Another aspect of creating an Azure DevOps organization is managing licenses. Within Azure DevOps, every user needs to have an access level assigned before they can log in to the product. There are three access levels defined:

• Stakeholder: Stakeholders are free users who can log in to the product but have limited access to its features. Stakeholders can manage work items, manage pipelines, and view dashboards. They do not have access to any of the other product areas, making this license level usable for non-development roles only.
• Basic: Basic users have a paid license that gives them access to all parts of the product, except for test management and advanced test execution functionality. A basic user license is priced at € 5.06 per month at the time of writing.
• Basic and Test plans: Users of the Basic and Test Plans license option have access to all parts of Azure DevOps. They have the same access as basic users, but are also provided with test management and tools for user acceptance testing, test execution, and test result reporting. At the time of writing, the Basic and Test Plans license option is priced at € 43.86 per month.

The first five basic licenses for every organization are free. This means that experimenting with the product and learning it can be done without incurring any costs. Additionally, Visual Studio subscribers can also get free licenses. Professional subscribers get a free Basic license and Enterprise subscribers get a free Basic and Test Plans license.

Licenses can be assigned and re-assigned at any point, so for a company or team with many joiners and leavers, it is not necessary to buy more licenses then they have people active at any given point.

Licensing costs are not the only costs that come from using Azure DevOps; it is important to also know about the pay-per-use costs.