What Are Salesforce Core, Advanced, and Max Editions, and How Many Flex Credits Does Each Include?

Salesforce renamed its editions and attached credit pools to them. The names are new. The math is not. Primary sources for everything below: the Salesforce news story, Sep 3, 2026, CIO, Sep 4, 2026, Subscription Insider, Sep 4, 2026, the Flex Credits Rate Card (Aug 31, 2026), and the Agentforce pricing page.

01. What changed on Sep 3

Salesforce collapsed its edition ladder into three names for Agentforce Sales and Agentforce Service: Core, Advanced, and Max. Published U.S. list prices are $195, $395, and $550 per user per month. Agentforce Industries editions are named in the same announcement with pricing to follow later this fall.

CIO maps the replacements directly. Core replaces Enterprise, and the seat price moves from $175 to $195. Advanced replaces Unlimited, moving from $350 to $395. Max replaces Agentforce 1 and holds the same $550 seat price. CIO also reports the editions are already available for Sales and Service.

Read the seat delta first. Core and Advanced buyers are paying about $20 and $45 more per user per month than the editions they replace. That is a real line item, and it is separate from the credit story.

02. The Flex Credit table

• Core, $195 per user per month, 500,000 Flex Credits. Source: https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-simplifies-editions-2026/
• Advanced, $395 per user per month, 1 million Flex Credits. Same source.
• Max, $550 per user per month, 2.75 million Flex Credits, up from 1 million under Agentforce 1 per CIO. Same source, plus https://www.cio.com/article/4218804/salesforce-offers-more-agentforce-credits-to-drive-adoption.html

One framing detail decides the whole forecast. Subscription Insider describes the Core and Advanced grants as Flex Credits per organization per year, and states plainly that credits do not increase with every seat. Treat the pool as an org-level annual allotment until your Order Form says otherwise in writing.

That framing comes from trade reporting, not from a Salesforce contract. It is good enough to plan the question. It is not good enough to sign against. Get the governing number on the quote.

03. The list math that actually matters

The rate card prices a standard or custom action at 20 Flex Credits in production, and voice at 30. Divide the pool by the rate and you get the ceiling in actions.

• Core, 500,000 credits at 20 credits per standard action, about 25,000 production actions per year.
• Advanced, 1 million credits, about 50,000 production actions.
• Max, 2.75 million credits, about 137,500 production actions.
• Voice at 30 credits per action cuts each of those ceilings by a third. Voice Minutes are a separate meter entirely: Voice Actions versus Voice Minutes.

Sandbox is not free. The same rate card applies sandbox multipliers of 16 for standard and custom actions and 24 for voice. UAT gets its own budget line, not a rounding assumption: Sandbox Flex Credits rate.

When the pool empties, the pricing page lists Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000. At 20 credits per action, that is 5,000 additional actions per $500 at list. Your contracted rate may differ. Put it in writing.

The rate card also states there is no rollover. Unused credits do not carry into the next term. A pool you did not spend is not savings banked, it is budget burned.

04. What does not scale with seats

The seat price scales. The credit pool does not. Hiring fifty more reps multiplies the license line by fifty seats and adds nothing to the org credit allotment, per Subscription Insider's per-organization-per-year framing.

The failure mode is predictable. A team models cost per rep, doubles headcount, and assumes agent capacity doubles with it. It does not. Capacity per rep falls as the org grows, and the first symptom is an overage invoice nobody forecast.

Build the model in two lines, always. Line one: seats times list price. Line two: the org pool, with days to empty at your measured burn rate. They move independently.

05. Legacy customers versus new buys

Salesforce says existing customers on legacy editions keep their current pricing. That is a real option, not a courtesy. If your Enterprise seat is $175 and the renewal quote says Core at $195, ask what you are getting for the delta and whether the credit pool justifies it at your burn rate.

Existing Agentforce 1 customers can upgrade to Max at no additional seat cost, per the Salesforce announcement. CIO reports the credit pool at that tier rises from 1 million to 2.75 million. If that applies to you, it is the clearest value move in the whole announcement, and it is the one to confirm on paper first.

Agentforce Industries editions are named with pricing to follow later this fall. If you are an industries buyer, you do not have a list price to plan against yet. Do not let a deck fill that gap.

06. The bundle visibility risk

Analysts quoted by CIO warn that bundling cuts line-item visibility. That is the operator problem here. When credits, Slack, Tableau, and agent capability arrive inside one seat price, nobody can tell which part earned its keep.

Two things that are not proof of return. Unused credits sitting in the pool are not savings. Bundled Slack or Tableau entitlements nobody activated are not value delivered. Both look fine on a renewal slide and neither survives a Proof Gap review.

Digital Wallet is the receipts layer. Burn by usage type, by agent, by month, against the pool you actually bought. Prefer that over any vendor value percentage. Salesforce's marketing language about 50 to 70 percent more value is vendor marketing, not Report research and not your measurement.

Digital Wallet does not stop the meter when the pool empties. Alerts are the prevention tool, not a kill switch: Digital Wallet has no hard kill switch.

07. Four questions for the AE

1. What is the governing Flex Credit figure for our edition, written on the Order Form, not quoted from a press release. If we are on Max, is 2.75 million on the quote.
2. Is the pool an annual organization-level allotment with no per-seat multiplier, and does adding seats mid-term change it at all.
3. What is our contracted overage rate per 100,000 credits, and confirm in writing that unused credits do not roll over.
4. Do Help Agent resolutions, Agentforce Coworker usage, and Data 360 processing draw from this same pool, or from separate meters.

Answers belong on the Order Form or in release notes. A call recap is not a contract.

What the sibling decoders already cover (do not duplicate)

• Foundations free grant and the outgrow test: Foundations outgrow
• Flex Credits versus Conversations break-even: Breakeven
• PayGo versus Pre-Commit versus Pre-Purchase: Commercial paths
• Digital Wallet behavior at zero: Digital Wallet
• Data 360 drawing the same pool: Shared with Data 360
• Coworker seat versus usage fork: Coworker seats
• Koa as a model-provider choice, still pilot: Koa
• Interface taxonomy: AIforce, Agentforce, Claudeforce, Slackforce

This page is the edition and credit-pool fork that sits above all of them on the quote.

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