Free vs paid features
Tier limits, pricing and feature gates on this page are still being tuned over the coming weeks. Treat the structure below as indicative — we'll update this page as it settles.
Bee Flow ships in three tiers. The Community tier is fully functional with no licence key — every product feature (chat, automations, voice, meeting notes, vector knowledge bases, web crawl, skills, agent routines, multi-user, the Nextcloud connector and every integration) is enabled out of the box, with no caps on users, agents, messages or knowledge sources.
Paid tiers add compliance, branding, and resale capabilities — not headroom.
At a glance
| Tier | Users | Agents | Messages/mo | What it adds over Community |
|---|---|---|---|---|
community | unl. | unl. | unl. | (the full product) |
enterprise | unl. | unl. | unl. | + Compliance Hub (GDPR + AI Act), guardrail DLP, SAML SSO |
full | unl. | unl. | unl. | + White-label (logo, colours, domain), sub-licence issuance |
The full feature × tier matrix lives in Licensing → Tiers. Source of truth: server/license/tiers.js.
Why Community is enough for most teams
Community installs get the whole product:
- Workflows — Automations, agent routines, the Component Designer, the Skills marketplace.
- Conversation — Push-to-talk voice, voice call, meeting-notes transcription.
- Knowledge — Knowledge Bases and Webpage creation.
- Integrations — Every Nextcloud-bridge feature, all 30+ tool integrations, OAuth-write Nextcloud access.
- Privacy — Privacy Shield (Standard, Strict, Custom) is enabled on every tier.
- Admin — User & group management, beta-feature opt-in, org settings.
A team only needs Enterprise if it has a hard regulatory or identity-management requirement (SAML SSO, GDPR/AI-Act compliance hub, DLP rules). Full is for partners shipping Bee Flow under their own brand or issuing sub-licences to downstream customers.
Where the limits fire
The Community tier sets every cap to "unlimited", so no limit currently fires on a fresh install. The enforcement plumbing is still in place so custom plans can opt back into capped seats / messages / KB sources:
| Limit | Where it's enforced | What happens at the cap |
|---|---|---|
| Users | User-create endpoint, NC sync job | New users are skipped; existing users stay active |
| Agents | Agent-create endpoint | UI shows "Tier limit reached — upgrade to add more" |
| Messages / mo | Chat endpoint, automations runner | Org-wide chat returns 402 with tier_limit until the next month |
A monthly counter resets on the first UTC day of each calendar month. Counter state is in Postgres; nothing is sent off-machine.
Feature flags (premium gates)
The server uses a requireLicenseFeature(name) middleware that returns 403
to any user/org without the feature. Community-tier features (skills,
kb_unlimited, custom_themes, etc.) pass through silently. The gates
that actually fire are the paid ones:
| Feature flag | Tier | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
compliance_hub_gdpr | Enterprise+ | /api/compliance, guardrail audit log export, DSR flows |
compliance_hub_aia | Enterprise+ | AI Act compliance hub |
sso_saml | Enterprise+ | SAML 2.0 identity-provider config |
guardrails_dlp | Enterprise+ | DLP rule editor and enforcement |
white_label | Full | Replace branding, custom theme assets |
license_issuance | Full | Mint sub-licences for downstream tenants |
Legacy Pro keys
Bee Flow previously offered a paid Pro tier. It has been retired — every
Pro feature now ships in Community. Existing licence keys carrying
tier: "pro" continue to validate and silently resolve to enterprise, so
paying customers retain access (and gain the compliance features) without
needing to reactivate.
Why fair-code?
The frontend and server are released under the Sustainable Use Licence. You can use, modify and self-host them for free for your own organisation. You cannot offer Bee Flow as a paid service to third parties without a commercial agreement.
The Nextcloud connector is AGPL-3.0-or-later to comply with App Store requirements.