Licensing
bext uses an open-core model. The core platform is free and MIT-licensed. Advanced features for security, performance, and operations are unlocked with a license key.
Early Bird Pricing
:::note Limited offer: The first 200 paid licenses get a locked discounted rate. The first 50 get a lifetime price lock, the rest lock for 12 months. Offer ends September 1, 2026. :::
| Tier | Standard | Early Bird | Lock Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro (self-hosted) | $29/mo per server | $19/mo per server | 12 months (lifetime for first 50) |
| Enterprise (self-hosted) | $199/mo per server | $129/mo per server | 12 months (lifetime for first 50) |
| Cloud Pro | $20/mo | $12/mo | 12 months (lifetime for first 50) |
| Cloud Team | $50/seat/mo | $35/seat/mo | 12 months (lifetime for first 50) |
Early bird keys include a promo field in the license payload. You can verify your promo status with bext-server license.
Tiers at a Glance
| Community | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $29/mo per server | $199/mo per server |
| SSR, ISR caching, compression | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-TLS (Let's Encrypt) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP/2 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero-downtime deploys | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| All framework adapters | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Full CLI | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| QuickJS plugin sandbox | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Prometheus metrics | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Source transforms, SEO, images | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Durable flow engine | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WAF (IP, geo, SQLi/XSS, DDoS) | -- | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP/3 (QUIC) | -- | Yes | Yes |
| Redis L2 cache + distributed sync | -- | Yes | Yes |
| OpenTelemetry tracing | -- | Yes | Yes |
| WASM + nsjail plugin sandboxes | -- | Yes | Yes |
| nginx config compatibility | -- | Yes | Yes |
| Real-time SSE/WebSocket hub | -- | Yes | Yes |
| WebSocket upstream proxy | -- | Yes | Yes |
| eBPF acceleration | -- | -- | Yes |
| Embedded PHP runtime | -- | -- | Yes |
| Multi-tenant RBAC | -- | -- | Yes |
| Feature flags | -- | -- | Yes |
| Auth proxy (OIDC, mTLS) | -- | -- | Yes |
| Priority support | -- | -- | Yes |
No Lock-In
- The Community tier is genuinely complete — you can run production workloads without paying
- All features are compiled into a single binary; the license key controls what activates at runtime
- License validation is 100% offline (Ed25519 signature, no phone-home)
- The server always starts, even with an invalid or missing key
Getting Started
1. Get a license key — purchase and configure 2. Feature reference — what each tier includes 3. FAQ — common questions