ADF is our powerful molecular DFT code.
Our periodic DFT module includes our AO-based code BAND and plane-wave code Quantum ESPRESSO.
The DFTB & MOPAC module includes both fast methods: density-functional based tight-binding and semi-empirical, for molecules and periodic structures alike.
ReaxFF is our reactive MD module.
ML Potential & Force Field include machine learning interatomic potentials and an interface to ASE so you can plug in many more force fields and the polarizable force field Apple & P
The COSMO-RS module includes instantaneous predictions with COSMO-RS, COSMO-SAC, UNIFAC, and QSPR for fluid thermodynamics properties. It also includes quick sigma profiles from SMILES and a database of compounds for solvents, polymers, and ionic liquids. It does not include (ADF) functionality for generating new sigma profiles with DFT.

The table below summarizes which relevant functionality is in which module.

Any license containing one of SCM’s own modules above will automatically include the Amsterdam Modeling Suite Foundation: the graphical user interface, the PLAMS python scripting environment, the central AMS driver for complex tasks on the Potential Energy Surface, interfaces to VASP & Zacros. It also includes some basic force fields, builder, and analysis tools. In 2026, we expanded the core functionality with many Advanced Workflows and Tools.

Additional functionality is licensed by third parties: NBO, Zacros, Apple&P parameters. Contact us for a quote ([email protected]).

This is usually because your firewall does not allow automatic downloading of a license file. If your machine is entitled to an automatic license (new trial, teaching, known machine for existing license), please send the machine info (the error you get- as plain text!) with your userid and password to [email protected].

You can use the command line on Windows:
Help → Command–line, type bash and hit Enter

See our installation manual on details on how to fetch the autolicense.

We will need to prepare a temporary license for your cluster, including a floating set up.
We need the machine info from some of your computers as well as the inode info of a new, user-writable, directory that contains the float info.
Mail that to [email protected] including your userid to request a cluster license.

1) download a relevant Linux binary from www.scm.com/downloads
2) untar; source amsbashrc.sh (and change the installation directory in that script if necessary)
3) run $AMSBIN/dirac info on the head node and a few compute nodes, send the info as plain text to [email protected] (and me)
The machine info looks something like

SCM User ID: u23946
release: 2025.104
:———-:
:Linuxdnst-X870-GAMING-X-WIFI7BC:C7:46:FF:E8:50:
:ncores 16:
:CPU Model AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 16-Core Processor:
:DMY 23- 9-2025:
:SRCID 6238137:

4) Ceate a Floating set up:

Documentation

We would then need the location of the FloatADF, FloatBAND, FloatDFTB, FloatReaxFF, FloatMLPot directories and their inode numbers, which would look something like this (if you just want to evaluate one or a few modules, we only need those)

16942270 drwxrwxrwx 2 dnst dnst 4096 Sep 23 11:54 /home/dnst/FloatADF
17103138 drwxrwxrwx 2 dnst dnst 4096 Sep 23 11:54 /home/dnst/FloatBAND
17204413 drwxrwxrwx 2 dnst dnst 4096 Sep 23 11:54 /home/dnst/FloatDFTB
17204414 drwxrwxrwx 2 dnst dnst 4096 Sep 23 11:54 /home/dnst/FloatReaxFF
17204819 drwxrwxrwx 2 dnst dnst 4096 Sep 23 11:54 /home/dnst/FloatMLPot

If the environment is not set automatically by sourcing the amsbashrc.sh, you may need to edit it. See also the installation guide.

Create a support ticket: https://support.scm.com/portal/en/signin if you have any questions or problems and provide specific information on what you tried and what failed.

You may also want to consider setting up remote jobs to use the GUI locally and submit to the queue on your cluster.

This can be for various reasons.

Most commonly, it’s because your firewall does not allow automatic download of the license (Problem contacting the SCM license server). Please send us the license error you get as plain text to [email protected] so we can manually generate a license.

Other common reasons are: you exceeded the maximum number of machines for your trial (contact [email protected] to enable more), your license period expired, or the machine is active in another account.

List of most occurring messages and actions to be taken.
In all cases, when in doubt, email [email protected] with your userid and the exact error output as plain text. Also let us know in case where we should get back in a few days, but we didn’t.

• Automatic download of your license is not allowed in your account => The SCM team will check if it should be allowed
• License request submitted => The SCM team will check
• Your AMS license has expired => consider license options
• Your license period has expired => consider license options
• Automatic download of your license has been refused (….). Your credentials for this license are disabled. => contact us if you believe this is in error
• Your license request has been refused, because the number of allowed licensed machines has reached the maximum. => contact us to discuss increasing the number of allowed machines
• We will check your license request => SCM will check
• We will process your license request manually => SCM will check
• Your request is submitted to SCM and will be processed within a few working days => SCM will check
• Your account does not allow automatic download of your license => SCM will check

The AMS installer sets the necessary environment variables in the Windows registry and notifies Explorer, but sometimes the latter does not work. In that case if you try to pick up your automatic demo license, you get the error message about the SCMLICENSE not being set.

If you reboot your system, the SCMLICENSE variable should be properly set and with your credentials you can then automatically download your demo license.

Please send an email to [email protected] with your userid and a the full error output as plain text.

If you can not automatically update your license through the AMS GUI, you should ask for a license.txt file to be sent to you ([email protected]).

