Licenses & tiers

Tiers

	community	pro	enterprise
Price	$0 forever	$49/mo per deployment	contact
All 16+ commands	✓	✓	✓
API keys	3	unlimited	unlimited
RBAC roles	—	✓	✓
Audit log	—	✓	✓
Zero-data-retention mode	—	✓	✓
Support	community	priority	dedicated
Deployment	self-hosted	per deployment	air-gap ok

The free tier is a product, not a demo — every command, the full fetch ladder, the index, MCP, and the HTTP API work with no license at all. Gating applies only to team/tenancy features a business actually needs: more than 3 API keys, admin roles, GET /audit, and zdr no-persistence mode.

How licensing works

Licenses are signed Ed25519 license files — verified offline by an embedded public key, no phone-home:

webx license install webx-license.json   # verify + park at ~/.webx/license.json
webx license status                      # confirm the active tier

webx serve    # picks up ~/.webx/license.json automatically — no env needed
webxd --addr :8080

WEBX_LICENSE=<path|inline-json> still works and wins over the file when set.

Without a valid license, gated requests return HTTP 402 with upgrade metadata pointing at WEBX_UPGRADE_URL — clients (and the SDKs) surface it as a purchase prompt, not a silent failure.

Buying a license

Self-serve checkout (Polar/Stripe) emails a signed license within seconds — subscription renewals automatically issue a fresh license each billing cycle. Manual path: the license request form, fulfilled within 1 business day.

For operators: minting licenses

webx license keygen --key maintainer.pem                    # one-time keypair (never commit)
webx license gen --key maintainer.pem --tier pro \
    --email user@co.com --out lic.json                      # sign a customer license
webx license check lic.json                                 # verify

To automate delivery on purchases, run webxl — a tiny webhook service that verifies Polar/Stripe payment events, signs licenses with your maintainer key, and emails them via Resend (or spools to a mailbox dir). See docs/LAUNCH.md for wiring.

WEBX_LICENSE_PUBKEY overrides the verifier for development.