# Time Limited vs Subscription Licenses

There are important distinctions between a time-limited license and a subscription license. Although they both hold a validity period, they don't work the same way. One license type might be more appropriate to use than another depending on how you wish to enforce your licensing.

## Distinctions Between Time-Limited and Subscription Licenses

There are a few key distinctions:

| Distinction         | Time-Limited                                                                                                                                                              | Subscription                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| License Status      | Assuming the license is enabled, the license status will be `inactive` if the total activations of the license is 0, and `active` if total activations is greater than 0. | The status does not depend on total activations. It will be `active` when the license is created, and will only be `disabled` if the source of truth communicates that the subscription has been cancelled. |
| Offline Activations | Possible by sending a license refresh file                                                                                                                                | Not possible.                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| Grace Period        | Not implemented at the moment                                                                                                                                             | You can define number of hours after which the license will be still valid (`is_expired` will be `false`) even if `validity_period` is expired                                                              |

Time-limited licenses need to be extended manually or using management api and subscriptions should rely on some 3rd party service as a source of truth.

## When to Use Time-Limited Licenses

* If you were issuing a recurring license that is for use on machines that do not have access to the internet. In this case, you can activate licenses offline, and simply resend a refreshed license file.
* You want to ensure a license expires unless its validity period is specifically renewed.

## When to Use Subscription Licenses

* Use this only if you are using an external source of truth to maintain subscription status. This external source of truth is typically a recurring billing system or a CRM.


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