The NFTC covers Oracle JDK 17 and later and permits free use — including commercial and production use. It also expires on a schedule. The conditions that invalidate it, and the upgrade cadence that keeps it valid.
The Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions licence — NFTC — is the licence that covers Oracle JDK 17 and later releases. Subject to its conditions it permits free use for all users, including commercial and production use, and it permits redistribution provided you do not charge for it.
That is a considerably more generous grant than the OTN licence it succeeded, and it is the reason moving to JDK 17 or later is the single most effective step most organisations can take on Java cost. It is also conditional, time-limited and easy to invalidate by accident.
Here are the terms.
Oracle grants to You, as a recipient of this Program, subject to the conditions stated herein, a nonexclusive, non-transferable, limited license to:
internally use the unmodified Programs for the purposes of developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your applications, and running the Program for your own personal use or internal business operations; and
redistribute the unmodified Program and Program Documentation, under the terms of this license, provided that you do not charge your licensees any fees associated with such distribution or use of the Program, including, without limitation, fees for products that include or are bundled with a copy of the Program or for services that involve the use of the distributed Program.
Outside those terms you would need to pay for commercial licence use or a My Oracle Support subscription.
The phrase carrying the weight is internal business operations. That is what OTN does not grant, and it is why the same host can be chargeable on Java 11 and free on Java 17.
An Oracle Binary Licence and Redistribution Agreement (BLRA) and an Oracle Trademark Licence (TML) are required for commercial distribution rights where your use of Oracle Java does not comply with the relevant Java licensing manuals. Oracle’s licensing user manual sets out which rights are included in each version of Oracle Java.
Keep local copies of your Oracle Java licence agreements. Oracle replaces the published versions on its website periodically, and not always on terms more favourable than the ones you accepted.
An NFTC licence is not valid where commercial features are in use — that requires an additional fee. Hosts running commercial features remain chargeable, exactly as they were under OTN, and the NFTC will not cover them.
Examples of commercial features include Java Mission Control (JMC), the Advanced Management Console agent and Usage Tracker. Where any of those is enabled, a paid licence is required for that specific host or environment.
Where commercial-feature usage predates the current subscription period, keep evidence that licences were procured for each subscription period covering that usage. You will be asked for it eventually, and reconstructing it after the fact is not realistic.
The practical recommendation is to maintain an effective licence position that reflects the annual subscription requirement, listing hosts and the licence requirement attributed to each. Keep that evidence safe. It is what lets you quantify — and contest — the difference between your position and whatever Oracle proposes during an audit.
The NFTC exists partly to serve Oracle’s interest in moving customers onto newer Java versions. An NFTC grant only applies while the installed version meets the NFTC rules, and a given version stays valid only until one year after the next Long-Term Support release ships.
LTS releases arrive every two years. So keeping a fleet inside the NFTC means scheduling an upgrade of every host on that cadence — otherwise the deployment falls out of the no-fee grant and into the subscription model. Non-LTS releases revert a year after their own release date.
Each upgrade must complete within twelve months of the new LTS version shipping. Oracle states the position plainly in its FAQs:
After the free use license period, Oracle intends to use the OTN Licence, the same currently used for Java 8 and 11 LTS releases, for subsequent updates.
So the updates are not optional if you intend to stay free.
Where a v17 or higher installation is not upgraded to the newest LTS release within twelve months of that release, the host requires licensing under the Java SE Universal Subscription. That is the mechanism preventing organisations from settling on an old version indefinitely and paying nothing.
Non-LTS versions of Oracle Java receive bug and security patches for only six months after release. Unless there is a specific business requirement for a particular non-LTS build, install LTS releases instead — otherwise you are upgrading every six months just to stay patched, on top of the licensing clock. If you are running a non-LTS version, you also have twelve months from its release date to move to an LTS release for the NFTC grant to remain valid.
The original worked example described an upgrade window that has since opened and closed, so it is worth restating with the dates that actually happened.
JDK 21 shipped in September 2023. Versions 17, 18, 19 and 20 therefore had to move to v21 between September 2023 and September 2024 to stay inside the NFTC.
JDK 25 shipped in September 2025. Versions 21, 22, 23 and 24 remain free under the NFTC until September 2026. Hosts still on those versions after that date fall outside the no-fee grant.
Two cycles in, the pattern is confirmed rather than predicted. Treat Java upgrades as a recurring licensing obligation with a date on it, owned by someone, funded like any other compliance activity. The organisations that get caught are not the ones that decided to pay — they are the ones that let a two-year clock run without anyone watching it.
Everything above depends on the same underlying data: for every host, which Java version and update level is installed, whether any commercial feature is enabled, what the host does, and whether Java is actually being used on it.
CerteroX SAM addresses that directly. Installed software is resolved against the Software Recognition Database — 3.5 million or more normalised publisher, product and version titles — so Java is identified by version and update level rather than logged as an unrecognised binary. The Software Recognition Service attaches release, end-of-support and extended-support dates, which is how you find hosts whose free-use window has closed or is about to.
Coverage is the other half of the problem. The native inventory agent runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, IBM AIX, HP-UX and Oracle Solaris against one schema, with agentless and command-line inventory for locked-down systems and standalone inventory for air-gapped ones. Java is on all of them.
AppsMonitor meters usage at file level with first-used and last-used tracking and a % Used figure over a rolling 90-day window, which separates hosts that run Java from hosts that merely have it installed — the difference between a defensible removal and an argument.
That feeds the effective licence position this post recommends keeping: purchased, used, available, required, variance and exposure, computed continuously rather than assembled under pressure. Governance Policies then hold the position, flagging a chargeable version reappearing on a host you have already cleared.
Certero is a verified third-party tool vendor with Oracle License Management Services. In Certero’s published wording: being a verified third-party toolset means that Oracle’s audit team can accept data from Certero during an official audit, as an alternative to installing Oracle License Management measurement tools. That is conditional rather than guaranteed, but it materially changes where an audit conversation starts.
Where the constraint is Oracle licensing expertise rather than tooling, Certero runs a SAM managed service for Oracle Java. In-house Oracle licensing consultants analyse the environment, identify the present risks, and work through the mitigation options — upgrading to a version inside the NFTC, moving to OpenJDK or another non-Oracle distribution, or making use of historic licence agreements you may already hold.
Other posts covering the same ground.
An Oracle Unlimited Licence Agreement is only unlimited within its clauses. What certification actually asks of you, where toxic consumption creeps in, and why the measurement work has to start at the beginning of the term rather than the last six months.
Microsoft's August 2025 Product Terms changes: Extended Term standardised across programmes, Exchange and Skype for Business Server Subscription Editions, the Exchange and Windows 10 ESU programmes, and the Dynamics 365 F&O enforcement dates.
Renew, rescope or exit — an Oracle ULA gives you three routes and a narrow window to choose between them. The questions to settle first, and a six-point health check to see how ready you actually are.
Everything argued above is checkable. Name the publisher, the billing account or the platform you would argue with, and the session is built around it — the reasoning attached, not a summary slide.
No gated download at the end of it.