The license.txt is usually placed in your AMS installation directory on Windows and Linux.
For example, C:/AMS2023.101/license.txt on Windows.
On Linux, the location is defined by the SCMLICENSE variable, which is typically set in amsbashrc.sh to $AMSBIN/license.txt while AMSBIN is typically set to something like $HOME/AMS2023.101

On Mac, the easiest is to just drop the license.txt on your AMS app. If you want to copy it manually, the default location on a Mac is “$HOME/Library/Application Support/SCM/license.txt”

Floating licenses can be used on Linux clusters. With a floating license, only a certain amount of cores can be used at the same time for a certain module in the Amsterdam Modeling Suite. For the license fees, floating cores are counted double with respect to host-locked cores.

To set up a floating license, you need a centrally accessible directory in which all AMS users have write permissions. The installation manual explains how to do that and generate the necessary information.

By default, the standard and trial licenses do not enable you to run in the cloud. Please contact [email protected] to discuss licensing options.
We have some limited accounts on a small Oracle cloud, where you can evaluate AMS instantaneously from the browser or using a Thinlinc client.

On a virtual cluster, every job will get a new set of nodes, which means the usual host-locked license file won’t work. For situations like this, we have a cloud license available.
When the cloud license is activated, you can set up AWS via AMSJobs in the GUI.

An important part of the cloud license is the SCM_CLOUD_CREDS=username:secret environment variable that needs to be set for every job in the “Prolog” field of the corresponding AMSjobs queue, for example as:

export SCM_CLOUD_CREDS=username:secret

Here, username and secret are the username and password you used to download AMS. Your cloud jobs will start working as soon as the cloud license is set up on our side.

Another important point is that the rank 0 process must be able to contact our license servers: license.scm.com, license1.scm.com, and license2.scm.com on port 443 any time during the job’s lifetime.

Cloud jobs usually make a contact with the license server at the start and the end of the job and once an hour in between.

The information transferred to the license server includes: the username and the secret specified in SCM_CLOUD_CREDS, the master node’s MAC address as the machine ID, the local Unix timestamp at the start of the job, license target (ADF, BAND, DFTB, or REAXFF), and the number of processor cores the job is running on (which is typically equal to the number of MPI processes). The communication goes via the HTTPS protocol.

To run in parallel using AWS ParallelCluster or via other cloud hosts, see the cloud computing documentation.

If you have a valid username and password (your evaluation period is still active or you are a current AMS licensee), you should be able to download AMS with the provided password and username.

The browser could have cached the wrong password from a previous attempt. Try again with a private session. Make sure you don’t include any spaces, the username is usually 6 characters and the automatically generated password is exactly 8 characters. If you still have problems, contact us at [email protected] with the username and password and the download link for the binary you tried to download.

Download the correct binary, usually the standard Linux binary will do. Follow the quickstart guide and create a support ticket: https://support.scm.com/portal/en/signin if you have any questions or problems.

You should be able to automatically download a demo license. If your machine does not have an internet connection, run

$AMSBIN/dirac

which should give you a LICENSE INVALID message and your machine info. Please send this as plain text text to [email protected] to request a demo license for your machine.

It is superseded by the more convenient ParAMS, which is part of the Advanced Workflows module, also containing a new ChemTraYzer, OLED tools, ACE-Reaction, and microkinetics.
From 2026, Advanced Workflows is part of the AMS Foundation.

AMS2022 has a new module, Advanced Workflows, which includes a new, improved version of ChemTraYzer as well as ParAMS,  OLED tools, ACE-Reaction, and  microkinetics.
From 2026, Advanced Workflows is part of the AMS Foundation.

No. Starting with AMS2018, all licensed machines include the GUI and the AMS driver.

Yes, since AMS2018 we work with module points. We have bundles with 4-6 or 7-8 module points. You can always request a detailed price quote.

By default, AMS engines will try to use all available cores on your machine. One exception is that ReaxFF jobs with less than 1000 atoms set up in the GUI will run in serial by setting export NSCM=1 in the run script.
You can limit the number of cores yourself, by setting the NSCM environment variable.

In the GUI, you can change the default number of cores the Sequential queue uses from AMSJobs -> Queue -> Edit -> Sequential and change Default Options to the number of desired CPU cores for most of your jobs.
You could also change the Interactive queue, which will enable you to run multiple jobs simultaneously at a subset of the available CPU cores.

You can still overwrite this default behavior in AMSjobs by entering a different number of cores in the rectangle to the right of the job name and queue, which then sets the # of cores for that job if you run it.

Not for a host-locked license. In such a case one should use a 16-core license, or select an 8-core machine to install AMS on.

You can start immediately. After we have received your informal purchase order confirmation, your signed license agreement, and your machine information, you will receive a temporary license until the invoice is paid.

In case of any type of license upgrade, we will only charge price differences and only for the remaining time period of the contract, thus making it easy and attractive to upgrade.

For multi-year licenses we can change the machine info once a year when we send a new license file for the next year. Certain exceptions are possible at SCM’s discretion.
You can of course always upgrade your license to include more CPU cores.

For Windows:
open the file explorer (Windows key + E), click on the address bar, and type: %USERPROFILE%, press enter. Open the .scm_gui folder and remove the file called “scmcreds”.

For Mac/Linux:
Open a terminal, and type:
rm $HOME/.scm_gui/scmcreds

The NBO interface with ADF (GENNBO) will be activated with an NBO license obtained with ADF. This will facilitate analysis and visualization of NBO orbitals and properties.