Q. During this reclaim window of 3 notification, if someone logs to PDI will the access be preserved considering grace period of 10 days met for my PDI to keep it active OR  still it will be reclaimed for other developers considering 90 days .
Thanks!

I just received my PDI for the first time. I am new to servicenow PDI I have finished some courses. So do I need to first enable my update set so that whatever I don can be saved there?, then whenever my PDI expires that's if I am inactive, I can transfer my work to the new PDI? Please someone should please help throw more light

I recieved the emails even though I use my PDI (writing/testing Script Includes mainly) every few days. Are Scripts no longer considered "activity"? 

I received the reclaimation mail even though i login to my PDI regularly. 

@ServiceNow  - my instance was reclaimed today (7/11), even though I logged into it yesterday (7/10). Please advice whom to reach out to for restoration ASAP.

@ServiceNow  

 My instance was reclaimed today, 7/11, and I was logged in multiple times this week and yesterday/last night.

I just tried to return to my PDI and get the "your instance is hibernating, please log in page" (I am already logged in, but click it anyway), and it just takes me to the dev page, and the Manage my Instance link is no longer available.

Please lmk how/who to restore/access my instance. Thank you.

@val_k once a PDI is reclaimed, there's no restoration possible, I am worried

I was actively using my PDI but I still got the notifications and then it was reclaimed. 

I logged in several times between these notifications, still it was taken.

Please restore. 

I've been getting these messages but I actively used my instance.  I decided to try releasing it and requesting a new instance, but every request for the last 2 days has resulted in the following message: 'We were unable to assign an instance to you. Please retry now.'

This is blocking me from continuing my training with ServiceNow.  I'm starting a new position on Monday but I'd prefer not to escalate this through a new partner relationship.

Any suggestions on what may be blocking me is appreciated.

Never mind on my previous ask ... I figured out that I was hitting the availability issue reported by this article.  I went back and requested an older version and it was successfully created.  I am now upgrading it to the latest.

I was activly using my PDI and it was reclaimed anyway. This is so frustrating

Same here, I use my almost every day and it was reclaimed, so I don't think the condition of login frecuently was one condition. 

Please clarify why all PDI were claimed. 

Hi everyone, I’m hoping to get some community guidance on a strange PDI issue I’ve encountered.

Here’s the timeline of events:

1. I recently had trouble logging in and received messages that my instance was offline.
   

2. Four days ago, I received an official email confirming: "Your personal development instance: dev266397 is now available. We apologize if the recent unavailability has impacted you in any way..."
   

3. Today, when I logged in, the instance no longer appears on my dashboard. The only option available is to request a new one, which placed me back on the waitlist.

For context, I have been actively using this instance and didn’t receive any reclamation warnings prior to this happening.  

Has anyone else experienced an active instance disappearing right after receiving a restoration email? If so, were you able to recover it, or did you have to start over with a new one?

I realize the Developer Program admins are busy, but if anyone knows the best way to request a specific review for dev266397 —or if I should simply wait out the new waitlist—I would really appreciate the advice.

Thanks in advance for any insight or suggestions!

Sending out notifications on a Public Holiday in New Zealand to come back on Monday and find they have been deleted even though they are logged into and built on every Monday and Tuesday 10/10 great job. 

@ServiceNow , could you possibly explain the following?

"We're reclaiming PDIs that meet both of these conditions:

90 days or older (based on when they were provisioned)
Haven't had a PDI login in the last 10 days"

If it requires both conditions, then the 90-days one is obsolete no? If you are inactive for 10 days, it's reclaimed but if you log in every 9th day for more than 90 days, will I still be able to keep my instance?

Or how should I understand the 90 days? 

My PDI was reclaimed in this week's wave, so let me second the advice in this post: regular backups are the real answer, not just keeping the login alive.

For anyone who prefers that automated: we published Instance Backup on Share (free). You define what to export per table with the condition builder, it runs on a schedule, produces standard update set XML ready to commit on a new PDI, and can push each backup to external storage so it survives the reclaim itself.

I logged in the developer portal, can see the instance is online., however when I click "manage instance". The new page for the instance just keep loading (blank page only). What is happening ? Will my PDI being reclaimed ?

Anyone can assist ?

@ServiceNow  - my instance was reclaimed yesterday (7/12), even though I logged into it on Friday (7/10) and I was updating all the plugins (it took almost 2 hours!) and also installed new ones (Discovery, Service Mapping) I just had to request a new one and now I'm on the waiting list. This is not ok! 

