Granting unlicensed (internal) access to Confluence Cloud
Platform Notice: Cloud Only - This article only applies to Atlassian apps on the cloud platform.
Summary
As of May 2026, Confluence admins can enforce anonymous access across their site, preventing spaces from turning on anonymous access when it's disabled globally. This control is available to paid Confluence Cloud customers on role-based access. Control whether spaces can turn on anonymous access
The information below applies to sites that haven't enabled this control, where spaces can still turn on anonymous access independently of the site-level setting. Learn more about anonymous access
This article outlines the requirements and process for granting internal access to Confluence without a license.
About unlicensed access
Different from anonymous access (anyone on the Internet), unlicensed access can be granted internally in Confluence as long as the user has site access, using methods like the following:
Give access to unlicensed users from Jira Service Management (JSM) (from the integration between Jira Service Management and Confluence)
By following one of these practices, even though anonymous access is not granted at a global permission level, additional spaces can have anonymous access enabled, allowing it to be visible by users with site access without a Confluence license (for example, site access without product access).
This means that in addition to the space open for the guest or unlicensed/Jira Service Management account, users can interact with these other spaces (respecting the permissions applied to anonymous users), and the information will not be exposed to the public or the Internet.
Solution
Pre-requisites to granting unlicensed access
For unlicensed users from Jira Service Management
The Use Confluence permission must be enabled in the JSM section in Confluence Administration. This way, these accounts can access the instance and then the spaces.
The user must be granted site access, but have the product access disabled.
For Guests
Upon inviting the user, guests will already have access to a single space dedicated to them. The guest account will respect the permissions assigned to guests in that space.
For spaces open for anonymous access, guest permissions will correspond to the ones assigned to anonymous
A combination of space permission changes and configuration is necessary for the accounts to allow guests and users without product access to view different spaces in Confluence.
Space permissions
As a space administrator, you must take the following steps for each space open for unlicensed users, starting with the permissions for each space.
Go to the space in question and select the Space settings option from the sidebar.
Select the Space permissions option in the sidebar (or General, under the Space permissions tab).
Select Edit permissions.
Under the Anonymous access session, check the permissions the unlicensed users should have (for example, View and Comment).
Select Save all.
When anonymous access is granted, the following banner will be displayed by the system since the global permission for anonymous is disabled.
Anonymous users can't view this space because global anonymous 'Use Confluence' permission is currently turned off.
Go to global permissions to grant anonymous users permission to use Confluence.
Unlicensed user from JSM
Once the spaces have the permissions configured, all unlicensed users from Jira Service Management should be able to access it via the space directory (the Spaces part on the navigation bar) as long as the JSM access tab of the global permission is enabled:
As an administrator, tap the gear icon at the top right while in Confluence.
Select Security
Select JSM access, then Edit and select the Use Confluence option.
Tap Save.
Even though the users are not necessarily accessing a Jira Service Management project (or portal), as long as they have site access (and no product access to Confluence, as displayed in the screenshot from the pre-requisites part), the spaces should also be visible when navigating to Confluence.
Guests
Guests are already granted access to a space after completing the invite process. After enabling the anonymous permission for the other spaces, these will also be visible to guest accounts, and no additional actions are required.
Notes
For the setting to work above, anonymous access must be disabled at a global level (under Security > Anonymous access) to prevent anyone on the internet from seeing the content.
When the space is open for anonymous access, any user in Confluence can see it.
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