Knox licenses

NOTE — With Knox 3.7.1, managed devices no longer need to activate a Knox license to call the new APIs introduced for ISVs. Refer to the Independent Software Vendors for more details.

Our Samsung Knox SDKs are powerful. They provide you with system-level control over all the great features in Samsung phones, tablets, and wearables, and help you to create the next killer app with differentiating features for the next big business opportunity. Our SDKs extend capabilities in the Android and Tizen SDKs, providing enterprises with additional features to remotely manage, customize, and secure devices.

We uses licenses for two key purposes:

Security—We limit access to the more powerful APIs to vetted enterprises in our Knox Partner Program. If we find that an enterprise is intentionally or accidentally abusing the use of our APIs, we can revoke their licenses immediately and prevent their apps from calling our APIs.
Billing—We charge for premium Knox features. We do this by tracking each time an app activates a premium license key on a device, and billing the customer who owns that premium license key. Standard Knox features are free; to see the standard and premium features, see Permissions. We bill premium features on either a subscription or one-time basis, with the pricing dependent on the negotiated partner contract.

You can incorporate the billing of our premium Knox features into your own monetization models as follows:

Add-on—Charge our Knox subscription fee on top of your own service fee.
Tiered—Establish a higher-cost, premium-tiered service that includes paid Knox services.

The model depends on whether you want to hide our licensing structure and details from customers.

KPE license types

The Knox SDK and Knox Tizen SDK for Wearables use the Knox Platform for Enterprise (KPE) license. This license is permission-based, with these variants providing access to different free and paid features:

KPE Standard—Provides permissions to call APIs that manage device features like network connections, user accounts, location, simple kiosking, data encryption, and security restrictions. This is a free license.
KPE Premium—Provides all the Standard permissions as well as permissions to call APIs that provide advanced security features like containers, VPNs, and certificates, as well as comprehensive device customization and kiosking. This is a paid license.
KPE DualDAR—Provides all the Premium permissions as well as a permission to call APIs that enable double encryption of Data-At-Rest. This is also a paid license.

Development and commercial licenses

We provide trial licenses for those evaluating our SDKs:

KPE Development—This trial license provides the permissions to call all APIs, but works on a limited number of devices for a limited time period. Once expired, you can either generate a new Development license or upgrade to a Commercial license. All partners can generate this license from the Knox Partner Portal.
KPE Development Limited—This is similar to the KPE Development license, but offers access to a limited number of permissions. Independent developers with our previous SEAP program could generate this license. The Knox Partner Portal still displays but no longer generates these licenses. We encourage independent developers to enroll to become a partner.
KPE Commercial—This license works on an unlimited number of devices for various time periods. How you get this license depends whether you are using free or paid features:
- Free (Standard permissions)—You can generate this commercial license from the Knox Partner Portal.
- Paid (Premium, DualDAR permissions)—Because billing needs to be set up, you must contact a Knox license reseller to purchase these licenses on your behalf.

License scope

You can use development licenses on a limited number of devices and for a limited time period:

SDK	Development License	# Activations	Valid Period	Max # Licenses
Knox SDK Knox Tizen SDK for Wearables	KPE Development	30	6 months	1
Knox SDK Knox Tizen SDK for Wearables	KPE Development Limited	10	3 months	1

You can use commercial licenses on more devices and longer time periods:

SDK	Commercial License	# Activations	Valid Period	Max # Licenses
Knox SDK Knox Tizen SDK for Wearables	KPE Standard	Unlimited	Unlimited	100
	KPE Premium	As many as you purchase	Monthly, yearly, or perpetual	Unlimited
	KPE DualDAR	As many as you purchase	Yearly or perpetual	Unlimited

Other license types

Other license types include:

Backwards—compatible key–This enables devices running Knox v2.7.1 and earlier to use the Knox 3.x SDK. If your app needs to support devices with older Knox versions, you need to generate only one such key, which works on an unlimited number of devices for an unlimited period.
REST authentication key—If you are also using our web services, you need an authentication token to verify that you are allowed to access our REST APIs.

Knox v2.9 first introduced a Beta version of the permission-based KPE license. Before that, devices running Knox v2.8 and earlier used these older license types:

Enterprise License Manager (ELM)–The ELM license was replaced by the Knox Standard license and has reached end of service. To get more info, see the ELM end of service FAQs. SDKs that used this license have now been deprecated. These include the Knox Standard, Premium, and Customization SDKs, as well as the Samsung EDU SDK.
Independent Software Vendor (ISV)–The Samsung India Identity SDK still uses this ISV license to authenticate apps that call its APIs. The legacy Knox ISV SDK also used the ISV license. The ISV license continues to work with no changes needed.
Knox License Manager (KLM)–The legacy Knox Premium and Customization SDKs used the KLM license to track customer usage of paid APIs for billing purposes. The KLM license continues to work, but if your key reaches the maximum number of activations purchased, you need to contact us to buy more activations for the key.