Licensing

Is Keel free to use?

For personal, non-commercial projects, yes. Download it, install it, run it on your own machines. The CLI, the policy store, the cryptographic WAL -- all of it works locally with no account and no payment.

Can my company use Keel?

Production use by or on behalf of a commercial entity requires a commercial licence. If your company's agents rely on Keel's safety guarantees in any environment, a Cloud subscription is the simplest way to be covered. Every Cloud plan includes the commercial licence for the local CLI.

* University IT departments using Keel to manage institutional infrastructure (rather than for teaching or research) should treat that as commercial use.

What if we only want the local CLI, not the Cloud features?

Cloud Pro at €29/month is the entry-level commercial licence. Even if you never use the hosted WAL, dashboard, or sync features, the subscription covers your commercial use of the local tooling. Think of Cloud Pro as "licence plus optional extras."

Why not just make it open source?

Keel is built by a solo founder. An open-source licence would allow a larger company to take the code, host a competing service, and outspend the original author on distribution. The BSL prevents that while keeping the source fully readable, auditable, and modifiable for non-production use.

Every version of Keel converts to Apache 2.0 four years after its first public release. Version 0.2.3 will become fully open source on 3 March 2030.

Why would I pay for Cloud Pro if the CLI runs locally?

Local agent environments are ephemeral. Containers restart, dev machines get wiped, sessions end. Cloud Pro gives you a hosted WAL with 90-day retention, a web dashboard for reviewing what your agents did, and policy sync that survives environment changes. Your audit trail lives somewhere permanent.

It also covers your commercial licence, so there is one bill and one conversation with procurement.

When should we move to Cloud Team?

When more than one person needs visibility. Cloud Team gives you shared policies across machines, multi-agent coordination, and bundled compliance exports for team review. Three seats included, self-serve card billing, no procurement process needed.

Our security team needs a DPA, vendor review, and custom retention. Do you support that?

Yes. The Business tier handles invoicing, DPAs, security questionnaires, and custom retention windows. Reach out to [email protected] and we will get it sorted.

What is the Business Source License?

BSL 1.1 is a source-available licence created by MariaDB. It grants everyone the right to read, modify, and redistribute the code for non-production use. Production use requires either the Additional Use Grant (which Keel defines as personal/non-commercial) or a commercial licence from the licensor.

BSL is not an open-source licence. It is a time-delayed open-source licence: every version automatically converts to Apache 2.0 four years after its first public release.

What does "production use" mean for Keel?

If Keel is providing safety guardrails for agents that operate on real data, real inboxes, real file systems, or real infrastructure in a commercial context, that is production use. It does not matter whether the agent runs on a developer's laptop or in a CI pipeline. The relevant question is whether a commercial entity is deriving value from Keel's safety guarantees.

Can I fork Keel and build my own hosted service?

No. The BSL does not grant production use rights for competing hosted or embedded offerings. If you want to build a product or service on top of Keel, contact us for a commercial licence.

When does Keel become open source?

Each version converts to Apache 2.0 on the earlier of: the Change Date specified in the licence, or four years after its first public distribution. For version 0.2.3, the Change Date is 3 March 2030.

Can I read and audit the source code?

Yes. The full source is available on GitHub. BSL grants the right to read, modify, and create derivative works. You can inspect every line of the policy engine, the WAL implementation, and the fidelity checks.