Nessus Offline Activation License Already In Use May 2026

Troubleshooting the "License Already in Use" Error in Nessus Offline Activation

Introduction

• Deactivate or revoke the license on the original host (in the Nessus GUI: Settings → License or via CLI, or via Tenable portal if supported).
• Wait several minutes for portal state to update, then reattempt activation on the target host.

Windows: C:\Program Files\Tenable\Nessus\nessuscli.exe fetch --deactivate.  3. Restart the Offline Activation Process  nessus offline activation license already in use

What Support will do: They will manually run a database query on Tenable’s backend to disassociate the activation code from the stale Challenge Code. This takes 24–48 hours for Standard support, 2–4 hours for Premium. Troubleshooting the "License Already in Use" Error in