I understand it this way: If it is 90 days or more since the PDI instance was provisioned to you, it will be reclaimed if you do not log in to the instance at least every 10 days. It explicitly states that both conditions needs to be true for the reclaim to happen, with both being highliged with bold font, emphasizing that both conditions should be true for the reclaim to happen. Based on that wording, my interpretation is that an older PDI can be kept indefinitely, provided you log in to the actual instance at least once every 10 days. Did others interpret it the same way?

I got an email through on Saturday around my instance being reclaimed on the 14th (tomorrow). There was no suggestion around it being possible to keep it, which is a bit of a pain as I was hoping I would be able to extend

This is a PDI that's over 90 days old but it's also actively used, so I wouldn't have met the conditions above. Has anyone else got a similar email?

@Daniel Madsen , your interpretation is correct in that it should be possible to keep a PDI indefinitely but the response just above yours indicates this might not be happening in practice.

@Nicholasgan and  @Daniel Madsen;

I too had a PDI that meet the older than 90 days but had been actively logged into in the last 10 days that was deemed suitable for reclamation and it has been reclaimed. Seems that they are NOT adhering to the stated conditions in practice.

I understand the conditions the same way you do @Daniel Madsen. Both conditions must be met for a PDI to be reclaimed.  Important to remember is this: "Background processes and developer site logins don’t count toward activity. An explicit login to your PDI is required."

And if that is correct, I think that the 90 days condition is redundant... unless the intent is that a PDI can go without a login for 89 days with no issue but the moment it turns 90 days, it suddenly needs a login every 10 days. Is that how the two conditions combine?

If it is just about the 10 days inactivity, then the 90 days condition doesn't add anything... no login for 10+ days should mean the PDI is reclaimed regardless of whether it's 2 weeks old or 3 months old. No?

Logging in once a week will satisfy the 10 days inactivity condition so can I keep my PDI for more than 90 days or will it be reclaimed at 90 days regardless of login frequency?

Can someone from ServiceNow confirm which of these is correct?

@Dan Bruhn @Allen Andreas @Servicenow 

Thank you and Have a wonderful day

I don't think the way that you all intended for this to work happened.  I was actually looking into Discovery configuration the other day and have logged in in the past 10 days multiple times and mine was reclaimed.  Not a good look ServiceNow developer program.  😞

I had the same issue as reported by many people on here - active, logged in and doing development, yet the instance was reclaimed anyway.

Annoying, but not the end of the world... managed to recover my work in a new PDI (though could only get a Zurich instance, no Aus available).

Hi everyone,

Thank you for raising these questions. We understand how frustrating this has been, and we're updating the blog to answer the questions we've seen from the community.

In the meantime, here's what you need to know:

1. As part of our current effort to improve PDI availability, we're reclaiming inactive PDIs to make more instances available for developers who are actively building.
2. If you've received a PDI reclamation email, plan for your PDI to be reclaimed even if you log in after receiving the notification. Please back up anything you want to keep before your scheduled reclamation date.
3. If your PDI is reclaimed and you still need one, you can request a new PDI through the Developer Site.

We know many of you have questions about why your PDI was reclaimed even though you've recently logged in. We're working with the product team to better understand those scenarios and will share additional clarification as we update the blog.

Thank you for your patience and for taking the time to share your feedback with us.

@ServiceNow  could you please answer question below:

Logging in once a week will satisfy the 10 days inactivity condition so can I keep my PDI for more than 90 days or will it be reclaimed at 90 days regardless of login frequency?

Thanks, it's important to know this in order to plan the PDI availability accordingly.

@val_k @LouisA245199140 Hi there, we're very sorry that happened. Once PDIs are reclaimed the process is irreversible and old PDIs cannot be restored. 

Last year I only used my PDI once in a while and it was reclaimed 3 times and I had no problem with it.

When I needed another, I waited a few days and requested one and spun it up for testing whatever issue I was looking to check. However, this yr is a different story. I have not had a PDI in many months and when I want one to explore a future upgrade, I am waiting and waiting.  The demand is increasing the supply is not keeping up.

@ServiceNow  

It appears my PDI have been reclaimed without any prior email or notice. 

I had been actively using the instance and had an ongoing project in progress at the time of reclamation. I have not received any communication warning me of an impending reclaim, which has left me unable to back up or export my work.

This is extremely frustrating, as starting from scratch would represent a significant loss of time and effort. I would like to understand whether there is any possibility of retrieving my project data before it is permanently lost.

