Comment by tpm

> XE can be used for free

> XE has hard limits on size and limits on active CPUs

So no, it can't be used for free, you will pay for that with your time to keep it in usable state. We had to use it as our dev dbs because our customers used it and the size limit was a huge PITA. We mostly use MSSQL as dev db now because the other half of customers use that (we have to support both in the end) and it is way worse in every other way but there is no size limit for dev use.