How self-hosted licensing works
Where a license activates depends on the plan. Pro and Business activate on one workspace. Enterprise Grid activates on the whole instance. Most other licensing questions follow from that difference.
For the difference between an edition and a plan, see Self-hosting 101. For prices, invoices, and proration, see How billing works.
Where your license activates
| Plan | Scope | You activate it in | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | Workspace | Workspace settings → Billing and plans | Pro or Business on Commercial |
| Business | Workspace | Workspace settings → Billing and plans | Pro or Business on Commercial |
| Enterprise Grid | Instance | God mode → Billing | Enterprise Grid on Commercial |
| Enterprise Grid, Airgapped Edition | Instance | God mode → Billing, using a license file | Enterprise Grid on Airgapped |
A Pro or Business key unlocks the one workspace you activate it on, and every other workspace on the instance stays on the Free plan. An Enterprise Grid key unlocks every workspace on the instance, and activating it deactivates any other license already on that instance.
Plane offers the Airgapped Edition with Enterprise Grid only. Pro and Business run on the Commercial Edition and activate online.
INFO
Pro and Business are the only plans you can buy yourself, from the Prime portal. Self-hosted checkout starts at 10 seats. Enterprise Grid and airgapped deployments go through sales.
What a license key is bound to
When you activate a license key, Plane records three things against it.
- the workspace you activated it on, by ID and slug, for Pro and Business
- the instance, identified by the machine signature your installation generated at setup
- the domain that instance reported
That binding is why a key works in one place at a time. Activating the same key on a second workspace fails with License already active for another workspace. Moving the same workspace to a fresh install on a new domain without releasing the key first fails with License already active for another instance. Both are fixed by delinking the key before you move.
Enterprise Grid keys skip the workspace half. They bind to the instance only, which is why God mode, not workspace settings, is where you activate them.
WARNING
A license key covers your own subscription. Sharing it, running beyond the seats or instances you bought, or interfering with license validation breaches Section 3 of the EULA, and Plane can terminate the license for it.
Delinking and reactivating is the supported way to move a key between workspaces, servers, or instances. It is free, immediate, and unlimited.
How seats are counted
Seats come from the roles in your workspace, not from a headcount.
- Owners, Admins, and Members each consume a paid seat.
- Guests are free, up to five per paid seat. Past that, each extra Guest consumes a seat.
- Pending invitations count as seats until the person joins.
- The Commercial Edition includes 12 free seats per workspace, so a small team can run it without buying anything.
Enterprise Grid counts differently. Every active user account on the instance consumes a seat, and so does each pending invitation for someone without an account. A person in several workspaces counts once, and there is no Guest allowance.
The app refuses an invitation that would go past your purchased seats, so add seats first. If a check finds more members than seats, a card-paid subscription raises the seat count with your payment provider and carries on. An invoice-paid subscription cannot, so activation fails until seats are added. See Add or remove seats.
INFO
Self-hosted instances do not get free trials. Trials are a Plane Cloud feature. The Commercial Edition's 12 free seats are the self-hosted equivalent.
Next steps
Pro or Business
Enterprise Grid
Airgapped
Manage your license
Troubleshoot
- License errors covers every activation and sync error by the message you see.