In the past decade, we’ve helped our customers push the envelope to lead in their respective markets, with data architectures that can seamlessly survive node outages, datacenter outages, regional cloud outages, and even the unprecedented ability to turn off a cloud vendor entirely with complete business continuity. We are agnostic to public vs private cloud, allowing zero-downtime portability, and public / private hybrid deployments. All while leaving the door open to the future repatriation of data – after all, the only guarantee is that business requirements will continue to evolve in hard-to-predict ways.
Our ability to meet these and other challenges is the number one reason why CockroachDB has become the trusted global database for running the mission-critical workloads of the world’s most important businesses.
From the beginning, CockroachDB has been released as software that customers can run themselves (“self-hosted”) in two flavors: a free Core version to provide everything an individual user or startup would need to reach scale; and an Enterprise version, positioned for scaled businesses with mission-critical applications requiring capabilities such as cluster optimization, disaster recovery, enhanced security, and expert support. Over time, extensive use of both offerings has allowed for CockroachDB’s rapid evolution.
Two trends have emerged in the usage of our Core product. First, startups and other small businesses have often shown a desire to use Enterprise features not available in Core. And second, a growing number of scaled businesses are compromising on using the full capabilities of CockroachDB, eschewing the Enterprise license for free usage of Core. The irony of CockroachDB’s state-of-the-art resilience is that as the product has matured, use cases can increasingly be run in production with minimal operator overhead and support requirements.
Consequently, we are introducing a new licensing model that better aligns the needs of our customers and our business by:
Providing all of our users with the full breadth of CockroachDB capabilities
Continuing to allow individuals, students, and small businesses to use Enterprise for free – this is an investment to help them reach their full potential using an enterprise-grade product
Encouraging a fair exchange of value with scaled businesses to continue the rapid evolution of CockroachDB
Keeping our code “source available” so the ideas behind CockroachDB can help foster innovation across the ecosystem
With the introduction of version 24.3 in November, we are retiring our Core offering and introducing a new Enterprise licensing structure for self-hosted users, also applied to new patch releases of versions 23.1 and later. This new structure will provide all users with the robust database capabilities found previously only in the self-hosted Enterprise license. CockroachDB will remain entirely source code available. Note that there will be no change for customers of our cloud platform.
New 30-day Trial and Free license tiers — available November 18
CockroachDB Enterprise Trial: This license will be available for self-service trials, lasting 30 days, with community support.
CockroachDB Enterprise Free: Free for individual developers, students, academic researchers, and businesses under $10M in annual revenues. This license can be renewed annually and comes with community support.
TL;DR: One, powerful self-hosted version of CockroachDB Enterprise
In the past, splitting capabilities between Core and Enterprise inevitably compromised the experience of using CockroachDB. In consolidating to a single CockroachDB Enterprise offering, we are ensuring that all of our users have access to the full breadth and scope of our product, delivered through a streamlined trial experience. Individuals and small businesses will now benefit from capabilities previously available only to paying customers, but continue using CockroachDB for free.
What’s next?
Additional details, including answers to a number of FAQs you may have and a form you can use to reach out to our team, are available at this information hub. While our license structure is evolving, Cockroach Labs’ commitment to our community, partners, and customers remains the same. Thank you for the trust you’ve placed in us and in CockroachDB.
