> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.chronosphere.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Licensing concepts

> Learn about telemetry data licensing concepts and usage in Chronosphere Observability Platform.

Chronosphere Observability Platform supports two pricing models: consumption and
capacity. Your contract with Chronosphere determines which model applies to your
tenant. Each model has its own set of licensing concepts that govern how usage is
measured, reported, and controlled.

## Consumption pricing

In the consumption model, your organization purchases a pool of
[credits](/administer/limits-licensing/licensing#credits-consumption) over a defined
contract period and spends them across any telemetry type. Usage is measured in
volume-based units such as persisted series, data points, and bytes, each with a
per-unit credit price.

The consumption model provides flexibility to shift spend between metrics, logs, and
traces as operational needs change. To protect against overspending, configure
[budgets](/control/consumption/budgeting) with thresholds that alert or drop data
before credit exhaustion.

For the full list of consumption licensing concepts and how each unit is counted, see
[Consumption licensing](/administer/limits-licensing/concepts/consumption-licensing).

## Capacity pricing

In the capacity model, your organization contracts for fixed rate limits measured in
data points per second (DPPS) and active time series cardinality. Exceeding these
limits incurs penalties that can result in dropped data.

Capacity limits are enforced across three dimensions: persisted writes, matched
writes, and persisted cardinality. To control which data drops first when limits are
reached, configure [quotas](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/quotas) and split total
system capacity into per-pool allocations.

For the full list of capacity licensing concepts, metrics, and limit management
strategies, see
[Capacity licensing](/administer/limits-licensing/concepts/capacity-licensing).