Krux licence cost: Audience Studio ended, Data 360 pricing now

The shortest honest answer to a Krux licence question is that the product no longer exists. The chronology is easy to state. Krux joined Salesforce in 2016, and in May 2017 the founder wrote: "We are also announcing that we are changing our name from Krux to Salesforce DMP." It later became Audience Studio, and the end was announced in a customer notice from a partner that depended on it: "Salesforce has officially announced that the End of Life date for Salesforce Audience Studio DMP (formerly known as Krux) is February 1, 2024." From that date, distributions to Audience Studio were switched off and destination accounts could no longer be viewed or activated, according to the same notice. There is nothing to renew, and any line that still carries the Krux name on a Salesforce invoice needs an explanation.

That leaves a practical question. The people who used Audience Studio still need to build audiences, unify what they know about customers and send segments to advertising and messaging channels. The Salesforce product a buyer would price for that today is Data 360, which Salesforce also lists as its unified customer data product. I want to be clear about what I am doing here. We could not find a Salesforce statement that names Data 360 as the official replacement for Audience Studio, so I am covering Data 360 because it is what you would realistically cost today, and we are not claiming it is the contractual successor to a Krux line. Implementation work sits on the Krux retirement guide and is kept out of this page.

#What a DMP licence was, and what Data 360 prices instead

A data management platform of the Krux type was typically licensed by the volume of audience data it processed and the number of connected destinations. Data 360 is priced differently. Its unit is either the profile, meaning a unified record of a person, or the Flex Credit, a consumption unit spent whenever you perform an action. That difference is the main thing a finance team must understand, because it moves the cost from a platform fee to the shape of your usage. We have not read the original Audience Studio order form, so I make no claim about how your own contract was structured.

#Data 360 list prices

The figures below come from Salesforce's Data 360 pricing page, read on 13 October 2026, which carries its own caution that it is provided for information purposes only and is subject to change.

Salesforce explains the choice in one line: "Profiles come with 1 flex credit per profile per year and you can purchase more flex credits as needed with the Flex Credits SKU." So a Profile plan is not a replacement for credits. It bundles the actions that build a unified profile, and anything outside that, such as querying data or processing unstructured content for AI agents, still draws on credits.

Salesforce also states that bringing data into Data 360 is free, and it lists what you pay for: processing unstructured data, preparing, harmonising and unifying records, segmenting and activating audiences, running queries and zero copy sharing, and streaming and real-time pipelines. The practical reading is that ingestion does not drive the bill, and the later actions do.

#Worked arithmetic

These are list calculations to show method, not quotes, and your discount and contract term will change them.

Suppose you hold 500,000 unified profiles. On the Profiles model the cost is 500 thousand-profile blocks at 240 dollars, or 120,000 US dollars a year. On Enterprise Profiles the same base costs 210,000 dollars a year, and the extra 90,000 buys the larger limits on transforms and segments and the two add-ons. The Profile plan also includes one Flex Credit per profile, which here is 500,000 credits. At the credit list price of 500 dollars per 100,000, that allowance would be worth 2,500 dollars if bought separately, which is small beside the profile fee. The profile price is the dominant number, and the credits are a modest top-up.

Now compare a credit-led estate. If the same business consumed 20 million credits in a year, the list cost would be 100,000 US dollars. The two models can land in a similar range, which is why Salesforce tells buyers to talk to their account team about which suits their use. The decision rule of thumb is simple. If your main use is building and activating profiles, such as personalised journeys, a profile model gives predictable billing. If you also run heavy queries or process documents, credits give flexibility, and the bill follows your use.

#What changes if you came from a DMP

Three things surprise teams moving from an audience platform to a profile and credit model.

1. The unit is a person, not an audience. A DMP often worked with anonymous identifiers collected from sites and apps. Data 360 unifies records you already hold or ingest, such as customers, leads and consented identifiers. If your Audience Studio use leaned on third-party reach, a profile licence does not recreate it, and you should not budget as if it does.
2. Actions have meters. Unification, segmentation and activation each consume credits or are bundled into a profile plan. A busy marketing calendar that activates many segments daily will use more than a quarterly campaign.
3. Ad add-ons are listed separately. The Enterprise Profiles model names an Ad Audience add-on. If ad activation is why you had Krux, read that add-on's terms before you assume it is covered by the base profile fee.