Could you please advise on the following:

1. Is there any way to restore or recover my reclaimed PDI and its contents?
2. If full restoration is not possible, can any project data or update sets be retrieved?
3. What is the standard notice period before a PDI is reclaimed, and why was no notification sent in this case?

Hey all, several of us on the community team is reading each of these comments and is waiting for confirmation from the infrastructure teams to let us know how best to clarify how some of these reclamations are happening and what are the conditions' nuances (especially the past 90 days questions a number of you have: @glideFather @Nicholasgan )

@blairedanny @chaithu1489 if you've received the email, treat the reclaim as happening, even though you've been logging in. Back up your PDIs.

Logging in regularly and getting the notice anyways is a legit report and the product team is reviewing those cases. When we understand why it still happen, we'll communicate here.

This information might be incomplete.

I use my PDI almost every weekday, and I got an email saying it was being reclaimed, but it did not specify a reason. It could not be due to inactivity and the email explicitly mentioned that there was no option to extend. Now I am on a waitlist.

@Earl Duque I got a subsequent message around my instance being reclaimed @14:00 yesterday, except instead of it stating the 14th July like the email I received on the 11th, it now states the 15th July. Despite this new date, I expected to have lost the instance already in line with the initial date but it seems i still have it for the time being. The day is still young, so it could still happen I guess.

The new message looks to be the same format as the previous one, although the subject is different (Action Required: Your Personal Developer Instance Will Be Reclaimed vs Reminder: Your Personal Developer Instance Will Be Reclaimed Soon)

UPDATE: I got a new PDI late yesterday. So for me, the wait list was less than 2 days.

How long is the current waitlist? It says I'm on it, but it doesn't give any indication of my placement in the line or how long I should expect to wait.

@ServiceNow  Similar to others who have commented here, I also log in to my PDI very frequently—at least once a week. However, I still received an email stating that my instance is scheduled for reclamation.

You have suggested taking a backup as a solution. While we can capture some of our configurations and changes in update sets, many changes made as part of our training may be missed or may not be captured in update sets at all. In this case, what would you recommend for us? Is there any way to preserve or recover these changes?

@HarshiniReddy have you logged in via /login.do?

It says an explicit login is required, clicking the "Start building" button on the Developer portal doesn't count as logging in

@glideFather Thanks for the clarification! I was logging in through the Start Building button.

I use my PDI daily and still received a reclamation notice. I log into my PDI daily, create update sets, and validate processes before performing them in my organizations dev instance.  This is not a PDI that has ever been dormant.  

Why is it being reclaimed? Instance: dev214260

Please advise. 

@glideFather this does not seem to be true from what I can see as I manually logged in on my PDI yesterday and it was reclaimed just a few minutes ago. It's possible that the method that is being used to determine activity is just not working correctly but I don't think they would deliberately ignore the login shortcut and only include manual authentication attempts

I received a notice that my PDI is being reclaimed, but I use it daily. I create update sets in it almost daily - why is it being reclaimed? According to your rules of use, mine is active. Please advise. 

Hi All,

I let my be released back into circulation it was due to be reclaimed tomorrow. Again as others have stated I was not a candidate for reclaimation and regularly see discrepencies on last used and last logins.

The is a slight cynic in me thinking this excercise is more budgetary/infrastructure rebalancing than a supply and demand issue. 

If that is the case fine as I understand this is a fantastic resource for folks to have at no charge. 

Just my tuppence worth.

Thanks

Frank

I'll add my note to the pile.  I log in daily to my PDI and trigger updates in update sets.  I have a fix script that I specifically use to ensure that I don't get reclaimed due to no "material changes" in the platform.  My PDI hadn't even hibernated since my last login but today I can't login and in the developer site, it's no longer linked to me.

I think that the 90 day usage is a hard limit, not 90 days and no logins in a week.  I've had this PDI for upwards of a year.

It's not all the code you lose, it's all the plugins that you install to test new or additional features that is the kicker for me.  I can save off my code sure - it's just the hours to reinstall plugins that is the real loss.

I appreciate the free instance and use it extensively - many times before we decide to invest in new platform features.  We're a 13 year customer of ServiceNow so changes in the PDI program aren't new to me but this one is a kick in the pants.

Like a few others - my PDI was reclaimed even though I have been actively using it.  The rules for reclaiming do not appear to apply they take it anyway.  Very frustrating.

Something went seriously wrong with these reclaims, and Servicenow does not take responsability for the wrong actions or even bother to explain them. Starts to look like the recent firing of 2500 employees. Just fire away, no need to explain. Sad. 

