Is Linux Free? What You Pay For and Why

Is Linux free? The short answer

Linux is free. The Linux kernel and the mainstream distributions cost nothing to download, install or run, on one machine or on a thousand. There is no licence key to buy, and no one counts your CPU cores. What can cost money is everything around the software: a vendor subscription, a support contract, a cloud image that is billed by the hour, and the hardware or VPS (virtual private server) that runs it.

A distribution, or distro, is the kernel plus the package manager and the thousands of programs that make a usable system. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, openSUSE Leap, Arch and Alpine are all free distros. You can install them on a company fleet or on a single VPS, and nobody sends you an invoice for the operating system.

Only a few distros are sold. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) are sold as subscriptions. Ubuntu is free, but Canonical sells an add-on called Ubuntu Pro. The rest of this guide explains what those payments buy, and how to tell whether a machine in front of you uses one.

Free as in price, free as in the GPL

The word "free" has two meanings here. The first is price: zero cost. The second is freedom: what the licence lets you do with the code.

The kernel is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2. The GPL gives you the right to run the code, read it, change it and share it. It does not forbid selling it. A company may charge for a copy of GPL software, as long as it passes on the same rights and makes the source code available to the people who receive the program. This is why a paid distro and a free distro can contain almost the same code.

So when a vendor charges for Linux, you are not paying for permission to run the kernel. You are paying for a service: tested updates delivered for many years, and a team to call when production breaks. The licence history is a long story of its own, and how the GPL, MIT and Apache licences came to be covers it properly.

Which Linux distributions cost money?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

RHEL is sold as a subscription. The subscription gives a registered machine access to Red Hat's update repositories, plus support at the level you paid for. The code is open source, but the binary updates come from Red Hat's servers. An unregistered RHEL machine cannot install packages or security fixes from them.

Red Hat also offers a no-cost subscription for individuals. As of October 2026, Red Hat's developer FAQ says it covers up to 16 physical or virtual nodes and allows "development, testing, and small production use cases". It is self-supported, which means no support contract and no service-level agreement. Only one is allowed per Red Hat account, and it is for individuals, not for organisations. A company that wants the same thing for its staff is pointed at a separate Developer Subscription for Teams.

On a RHEL machine you register with your Red Hat login, then list the repositories it can now use:

sudo subscription-manager register --username your-redhat-login
sudo subscription-manager repos --list-enabled

A registered RHEL 9 machine lists repositories such as rhel-9-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms and rhel-9-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms. An empty list means the machine is not registered, so dnf has nowhere to download updates from.

If you want RHEL compatibility without a subscription, that is exactly the job of Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux. Rocky Linux versus RHEL compares the two, including what the paid side gives you that the free rebuild does not.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

SLES works the same way: a paid subscription for updates and support. SUSE also builds openSUSE Leap, a free community distro that shares its code base with SUSE Linux Enterprise. Many people run Leap on servers and never pay anything.

Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu itself is free. Every LTS (long-term support) release gets five years of standard security updates for the packages in the main repository. Ubuntu Pro is an add-on. It extends security maintenance to ten years and covers the much larger universe repository. It also includes Livepatch, which applies kernel security fixes without a reboot.

As of October 2026, ubuntu.com/pro says Ubuntu Pro is "free for personal use on up to 5 physical machines", or 50 machines for official Ubuntu Community members. Past that allowance, it is paid. On the same date, Canonical's pricing page listed $25 per machine per year for a desktop, and $500 per machine per year for a physical server with unlimited virtual machines, both before 24/7 support is added. Check the pricing page before you budget, because these figures change.

The Pro client is already installed on current Ubuntu releases. This command shows whether the machine is attached to a subscription:

pro status

On a machine with no subscription, the output lists services such as esm-apps and livepatch, and ends with This machine is not attached to an Ubuntu Pro subscription. That is a normal state for free Ubuntu. Nothing stops working. You simply do not receive the extra Pro updates. To attach a machine, copy the token from your Ubuntu Pro dashboard and run sudo pro attach with it. What Ubuntu Pro does on a server explains which of its services matter on a VPS and which you can leave off.

Why Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux exist

For many years, CentOS Linux was a free rebuild of RHEL. It used RHEL's source code, removed Red Hat's trademarks, and published the result at no cost. In December 2020, Red Hat announced that CentOS Linux 8 would end on 31 December 2021, and that the project would focus on CentOS Stream instead. CentOS Stream is built just ahead of the next RHEL minor release, so it is a preview of RHEL rather than a copy of it. Two new free rebuilds appeared in response. AlmaLinux published its first stable release in March 2021, and Rocky Linux followed in June 2021. Both aim to be binary compatible with RHEL, and both are free to run anywhere. CentOS Linux 7, the last of the old line, reached end of life on 30 June 2024. The full sequence of events is in the history of Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky and Alma.