#Contract and renewal mechanics

Salesforce notes that how Data 360 usage affects billing depends on how your org was contracted, that a Monthly Usage Summary goes to the billing contact each month, and that a free tool called Salesforce Digital Wallet monitors consumption in near real time. Use all three. The monthly summary tells you what you spent, the wallet tells you where you are in the term, and the contract tells you what happens at the end. Ask whether unused credits expire, whether they roll over and what the overage rate is.

There is also a legacy rule. Salesforce says customers on Data Services Credits face no forced migration, and can stay on their current model. To move to Flex Credits or Profile pricing, you must swap all existing Data Services Credits. If your estate predates the newer models, do not accept a renewal on the old unit without seeing the new one priced alongside it.

Finally, Salesforce says customers can provision Data 360 for free with a limited amount of storage and consumption credits. That is a way to measure your real use before committing to a model, and it is worth a month of attention from your team.

#How to right-size

Start with profiles. Count the unified individuals you expect to hold at the end of the term, not today, and include only the ones you will actually activate. Then estimate actions. List the segments you will build, how often they refresh, where they are activated and what queries your teams and agents will run. Salesforce provides a pricing calculator on its page, and you can use it to turn the action list into a credit estimate. Compare the profile model and the credit model on the same assumptions, then ask for both in writing.

#Why the profile count is the number to defend

Almost every Data 360 conversation turns on a profile count, and the number is easy to inflate. A profile in the pricing sense is a unified record, but your source systems may hold several records for one person: a CRM contact, a marketing subscriber, a commerce account, a loyalty member. Until those are matched, the count of source records is higher than the count of people. Unification is the step that collapses them, and it is also an action with its own cost.

That gives you two levers. Quality of matching changes how many profiles you end up paying for, and scope changes which source systems you admit in the first place. A team that connects everything on day one will see a large profile count, much of it inactive or duplicated. A team that starts with the sources behind a defined set of audiences, and adds others as value is proved, will see a smaller number and a more defensible licence. Salesforce's own page notes that profile models suit use cases such as personalised journeys or proactive service built on a unified profile. If your use case is narrower than that, say so in the negotiation.

#Segments and activation are where credits go

On the credit model, the actions that follow unification are what consume the balance. Building segments, refreshing them, and sending them to destinations each have a meter. A marketing team that refreshes thirty segments daily and activates each to several channels is spending credits every day, while one that runs a quarterly campaign is not. That is why two businesses with the same profile count can have very different bills.

Salesforce's profile plans cap what they bundle: the Profiles model lists 100 segments and the Enterprise model 500. If you expect to exceed those, the cap is a negotiation point, because the next tier up has a different price. If you expect to sit well under, the cheaper model is almost certainly the better choice and you should resist the pull towards the larger one for headroom you will not use.

#The overlap trap

A final trap sits in the calendar. Audience Studio is already finished, so there is no overlap with a live Krux contract. But some organisations will have run a parallel Data 360 trial, or kept an older Data Services Credits balance, while sorting out what to do. Make a list of every Salesforce data-related line on your current paper and mark which are live. If you hold unused credits from an older model, ask in writing whether they can be swapped, in whole, as Salesforce's page describes, and what the exchange terms are. Unused balances are the commonest source of quiet waste in consumption contracts.

Consent and governance also affect licence size, though they are rarely written on the order form. If you will only activate profiles with valid consent, the active count may be smaller than the stored count. Ask your privacy team for a realistic figure before you finalise a quote, and size to that.

#A short sequence for the next quarter

Start by confirming with Salesforce that no Krux or Audience Studio line remains on your account. Next, decide which audience jobs the business still needs: unified profiles for journeys, ad audiences, or insights for service teams. Then run the free provisioning to measure real actions for a month, use the pricing calculator to estimate credits, and ask for both a profile quote and a credit quote on identical assumptions. Take the two quotes, the monthly usage figures and this page's list prices into the discussion, and keep each on its own row.

#Comparing offers

#Where the other questions sit

The history of the purchase is on what happened to Krux. Connecting audience data to the CRM is on integrating Krux with Salesforce, and the decision about moving is on should I migrate from Krux. All Data 360 figures here come from the Salesforce Data 360 pricing page, read on 13 October 2026.