tool, which could itself be an AI agent, is licensed as a human user, not as an Active Agent, where the administrator has no visibility into the tool used and cannot control the access of any agent the developer uses.

• On the proxy, each harness a person runs on their own machine is one Active Agent. One person running Claude Code and Codex is two Active Agents.

• Sub-agents collapse into the harness that spawned them. One Claude instance spawning thirty sub-agents is one Active Agent.

• Running an agent on a schedule inside a harness does not change the count.

• An autonomous agent is one built and hosted by the customer's organization, in its own infrastructure or PaaS infrastructure. One autonomous agent is one service account, which is one Active Agent.

• In Secret Server, one agent is one API key.

• An agent active on both the vault and the proxy in the same month is one Active Agent, counted once.

• Where activity cannot be attributed to a specific agent, it resolves to one Active Agent per human identity. Delinea carries the burden of demonstrating any count above that floor.

Why one per harness, not one per person. On infrastructure an agent must register with Delinea before it can reach a back end, so it is countable. On the endpoint, each harness a person runs counts as one Active Agent, and the telemetry can tell the harnesses apart. Sub-agents inside a harness do not add to the count. If you have previously been told that Claude and Codex under one person count as one, that is out of date. Dedupe is stated but not yet enforceable. An agent active on both planes counts once, but there is no federation between the Platform and StrongDM tenants, so the overlap cannot be detected at launch. Adding a vault count to a proxy count will overcount any agent that uses both, which is the architecture of the lead deployment. The rule as written is correct and is in the customer's favour; this is an internal measurement caveat.

2. How your monthly figure is calculated

Definition. Delinea counts the distinct Active Agents in your environment each day. At the end of each calendar month we drop your single busiest day, and your highest remaining day becomes your figure for that month.

What this means. Your biggest day of the month does not count. A single spike, a month-end batch run or a one-off load test will not set your number.

What this does not mean. Only one day is dropped. If your Active Agent count is elevated on two or more days, that elevated level sets your figure. This is not burst smoothing and should not be described as burst relief.

Terms.

• A day runs from 00:00 to 23:59:59 UTC.

• The month is the calendar month.

• A day with no telemetry is not counted as a day.

What it is not.

• Not a peak. Your busiest day is specifically what is removed.

• Not an average and not a median. The figure sits near the top of your range, not in the middle.

• Not a cumulative total of every agent seen during the month.

• Not concurrency. It counts identities that acted within a day, not simultaneous sessions.

• Not a billing meter. It sizes the subscription and informs true-up. It never produces an invoice on its own.

The commercial rule that goes with it. Securing AI is an annual committed subscription. You are billed on the band you subscribe to, not on what you use. Subscribe to 500 and measure 100, and you are billed for 500. Exceeding your band does not block anything, interrupt service, or trigger an automatic charge.

3. Agentic True-Up

Definition. If your monthly figure exceeds the band you purchased by more than 10%, the additional agents above your band are licensed through the Per Agent Add-On. A monthly figure within 10% of your band does not trigger a true-up. The 10% allowance is the default and applies unless your agreement states otherwise.

Worked example. On a 500-agent band the allowance runs to 550. A monthly figure of 540 sits inside it and nothing happens. A figure of 560 passes it, and the 60 agents above your band, not the 10 above the allowance, are licensed on the Add-On.

Usage review. Delinea may periodically review your Active Agent usage. If your monthly figure approaches or exceeds the band you purchased, your account team will contact you to discuss a true-up. Exceeding your band does not interrupt service and there is no hard stop.

Mechanics.

• Direction is forward only. A true-up raises your licensed quantity going forward.

• No retroactive charges for prior periods.

• No credit or refund applies if your monthly figure is below your band.

What it is not.

• Not overage billing, consumption billing, or metered billing. There is no per-use charge and no variable monthly invoice.

• Not a repricing. Your band rate is unchanged. Additional agents are licensed on the Add-On, or by moving to the next band where that costs less.

Note the shape of it. The allowance is a trigger, not a free block. Once the monthly figure passes 110% of the band, the true-up is calculated from the band, so on a 500-agent band a figure of 551 licenses 51 agents rather than 1. That is a cliff at the threshold and it is stated deliberately.