A Comparison of SQL Server Pricing Through the Years

Recently Microsoft announced the new SQL Server 2008 R2 pricing and a lot of people wondered, "Why such big price increases?" There are the new "premium" editions - Datacenter and Parallel Data Warehouse - which are priced at more than $50,000 per processor but what caught my eye is the increase in both the Standard and Enterprise editions. I'm going to simply compare retail pricing otherwise it would require a whitepaper to understand.

The next decision was whether to compare CAL licensing or CPU licensing. I started out wanting to do CPU licenses only - it's far easier to do a comparison on a single number as opposed to "How many CALs are you purchasing?" However this presented another problem: SQL Server 6.0/6.5/7.0 did not have the same CPU-based licensing model that we have today. Prior to SQL Server 2000, you could get an unlimited-user license with the SQL Server Internet Connector. My memory is terrible and web docs from 1996-1998 are sketchy so I'm actually a bit confused regarding CPU pricing for 7.0 and 6.5 (hopefully someone can help out in the comments). I do know that, if you wanted to "downgrade" from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 7.0, your CPU license for SQL Server 2000 would apply to 7.0. You can read more about downgrading, if you care, here in .doc format or here in .pdf format. The price for the SQL Server Internet Connector was $2,999 per processor for SQL Server 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0. Since I could find 25-user licensing prices for all "modern" versions, I chose to compare CAL packs (retail value) and also, for SQL Server 2000+, the CPU costs.

A Comparison of CAL Licensing Costs for SQL Server through the years

	2008 R2	2008	2005	2000	7.0	6.5
Enterprise (25-CALs)	$13,969	$13,969	$13,969	$11,099	$7,999	$3,999
Standard (5-CALs)	$1,849	$1,849	$1,849	$1,489	$1,399	$1,399

You can see a clear trend of up, up, and up! Interesting info:

No price increase for 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2
SQL Server 2005's Enterprise edition licenses were ~ 21% more expensive than SQL Server 2000
SQL Server 2000's Enterprise edition CALs were about 28% more expensive than the SQL Server 7.0 CALs
Standard edition pricing has been relatively flat for CALs

A Comparison of CPU Licensing Costs for SQL Server through the years

	2008 R2	2008	2005	2000
Enterprise	$28,749	$24,999	$24,999	$19,999
Standard	$7,499	$5,999	$5,999	$4,999

The price meter moves up much faster and more drastically here in the Enterprise edition.

~30% price increase from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008 R2 over about a 10-year span
Enterprise edition CAL packs of 25 increased by only 21% over the same time
SQL Server 2008 R2 EE is ~13% more expensive than 2008 and 2005
Biggest jump came between SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 EE (~20%)

The CAL pricing of the Standard Edition increased quite a bit:

~34% price increase from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008 R2
Standard edition CAL packs of 5 users increased by ~24% during the same time

Interesting to Notice

I found this strange: the CAL licensing for both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 did not change yet the CPU licenses went up 20% or more. How unexpected...

Sources

SQL Server 2008 R2 pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx

SQL Server 2008 pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx
SQL Server 2005 pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/pricing.aspx
SQL Server 2000 pricing: CPU licensing info here, more here, and CAL pricing here
SQL Server 7.0 pricing: http://www.e-typedesign.co.uk/presspass/features/1998/11-9sqlpricing.mspx
SQL Server 6.5 pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1996/apr96/sql65ppr.mspx

Other Editions

Yes, there are plenty of other editions - Workgroup, Web, etc - but I focused on the workhorses: the editions that are in all versions of SQL Server since at least SQL Server 6.5.

That Was Fun!

I enjoyed going back in time. Did I get anything wrong? If so, please let me know! Oh, and if you like learning about the history of SQL Server, there are lots of places you can learn more information: