Licensing
Every Exolvra install starts as a full-product free trial — nothing is locked, the time limit is the only boundary. This page covers the trial, activating a license key, reading your current entitlements, and what happens when a trial or license expires.
What this page is for
A fresh Exolvra install runs the full product on a free trial — every agent, channel, and tool is available from the first boot, with no license key and no sign-up. A license key removes the time limit and sets your paid tier. The Licensing admin page (/admin/license) is where you watch the trial countdown, request a trial key, activate a license, check entitlements, and monitor seat usage.
The free trial
There are two trial shapes, and both are the complete product:
| Trial | Length | How you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in | 7 days | Automatic — starts on first run, works fully offline, no email required |
| Trial key | 14 days | Free, one per person — enter your email during onboarding or on /admin/license and the key is issued and applied automatically (requires internet) |
The trial countdown shows in the top bar of every dashboard page. If you start on the built-in trial and later request a 14-day key, the key’s own validity takes over — the two windows don’t stack.
When the trial ends
Trial expiry pauses autonomous compute only: agents stop picking up issues, schedules and charters stop firing. Everything else keeps working — the dashboard stays browsable, chat still responds, settings are editable, and export always works. Your data is never held hostage. Entering a license key resumes agent work within a minute or two, no restart needed.
The tiers
| Tier | Users | Key features |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | unlimited | The full product, time-limited. Team-equivalent features; Enterprise-only features stay gated. |
| Pro | 1 | Unlimited agents and skills, all channels and tools, scheduler, data store, budgets, approvals, Council, MCP install |
| Team | unlimited | Adds multi-team deployments, role-based access control, audit logging, access guards, analytics |
| Enterprise | unlimited | Adds triggers, runbooks, the workflow builder, file indexing, and unlimited audit retention |
Tier names and feature breakdowns change occasionally. The admin page always shows the exact entitlements for your current license.
Common tasks
Get a 14-day trial key
- Open
/admin/license(or use the Trial & license step during onboarding) - Enter your email in the Get a free 14-day trial key field
- Click Get 14-day trial key — the key is issued, applied, and activated in one step
One trial per person: requesting again with the same email (or from the same machine) returns your existing key rather than starting a new window — so losing the key never costs you anything, and it can’t be used to chain trials.
Activate a license key
- Obtain a license key (from the Exolvra team or your vendor)
- Open
/admin/license - Paste the key into the License key field
- Click Apply license
- Exolvra validates the key, activates it, and displays the tier, seat count, and expiry
Standard licenses activate against Exolvra’s licensing service and refresh in the background — the install needs internet access at least occasionally, and a brief outage never interrupts work. For air-gapped or regulated environments, offline licenses are available that validate entirely locally with no server contact — contact the Exolvra team.
Check current entitlements
Open /admin/license. The page shows:
- Current tier
- Organisation — the name the license was issued to
- Seats — how many machines the license allows and how many are activated
- Issued and Expires — dates
- Features — the full list of capability flags enabled by this tier
If the license is near expiration, the tier chip in the top bar turns amber, then red.
Upgrade or downgrade
Tier changes on a standard license are applied by your vendor server-side and picked up automatically at the next refresh — no new key to paste. Offline licenses are a key swap: paste the new key and apply. All existing data, users, and projects are preserved either way.
Seat usage
A seat is a machine activation, not a user. The Licensing page tracks how many machines have activated the license against its seat count. Deactivating a machine (Deactivate & clear on that machine, or freed by your vendor) returns the seat to the pool.
What happens when a license expires
- The instance falls back to trial behavior: if the built-in trial window has also elapsed (it usually has), autonomous compute pauses
- The dashboard, chat, settings, and export keep working — all data remains intact
- Re-activating with a valid license restores full operation immediately, no restart
Expiration is never a silent failure: the top-bar tier chip warns as the date approaches, and an expired trial shows a banner on every page.
Common pitfalls
Letting a license lapse without a reminder. The warning chip appears in the dashboard, but if nobody’s actively logging in, it can go unseen. Set a calendar reminder for your expiry date.
Running above the seat limit. A license with all seats activated refuses a new machine until one is deactivated. Free a seat from the old machine’s /admin/license page before migrating to new hardware.
Confusing trial expiry with data loss. An expired trial (or license) pauses agents — it never touches your data. Projects, issues, memory, and files are all intact and exportable; entering a key picks up exactly where things stopped.
Where to go next
- Users & teams — manage users
- Admin overview — the broader setup checklist
- Security and cloud mode — hardening a deployed instance