- Christian

I'm annoyed. I received those notifications, but was active in my PDI, not just signing into the dev site or with background processes, so I thought I was going to be fine, but it was still reclaimed, just as others are saying. I'm only now seeing this post, but even with the conditions described, my PDI should not have been reclaimed. I noticed that the "Last accessed" date for my PDI on the dev site was also incorrect when I signed in, so I'm wondering if there may have been a bug in how that value was getting updated?

ServiceNow

Your response is disappointing in the extreme.  I, like so many others here, followed the rules... but hey, cost-cutting is king, right?

I was on waiting list and about to update to a new version that is one of the PDI versions and I got an email that my request would not be fulfilled. 

ahoy @Dan T_, 
A plugin installation started to create a record in an update set some time ago. So when you have that update set and promote it to another environment, it will ask you to agree to install the plugin, or ignore to skip the installation.

I agree it is annoying, just wanted to share this with you in case you'd be doing backups.

For me it is frustrating because I use PDIs as example to follow during de-customisations. Most of my clients have unbelievably broken instances and a PDI works as a model I aim to follow, since some records get deleted, renamed or heavily customised there. Losing a PDI after 90 days in the middle of a project would make things much harder for me. ://

For many of us (developers AND admins), we like to have an 'out of the box' instance to compare new features, etc. when our company instance is customized. 

It is EXTREMELY frustrating to build an instance to the 'company' specifications/licensed products, use it for a few months, and lose it to reclamation. There HAS to be a better way to provision PDIs. Maybe we could 'check what we want' and a PDI could be created FOR us instead of us having to sit and watch paint dry by installing every plugin individually? (After finding it, that is.) If the process to provision a PDI matched to our company's setup were easier, I'd be HAPPY to let my PDI be reclaimed when I finish researching a particular item. Instead, I want to keep it as long as possible b/c I put in ALL THAT WORK! 

Plug-in/Application updates need to be easier, too. On PDIs and regular instances. 

I understand these are 'non-rev' features, but if devs/admins aren't happy, it will be communicated to clients and impact ServiceNow eventually. 

I too logged into my PDI yesterday and today it is gone [dev215483].

I look forward to you restoring it and linking it back to my account.

At a time when the customer is considering moving away to a competing product, this couldn't have happened at a worse time!

I too logged into my PDI yesterday and today it is gone [dev215483].

I look forward to you restoring it and linking it back to my account.

At a time when the customer is considering moving away to a competing product, this couldn't have happened at a worse time!

Currently I am working on app developement. As you mentioned, if my PDI meets one of the two criterias, it will be reclaimed. I am worried about that.

• 90 days or older - I didn't understand this criteria. I can guess, If my PDI is older than 90 days (even if I am using it on daily basis), it will be reclaimed.
• Haven't had a PDI login in the last 10 days  - I do not come under this criteria as I login to my PDI everyday for developement.

My instance was also reclaimed today even though I logged into it Monday and upgraded it to Australia. Can someone please post an update to this issue so we know it is being addressed. Thanks

Ahoy @ServiceNow  @Earl Duque,

please do you have any update on the 90 days condition?

I checked my mailbox and according the emails, my PDI was requested the first week in May 2026 (still less than 90 days) and my PDI was reclaimed this morning without any warning. Which is a shame!

I realise and understand that PDIs are for free, I am very grateful to have this opportunity in learning new things there, however it would be helpful to understand the conditions of using it and to know what to expect or how to plan having one.

The last year my PDI was slower and slower, updating a variable label sometimes took 2 hours due to ending up with 502 errors very often, see this [GF#5] PDI in Offline state: Resolving Error 502 Bad Gateway (snow_adc) for reference, it was unpleasant but still good to have. Now it's not much clear how can we use PDIs, mine was reclaimed and a new one cannot be requested.

Just logged into ServiceNow Developers and it is not loading.  Is there an outage ?

Good morning,

Is there a ServiceNow Developers outage.  I am unable to load the page. 

I lost mine and I log in every day. No fun.

Hi @kirsten_for @Beth_478, yes the Developer Site is currently down. Engineering is working on a blog post with more details. We will publish it when it's ready and we'll share it here in the comments as well. 

Hi @glideFather, we're waiting for an update on the 90-day condition from the Product team responsible for PDI. We'll update the post once we have more information.

Why some of the PDI instances were taken offline. The message says instance is Hibernating and I could not wake the instance up. Is there an issue going on with ServiceNow

Can anybody help me with this......."Your PDI is temporarily hibernating due to an infrastructure issue. Our team is working on a fix now. Updates to follow!"? 

