Licensing
bext is open source. The engine is licensed under the AGPL-3.0, and most supporting crates and packages under MIT. Read the code, modify it, run it in production at any scale, self-host it, and build and distribute your apps for free. If you distribute the engine, or let users interact with a modified version over a network, you share the source of your version under the AGPL-3.0. A commercial license is available when that condition doesn't fit, for example to embed the engine in a closed-source product.
A small set of genuinely advanced capabilities is the optional, paid part. One Pro add-on unlocks all of them for self-hosting; bext Cloud and Enterprise include them.
What's free — the open core#
| The engine — routing, automatic TLS, ISR cache, streaming SSR (PRISM), the tsc-rs compiler | Yes |
| HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 (QUIC) | Yes |
| Base WAF — rate-limiting, IP/geo rules, SQLi/XSS/traversal detection | Yes |
| Single-node Redis L2 cache | Yes |
| Plugins (WASM, nsjail, QuickJS), embedded PHP, nginx compat, real-time hub | Yes |
| Zero-downtime deploys, the solo dashboard, Prometheus metrics, structured logs | Yes |
| Self-host at any scale · build, sell, and distribute your apps | Yes |
Pro add-on#
A single self-host license. Included in bext Cloud and Enterprise.
| Managed WAF — auto-updating rule sets, ML bot detection, threat-intel / GeoIP feeds | Pro |
| Distributed Redis — clustered / multi-region cache, shared invalidation & rate-limiting | Pro |
| Team dashboard — RBAC, SSO/SAML, audit logs, long-retention analytics, flow debugger | Pro |
| OpenTelemetry — distributed tracing + OTLP export | Pro |
Cloud, Enterprise & OEM#
- bext Cloud — managed hosting (includes Pro).
- Enterprise — SLA, dedicated support, security review, on-prem deployment.
- Commercial license (OEM): embed the bext engine inside another product or platform without the AGPL-3.0 source-sharing condition.
For current prices see bext.dev/pricing; for the AGPL-3.0 terms and the commercial license see the license page.
License keys#
Self-hosting the open core needs no key. A key unlocks the Pro add-on for self-hosting, or carries Enterprise / OEM entitlements. Validation is fully offline (Ed25519). See License Setup.
Related#
- License model: AGPL-3.0 engine, MIT ecosystem, commercial license
- Pricing — Open source, Pro, Cloud, Enterprise
- License Setup — configure and verify a key
- Feature Reference — every feature, free vs Pro, and its Cargo flag