A monthly active user ceiling, and who is expected to notice it
A user ceiling caps the grant at a stated number of monthly active users, above which a separate licence has to be requested. The figure is measured in the licensee's own analytics, so nobody at the supplier can see the moment it is crossed. As of 2026-09-22.
| Question | What the phrase answers |
|---|---|
| What is counted | Monthly active users of the licensee's product |
| When it is assessed | Often a named period, such as the preceding month |
| Who reports it | The licensee; the supplier cannot see it |
| What counts as a user | Rarely defined in the licence itself |
Inclusion rule. Phrases that appear in more than one vendor's permissions documents and that change what a sentence means. A phrase used by a single vendor in a single clause is described on that vendor's own page instead. Order. Reading order: where you meet it, then what it settles, then what it does not.
1A condition that only large products meet, and a few unexpectedly
For almost every reader a hundred-million-user ceiling is decoration. For a consumer app with a free tier it can be closer than the company's revenue suggests, because the two quantities are not related.
That is the useful observation: a threshold on users and a threshold on revenue catch entirely different businesses. Neither is a proxy for the other, and a licence that uses one says nothing about the other.
2The definition is usually missing
Active is a product metric with a dozen reasonable definitions. A licence that names a figure without defining the unit has left the measurement to whoever is relying on the grant, which is comfortable until somebody disputes it.
The practical response is to record the figure and the definition being used, and to ask the supplier if the number is within an order of magnitude. Asking early is cheap; asking after a launch is not.
3What happens at the ceiling
The licence generally requires a request rather than offering a purchase. A request can be refused, and refusal is a different commercial risk from a price increase.
Work already produced is not unmade by crossing a threshold. What disappears is the basis for continuing, which is a planning problem with a long lead time if anybody is watching the number.
4From the making side
Alongside the terms behind “Monthly active users”, SceneMixer's guides describe the work itself this way:
On the end card, yes, along with the product name, the tagline and the call to action, in the language of the ad.
SceneMixer, AI Ad Video Generator — “Will my brand name appear in the video?” (read 2026-10-13)
The photo is cleaned into a product shot and that object appears in every shot.
SceneMixer, An AI Ad for a Physical Product — “Will the product look like my product?” (read 2026-10-13)
5Where the sourced wording is
A word page, not an entry in the register: nothing above is attributed to any vendor and nothing above is legal advice. The quoted clauses are on commercial use, the column this phrase turns up in is commercial use from, and the reading rules are on the reading page. Next words: Revenue threshold, Territory, Carve-out.