Internal User Access

[Justin Gavette]

Is there a way to extend access to a confluence space for internal users only?  I have not found a way to efficiently create this type of access

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

Hi @Justin Gavette 

As @Trudy Claspill said, Confluence content can be accessed only people who have a paid seat. 

There are two legitimate ways how to give authenticated access to Confluence content to people who do not have a paid Confluence seat.

If I understand your use case, you have a Confluence license for n users. You company has n + x employees, where x > 1. Those x > 1 employees need to access Confluence content in an authenticated manner.

Option 1 - Confluence Guests

As long as those x > 1 employees do not have a seat in other Atlassian apps within your Atlassian Organization, you can grant them Guest access. There are caveats.

• If employee Joe Doe has access in Jira, they can't become a guest on Confluence.
• A guest can only access a single space at a time
• You can only invite 5 guests per one paid seat. If you have 200 Confluence seats, you can, in theory, invite 1000 guests. And create a nightmare. More on this here.

Option 2 - a Marketplace app that creates an SSO-protected website from Confluence content 

This is the option that I used in the past to allow non-Confluence users access Confluence content without making that content public.

In the past, I used K15t's Scroll Sites app for a similar use case - internal documentation and an Intranet site.

Scroll Sites app creates a static website from designated Confluence content (any space you want) - and you can protect that site with your company's SSO (or a password).

In this case, you will control access with SSO, independently of Confluence login and user count. In other words, if your Confluence has 200 seats but your company has 500 employees provisioned into your SAML SSO identity provider, you can grant those 300 access to the site (well, all 500 would have access).

The caveats:

• you have to pay for a Marketplace app
• and calculate the cost of expanding the Confluence license vs buying the app.

The advantage is that if you add 100 user to SSO for the purpose to accessing that site, you won't have to expand the Confluence license.

Disclaimer: I've been working for K15t since September 2025.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Justin Gavette 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

To grant internal users access to a Confluence space they must have a Confluence User license.

You can then add them individually to the space or you can add them to a group that has been added to the space.

If that doesn't satisfy your requirement, can you provide more information about your requirement?