Workday Extend legacy vs Extend Professional (now Extend AI): storage, AI features and how cost is measured

Extend Professional and Extend AI are the same package

Extend Professional is the former name of the package Workday now calls Extend AI; Workday's documentation release notes for October 30, 2026 record the rename across the Developer Guide. Compared with Extend Core and older ("legacy") Extend contracts, Extend AI raises the business object limit from 10 million to 100 million instances per tenant, allows more apps in Production, and is the package that includes Workday's AI development features outside Development tenants.

Some Workday pages still say Extend Professional, including the pages on external agents, agent traces and A2A. Read those as Extend AI.

The current packages side by side

Workday's Workday Extend Packages page lists two tiers and what each includes:

Both include Workday's standard Extend app development tools. Workday directs contract changes to your Workday Account Manager.

"Legacy" isn't a package on that page. It's how Workday's own reference pages refer to customers on older Extend contracts: the limits page groups "Extend Core and Legacy SKUs" together at 10 million instances, and the collaborators page carves out an exception for "Extend Legacy Customers".

Storage: instances, not gigabytes, for Core and AI

The business object ceiling is per tenant and shared across every Extend business object and attachment object in it, excluding deleted instances. Workday's limits reference sets it at:

• 10 million instances for Extend Core and legacy SKUs.
• 100 million instances for Extend AI (the page still labels one row "Extend Professional SKU").

Everything else on that page is the same for both: 20 business objects per app, 50 fields per business object, 30 MB per attachment, 75 pages per app, and so on. Paying for Extend AI doesn't change app design limits, only the instance ceiling.

To see where you stand, run the Extend Object Instance Count report in the tenant (secured by Manage: App Manager), or open an app's Extend Business Object Instance Count tab in App Manager.

What legacy contracts are measured on

The Developer Site Entitlements dashboard shows different meters depending on the contract. For Extend Core and Extend AI it shows Extend Apps in Production. For other Extend customers it shows Data Usage: the total GB of inbound and outbound data transfer by Extend apps in Production, counting successful requests and responses to Workday or third-party APIs, excluding attachment responses and any response with a 4xx or 5xx code. The dashboard colours that meter orange at 85% of the entitlement and red at 100%.

For a legacy customer, then, a Production page that calls an API on every load adds to the Data Usage meter with each successful response, while a Core or AI customer's dashboard counts apps in Production instead. App retirement reflects both models: retiring an app from Production frees its app entitlement and stops it counting against future data GB limits, though data already used still counts.

Some things don't count against the app entitlement at all: Built on Workday apps, integration apps and external Home page card orchestrations, and Agent apps (the dedicated app type for building custom agents).

AI features that need Extend AI

Across the Developer Guide, these are marked as Extend AI (or Extend Professional) only:

• Developer Copilot for Extend apps and for APIs. Copilot for Orchestrate is Extend AI only and, per its page, available in North America and EMEA (Germany) only.
• Workday AI Gateway in non-Development tenants. Every Extend customer can use it in Development tenants, so on Extend Core an app that calls AI Gateway works in Development and loses that access once promoted to Implementation, Sandbox or Production.
• Workday-provided AWS accounts and the Extend Integration with AWS.
• Connectors for Orchestrate, available only in Custom Agent Action orchestrations.
• Agent traces for custom agents, kept for 30 days and visible to Admin, Developer and Specialist roles.
• Connecting an external agent to Workday's Model Context Protocol server (Agent-Ready Tools) and A2A connections between custom agents and external agents.
• A choice of model for a custom agent. Workday's custom agent page says the Model field is set to Auto - Base and that Extend AI subscribers can select other large language models.
• SAML single sign-on for the Developer Site.

If a design depends on any of these in Production, confirm the contract before you build. The pattern to watch for is a Development tenant that lets you build something the Production contract won't run.

How AI use is charged

Workday's documentation gives no Extend prices; the packages page sends contract questions to your Account Manager. AI usage is metered separately from the package:

• The Entitlements dashboard has an Organization AI Usage meter: AI invocations used against the total available.
• Workday's Invocation Definitions page defines three metered units: a Developer Agent invocation (a query or command to Developer Agent, from the Developer Site or a supported coding tool), a Custom Agent invocation (processing in Workday's AI runtime for a request to a Production Extend app, on Base, Standard or Premium models), and Tool Calls to Agent-Ready Tools (designated Base or Advanced in Workday's Tool Call Catalog). The page points to the Platform Consumption Console for monitoring them.
• Customers on the Universal Main Subscription Agreement (UMSA) see agent usage and Flex Credit balance in the Platform Consumption Console. Flex Credits are available only to UMSA customers.

The Platform Consumption Console guide explains how to read that usage, and Flex Credits explained covers the credit model itself.

Which one you're on

Open the Developer Site Entitlements dashboard. If it shows Extend Apps in Production, you're on Core or AI; the allowance (3 or 10) tells you which. If it shows Data Usage in GB instead, you're on an older contract. Check the Development tenant count too: Core allows 1, AI allows 3.

A personal Open Developer Program account is a separate case, with one Development tenant and its own rules, covered in personal vs company developer accounts and is Workday Extend free.