What is a “Runtime” in UiPath?

One of the concepts in UiPath that takes a bit of time to understand is the concept of runtimes and licenses. Let’s see if we can break it down.

Licensing – How UiPath Makes Money

UiPath is in business to make money after all. They do that by licensing their software platform and services to other businesses. There are various tiers, packages and services available, mostly on a subscription model. It’s all very complicated and more information is available through their website here and here. But for our explanation, just know that once licenses are purchased, they are set at the top-most level by UiPath and can only be changed by contacting them, or purchasing more.

Licenses can be viewed in the Admin tab (top-most level) in Orchestrator, under the Licenses section. Here you can see what was puchased and is available.

Let’s look at mine, and notice something in particular:

This is the setup for the Free Community Edition of UiPath, under my account. Here we see we have 2 “Robots” available, one Production (Unattended) and one Testing.