From VS Community to VS enterprise, what kind of license do I really need?

Hello,
here is the full licensing whitepaper for Visual Studio: Visual-Studio-Licensing-Whitepaper-Mar-2020.pdf
I hope it helps to answer your questions.
Regards, Guido

Hello @SuperKogito ,

Thank you for posting this issue in Microsoft Q&A forum.

As Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Licensing(page 8) mentioned, “In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1M in annual revenue) no use is permitted for employees as well as contractors beyond the open source, academic research and classroom learning environment scenarios described above”. So if you are considered as an Enterprise, you should use Visual Studio Professional or Visual Studio Enterprise edition to develop your application(project).

Can someone please give me a simple explanation of the difference between a VS enterprise product key and VS enterprise license.

Please check these documents: How to activate subscriptions, Finding and claiming product keys in Visual Studio subscriptions and Using product keys in Visual Studio subscriptions.

Also, please kindly check following web page: Visual Studio Pricing and notice compare these two tab: 1) Standard subscriptions. 2) Standalone License.

The resulting app will be used internally and distributed for free, does that still require a license?

Yes, it still requires a license. Actually you need to use a license to use Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise version to develop your app. You can refer to Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Licensing (page 8) and it lists the usage scenarios of VS Community 2019.

I only need Visual Studio to compile and build my code. So what kind of key do I need and what kind of license is best suited for my use case?

Please check these documents: How to buy subscriptions, and Compare Visual Studio 2019 Editions to see which version of VS includes the supported features that meet all your requirements. And check this web page: Visual Studio Pricing to buy corresponding version of Visual Studio which you need.

Besides, if you have any other questions about VS license, I recommend you directly call 1-800-426-9400, Monday through Friday, 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. (Pacific Time) to speak directly to a Microsoft licensing specialist, and you can get more detailed information about the license from there.

Sincerely,
Tianyu

• If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
  Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.