@sbhusarapu Yes, you can find more on it here: https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-blog/incident-developer-site-restored-and-pdi-availab...

Please fix it, I logged into PDI yesterday as I'm a new user and it is showing hibernation state.

I received notifications even though I had been actively using and developing in my PDI, then it was reclaimed a day after I last used it.   I understand the need to release resources, but can the Developer Team please manage properly.   It takes at least a day to re-install plugins and restore backups.  😞

@ShaziaN there's an infrastructure related issue:

CURRENT STATUS

Developer Site: Available
New PDI provisioning: Paused
PDI reclaim and wake actions: Paused
Existing PDIs: Some are offline
Developer action: No action is required at this time

Read this Incident: Developer Site Restored and PDI Availability Issues for more details.

@BobMullinea have you been logging in as an explicit login via https://yourPDI.service-now.com/login.do and inserting your user name and password?

Accessing your instance from the Developer portal by clicking Start building doesn't count as activity...

Thanks a lot ServiceNow, even though I was using my instance regularly, you still reclaimed it. costing me many hours just to reinstall and reconfigure all of the plugins required for my testing and development. 😠

@glideFather Are you sure about the "Start building" button?

I'm 99% sure it acts just like the instance URL which loads the "login.do" page with the user name and password as parameters to log into the "admin" account automatically.

I know it did in earlier versions of the dashboard, and I'm guessing still does.  Just wondering where you got that info.

@Jim Coyne yes absolutely sure, I use PDIs very often.

When you click the Start building, it opens your PDI with admin profile without the need of logging in manually. While via /login.do it can be accesses by any user that has set the passwords.

I tried just now, there's no change - click the Start building button and a new tab opens, no password was required.

but to keep your PDI active, as mentioned above in this article, this approach doesn't count as an activity, so even though you access your PDI every day by clicking start building, you will lose your PDI after 10 days, one weekly login from /login.do is sufficient to keep it. 

Still not sure about the 90-days condition, it doesn't make any sense beside the 10-days condition (you either log in during 10 days or don't) and @ServiceNow  and @Earl Duque promised to follow up once it is clear whether we can keep a PDI for longer than 90 days or not..

The 2 links don't just login to the instance automagically, they pass the user name and password as parameters that the login.do page uses to then login using those credentials.

Try it out by changing the password of the admin user in your instance then try clicking the URL or "Start building" button and you will NOT be logged in.  Or deactivate the admin user.  Same result.

And yes, that whole 90-day thing is confusing.  I think it was a cleanup exercise and the 90-day condition does not apply going forward, only on older instances that snuck through the 10-day login condition.  The emails that were mentioned were date-specific and do not seem to make sense going forward.  Anyways, just my thoughts, but this blog post/exercise was extremely confusing.

Here is what makes this a little frustrating.  I depend on my PDI to compare modules that are on our company instances with what it looks like OOB (my PDI).  It seems that we are no longer able to install key modules like HRSD, VRM just to name a few.  I understand the clean up, but to then limit what we can re-install back on the new PDI instance is very frustrating.  As a developer I do not have the luxury to being loaded with cash to fork over to ServiceNow for my own developer instance.  And most companies do not have developer instances for each developer.  Most have a DEV , TEST and PRD instance and do not see the feasibility to also have a DEMO or UAT instance as an extra cost.  

I actively use my PDI (dev280385) - if not daily, a few times a week.

I received a notice that my instance was being reclaimed.

I suspect they've added a maximum a useable life of PDI's to 12 months.

It appears this instance was initially issued to me in Sept 2025.... and the reclaim notice (dated 13 September) does not reference an "inactivity" warning like I've had a couple of times in the past... just "your instance is being reclaimed".

I will be requesting a new PDI as soon as it is reclaimed. In the meantime... I'll continue to use it like I have been...

@PattenM1 Did you receive any information why your PDI was being reclaimed? I also received a similar email this morning even though I was actively logging into my PDI for the past 4 days. Wondering if you received any exceptions or updates on why it was being reclaimed. 

@JahanzebB 

@PattenM1 

Here's the frustrating reason this has happened: you thought you were logging in regularly, but your login method wasn't being recognized:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/app-engine-forum/pdi-account/m-p/3611526

It's very disappointing that ServiceNow has allowed this to happen.

@Simon Hendery 

yeah, nah… I was logging in directly using the instance url and a non-admin account I created. The only exception being when the instance was hibernatp- in those occasions I HAD to wake it via the dev portal.

@PattenM1 - just a guess, but I wonder if only admin logins are recognised?