Odoo 20 was unveiled on 24 September 2026 at Odoo Experience in Brussels, and for once the licensing news deserves as much attention as the features. After four years without a price rise, Odoo has changed its pricing structure: the Standard plan stays where it was, the Custom plan becomes more expensive from 2027, and an entirely new licence type — the Light User — appears for employees who only touch a small corner of the system. Because Odoo charges per user rather than per app, the mix of licences you hold matters as much as the plan you choose. This article explains how the pieces fit together, what each plan actually buys, and where the costs that never appear on the pricing page are hiding.
The plans at a glance
Odoo sells one product three ways, plus a licence type that cuts across all of them. Every paid plan includes all apps — there are no per-module charges — along with hosting, daily backups, support by email, the eLearning platform, and upgrades to new versions at no extra fee. What differs is where you may host, how much you may customise, and how many companies you can run.
| Plan / licence | Hosting | What it includes | Price direction with Odoo 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| One App Free | Odoo Online | One app (plus its required dependencies) for unlimited users | Still free |
| Standard | Odoo Online only | All apps, no custom modules, single company focus | Unchanged — no increase |
| Custom | Odoo Online, Odoo.sh, or on-premise | All apps plus Odoo Studio, multi-company, external API, agentic AI tooling | Rises by roughly 20% from 2027 |
| Light User | Follows your plan | A limited-access licence for self-service and operational tasks, on top of a Standard or Custom subscription | New — from EUR 7.90 per user per month in Europe |
Prices are quoted per user per month and vary by region and by billing period, so treat any figure here as a reference point rather than a quote. Odoo publishes the current numbers for your country on its pricing page, and that page — not a blog post, including this one — is where a budget should take its figures from.
Standard or Custom: what the difference actually is
The Standard plan is the hosted product in its purest form: every app, running on Odoo Online, configured but not customised. You cannot install custom modules, and if you install Studio or add companies to your database you are moved to the Custom plan automatically. For a business whose processes fit Odoo's standard workflows, Standard is the rational default — and its price did not move with Odoo 20.
Custom is the plan for companies that need to bend the software or the org chart. It adds four things that matter in practice:
- Hosting choice. Run on Odoo Online, on Odoo.sh (Odoo's platform for custom development, with staging and production branches), or on your own servers.
- Odoo Studio and custom development. Build fields, views, and automations without code, or install custom modules built by you or a partner.
- Multi-company. Run several companies on one database with shared data and inter-company flows — structural for groups, holding companies, and franchise-style operations.
- External API. Let outside software initiate calls into Odoo — reporting engines, legacy systems, integrations — rather than only the other way round.
From 2027 the Custom plan costs roughly 20% more. That is the first increase Odoo has applied in four years, and it lands on exactly the customers with the most complex setups. If you are on Custom, model your renewal at the higher rate now rather than discovering it on the invoice; if you are deciding between plans, the gap between Standard and Custom is about to widen, which makes “do we truly need Studio, multi-company, or the API?” a question worth answering honestly.
The Light User: the headline change
The genuinely new idea in Odoo 20 licensing is the Light User. Until now, Odoo's per-user model had an obvious rough edge: every internal user cost the same, whether they ran the accounting department or only filed their own expenses. A warehouse of forty people who each scan barcodes a few times a day was priced like forty accountants. The Light User is Odoo's answer — a licence for limited access, priced from EUR 7.90 per user per month in Europe, with regional prices varying.
The definition on Odoo's pricing page is precise, and it has two halves. A Light User is either a user account that is active and designated as a Light User in the software, or any active employee record in the HR app that is not linked to an active non-portal user account. That second half is the one to read twice: employee records count, even if those employees never log in.
What a Light User can do is deliberately narrow. As a user, the licence covers the self-service and operator corners of the system:
- HR self-service: My Time Off, My Expenses, My Appraisals, My Attendances, My Referrals, My Planning.
- Field and floor work: Field Services tasks and the Inventory Barcode Operator role.
- Read-only Knowledge access.
And as an employee — without a full login — a Light User can receive payslips and use the Point of Sale and the Manufacturing Shop Floor apps. Anyone who needs to create, edit, or approve work across the wider backend is a full user, and the licence follows the access a person actually holds. Two practical consequences follow. First, the savings are real for businesses with large operational or HR-heavy workforces: retail, warehousing, manufacturing, field services. Second, the licence is not self-serve — Odoo's pricing page directs you to schedule a meeting with an Odoo advisor, who reviews your requirements and provides a customised quote. Before that meeting, audit your Employees app: dormant employee records you kept for history may each count as a Light User, so clean records and deliberate designations are worth money.
What no plan includes
Three costs sit outside every plan, and budgets go wrong when they are forgotten. First, IAP credits: in-app purchase credits are not included in any plan, and in Odoo 20 that matters more than ever, because all AI features — the agents, the accounting and website assistants, bill and expense scanning — consume IAP credits. AI is therefore budgeted per use, not per user, and belongs in your forecast as its own line. Second, implementation: analysis, data import, configuration, training, and development are services, bought from Odoo's success packs or from a partner, not part of the subscription. Third, maintenance of custom code is expressly excluded — if you customise, keeping that code working across upgrades is your cost or your partner's contract. Odoo 20 adds a “My Subscription” page under the user menu that centralises your plan, your IAP services, and database management, which makes these moving parts easier to watch than they used to be.
Choosing, in one pass
Work through the decision in this order. One app, many people: One App Free may genuinely be enough. All apps, standard processes, one company: Standard, at an unchanged price. Multiple companies, Studio, custom modules, an external integration that calls into Odoo, or self-hosting: Custom — with the 2027 increase priced in. A long tail of staff who only book leave, file expenses, scan stock, or work a till: Light Users, designated deliberately, after an employee-record audit. And whatever the mix, add an IAP credit budget if you intend to use Odoo 20's AI, because no plan bundles it.
Finally, make licence review a calendar habit rather than a renewal surprise. Headcount changes, roles change, and a database accumulates users and employee records the way it accumulates everything else. A short audit before each renewal — who logs in, who only self-serves, which records are dormant — is the difference between paying for the workforce you have and paying for the one you had three years ago.
Further reading
- Odoo Pricing — the official plans page, including the Light User definition, capabilities, and what plans do and do not include.
- Odoo 20 Release Notes — the full feature list for the release this pricing accompanies.