What else costs money when you run Linux?

The distro is usually the cheapest part of a Linux server. These are the places where the money really goes:

• Support contracts. You can run free Debian or Rocky Linux and still buy support for it from the vendor or from a third-party company. You pay for people and response times, not for the software.
• Paid cloud images. On the large public clouds, RHEL and SLES images, and Ubuntu Pro images, carry a software charge on top of the instance price. The cloud bills it by the hour or by the second, and the licence is included in that charge. Official images of free distros such as Debian, Ubuntu, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux carry no software fee. Check the listing anyway, because some third-party marketplace images of free distros add one.
• The hardware or the VPS. A server needs CPU, memory, disk and bandwidth, and someone has to pay for them. On a VPS, that is your monthly plan.
• Your own time. Updates, backups, monitoring and security fixes take hours every month. A subscription can reduce that work, for example with Livepatch, but it does not remove it.

Containers follow the same pattern. Docker Engine on a Linux server is free, while Docker Desktop has paid tiers for larger companies. Which Docker products are free and which are paid separates the two.

How does this compare with Windows Server licensing?

Windows Server is licensed per physical CPU core, with a minimum of 16 cores per server. Many setups also need client access licences (CALs) for each user or device that connects. That model is the real price difference between the two platforms. A Linux server has no per-core count and no per-user count, so adding cores or users never changes what you pay for the operating system.

On a VPS, the provider usually includes the Windows licence in the monthly price. This is why a Windows plan often costs more than a Linux plan with the same CPU and memory. Linux versus Windows Server for a VPS compares the two in more detail, beyond the licence.

Is Linux free on the desktop?

Yes. Linux Mint, Ubuntu Desktop, Fedora Workstation and Debian are free to download and install, and they stay free. There is no paid "home" or "pro" edition that unlocks features.

The caveat is drivers and media codecs (the software that decodes video and audio formats). Some formats, such as H.264 and HEVC video, are covered by patents. For that reason, some distros do not ship every codec by default. Fedora leaves several out, and most users add them from the RPM Fusion repository. Ubuntu offers a third-party software option in the installer, and a ubuntu-restricted-extras package after installation. Linux Mint offers to install the codecs during setup.

Graphics drivers are a similar case. The NVIDIA proprietary driver costs nothing, but it is closed source, so some distros make you choose to install it. On Ubuntu, ubuntu-drivers list shows the drivers that match your hardware.

None of these steps costs money. They are extra steps, and the reason for them is licensing, not price.

Check what you are running

If you are not sure which distro a server runs, or whether it depends on a paid subscription, ask the machine:

cat /etc/os-release

The NAME and VERSION lines tell you the distro. Ubuntu, Debian GNU/Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux and Fedora Linux are free. Red Hat Enterprise Linux needs a subscription, or the no-cost individual one, to receive updates. On Ubuntu, pro status then tells you whether Ubuntu Pro is attached. Moving between these families mostly means learning a new package manager, and the dnf and apt command equivalents maps one to the other.

FAQ

Is Linux free for commercial use?

Yes. The GPL places no limit on commercial use. The mainstream free distros, such as Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, can run a company's production servers at no cost. Companies pay only when they choose a paid product, such as RHEL or SLES, or Ubuntu Pro beyond its free personal allowance, or when they buy a support contract.

Is Linux free for businesses?

The software is free for businesses, but some free offers are for individuals only. As of October 2026, the no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is not for organisations, and free Ubuntu Pro is for personal use on up to five machines. A business that wants those specific products buys a subscription. A business that runs free Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux pays nothing for the operating system.

Do I pay for Linux on a VPS?

Usually not. With a free distro such as Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux, the VPS price covers CPU, memory, disk and bandwidth, and the operating system adds nothing. You pay extra only for a commercial image such as RHEL or SLES, or for an add-on such as Ubuntu Pro beyond the free allowance. A Windows Server VPS usually costs more, because the provider pays Microsoft a per-core licence fee and includes it in your plan.

Is Ubuntu free, or do I need Ubuntu Pro?

Ubuntu is free. An LTS release receives five years of standard security updates for the main repository with no subscription. Ubuntu Pro is optional: it adds ten years of security maintenance and coverage for the universe repository. Run pro status to see whether a machine is attached. A machine that is not attached keeps working and keeps receiving standard updates.