Licensing - NetlyDB documentation

Community and Enterprise

Without a license NetlyDB runs as the Community edition: the complete embedded, single-node engine, free to use under NetlySoft's license terms (the package's license file: all rights reserved, use governed by your license agreement with NetlySoft). Enterprise features need a license.

Enterprise features

Feature	Enabled by
Clustering & replication	`JoinCluster(...)`
REST API	`AddNetlyDBAPI(...)`
Management UI	`AddNetlyDBManagementUI(...)`
MCP server	`AddNetlyDBMCP(...)`
Encryption at rest	`Security.Encryption.Enabled`
JWT / OIDC authentication	`Security.EnableJwtBearer`
Observability: the Management UI metrics dashboard	the Management UI Metrics page

Everything else is Community - including full-text and vector search, health checks, the NetlyDB metrics meter, backup and import, compression, schema validation, memory limits and API-key authentication.

Applying a license

Provide the license token in one of these ways, checked in this order:

In code - options.License.LicenseKey.
File - options.License.LicenseFilePath, a file containing the token.
Environment variable - NETLYDB_LICENSE (the name is configurable through options.License.EnvironmentVariable).

// 1) Inline license key (for example from configuration or a secret store)
builder.Services.AddNetlyDB(options =>
{
    options.License.LicenseKey = configuration["NetlyDB:License"];
});

// 2) From a license file
builder.Services.AddNetlyDB(options =>
{
    options.License.LicenseFilePath = "/etc/netlydb/netlydb.lic";
});

// 3) From an environment variable (default name: NETLYDB_LICENSE) - no code required
builder.Services.AddNetlyDB();

Where the token is read from, how it is verified, and the three outcomes at startup.

Offline verification

Licenses are signed tokens verified against a public key embedded in NetlyDB (ECDSA P-256). Verification is entirely offline: there is no license server and no call home, so licensed features work on machines without internet access. A license can also limit the number of cluster nodes.

Enforcement and grace period

With no license the process runs as Community. If you enable an Enterprise feature without a valid license, startup fails closed with an error that names the feature, instead of silently running degraded. An expired license keeps working during a grace period (options.License.GracePeriod, default 14 days), with a warning logged, so a renewal does not become an outage. The Management UI's Settings page shows the active license and which Enterprise features it enables.