License and account type overview

Sigma’s licensing model includes three tiers that define the usage terms of your organization members: Lite, Essential, and Pro. Each license tier establishes a different set of available permissions that enable access to Sigma’s features and capabilities. These permissions are managed at a granular level using account types.

This document describes the license tiers and explains the relationship between licenses and account types in Sigma. It also provides a comprehensive comparison of account type permissions available in each license tier. For information about using account types, see Create and manage account types.

License tiers

The three license tiers provide different levels of service to accommodate your organization’s diverse user requirements and access control policies.

Lite license

The Lite license is suitable for report consumers who require access to prepared data and insights. This license tier allows members to view shared datasets, explorations, and workbooks. Lite-licensed members also have access to baseline interactions in explorations and workbooks, including the ability to update control values, sort column data, view aggregated underlying data, and create bookmarks.

Essential license

The Essential license is ideal for decision-making data consumers who require more deep-dive capabilities in published workbooks but don’t need to build workbooks themselves. This license tier includes all Lite license capabilities while also allowing members to drill into unaggregated underlying data, contribute to input tables, download workbook content, and schedule exports and alerts.

Pro license

The Pro license is designed for data architects, BI analysts, and report builders who model, transform, and analyze data. This license tier offers the full range of Sigma features and capabilities, including the ability to create and manage datasets, data models, and workbooks. The Pro license also supports system administrators who manage organization settings and members.

Account types

While license tiers establish the maximum range of available permissions that enable access to features and capabilities, account types determine the actual permissions and access your organization members are granted. Sigma provides four default account types (Admin, Pro, Essential, and Lite) and supports custom account types that enable or disable any combination of permissions within the constraints of the license tiers.

Sigma’s customizable account types add flexibility and scalability to the access control model by enabling your organization to manage license permissions at a granular level. This allows your organization to easily modify member access and adapt to the changes in your licensed user base and user requirements.

Account type permission availability matrix

The following table compares available account type permissions by license tier.

		Lite	Essential	Pro
Data warehouse
Connections	View connections Browse connections, schemas, and database tables
	Manage connections1 Create new connections and manage existing ones (Automatically enables the View connections permission)
Tables	Annotate tables1 Annotate database tables (edit column details, metrics, and links)
Writeback
Input tables	Create input tables2 Create and edit input tables in workbooks
Materialization	Schedule materializations2 Create and edit materialization schedules
CSV	Upload CSV Upload and analyze CSV data
Warehouse views	Create warehouse views2 Create warehouse views based on datasets and workbook elements
Data modeling
Datasets	View datasets2 View existing datasets
	Create, edit, and publish datasets Create new datasets and manage existing ones (Automatically enables the View datasets permission)
Features	Write SQL Query a connected CDW or DBMS directly with SQL
Documents
Workbooks	View workbooks2 View and interact with explorations and published workbooks
	Can comment on workbooks4 View and add comments on workbooks
	Basic explore2,3 View and interact with explorations and published workbooks with added ability to drill into data, filter columns, enter input table data, and more (Automatically enables the View workbooks permission)
	Full explore2,3 Modify workbook elements to create custom views of published workbooks (Automatically enables the Basic explore and View workbooks permissions)
	Create, edit, and publish workbooks Create new workbooks and manage existing ones (Automatically enables the Full explore, Basic explore, and View workbooks permissions)
Version tags	Apply tag2 Apply version tags to workbooks
Org management
Usage dashboard	View usage dashboard View the organization dashboard
	View SQL in usage dashboard View raw SQL in the organization usage dashboard (Automatically enables the View usage dashboard permission)
Customization	Manage all workbook themes and fonts Create, edit, and delete workbook themes and custom fonts
Admin	Manage branding settings Manage organization branding settings, including workbook themes, custom fonts, and system emails
Plugins	Manage plugins Access plugin development features and manage custom plugins
Badges	Manage all badges Add, change, and remove workbook badges (Endorsed, Warning, or Deprecated)
Sharing / folders
Sharing and exports	Download or Send Now2 Immediately download or send entire workbooks, specific pages, and individual elements
	Export to Google Sheet2 Export data to Google Sheets spreadsheets
	Export to Google Drive2 Export data to Google Drive folders
	Export to Slack2 Export data to Slack channels
	Schedule export2 Create, edit, and delete scheduled exports and alerts to send entire workbooks, specific pages, and individual elements (Automatically enables the Download or Send Now permission)
	Share documents2 Share folders and documents with organization members
	Export to cloud2 Export data to Google Cloud Storage (GCS) or Amazon S3 (Automatically enables the Download or Send Now permission)
	Export to webhook2 Export data to webhook endpoints (Automatically enables the Download or Send Now permission)
Folders	Create new folders2 Create new personal, workspace, and shared folders
	Contribute to shared folders2 Create new documents in workspaces and shared folders
	Create new workspace Create new organization workspaces (Automatically enables the Contribute to shared folders and Share documents permissions)

1 Access to individual connections are determined by data permissions.

2 Access to individual datasets, data models, and workbooks are determined by folder and document permissions.

3 For a comprehensive comparison of user capabilities, see Basic explore vs. Full explore.

4 Enables the ability to add and view comments for all license tiers. Also enables screenshot capture and annotation in comments for Essential and Pro licenses only.