development and test/staging domains do not count towards the site limit.
When you activate the license, you should see a message that the activation is registered but is not counted as a live domain.
Our API tries to recognize this based on the IP and domain you’re activating the license one.
If your staging/local domains is counted as a production site, you could let us know so we can add it to our whitelist. More information about this can be found here:

https://docs.admincolumns.com/article/81-how-many-sites-can-i-activate-with-my-license