Public signup confluence - license

[sladha_projects NA]

I use Confluence Cloud for my organization. Let me state my requirement:

• External users: I want to open up my org's confluence site to select external users ((1) public signup - limited by domains or (2) manually added by my site's admin (3) NOT anonymous users)
• I only want read-only access to these external users. I.e. viewing only.

Will each such external user consume a Confluence Cloud license? Is there any other way I can accomplish my goal in Confluence Cloud that does not have me spending a license for each read-only external user?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The only way to do free access is to use anonymous. 

If a user is not anonymous, then they have to log in, and to log in, you need a licence.

If you were on a server version, there are some tricks you can play, but on Cloud, no.  It's anonymous or licenced user.