---
title: Licensing & Billing
description: How Sencho licensing works, including trials, activation, and subscription management.
---

Sencho uses an open-core model. **Community** is the complete self-hosted control plane, free forever with unlimited nodes. **Admiral** adds governance, security, and fleet control for teams.

<Tip>
  *Our tier names are inspired by the meaning of Sencho (船長), because you're the captain of your container fleet.*
</Tip>

## Plans

| Tier | Annual (per mo, billed yearly) | Monthly | Seats |
|------|--------------------------------|---------|-------|
| **Community** | Free | Free | Unlimited |
| **Admiral** | $8.25 | $12 | Unlimited |

See [the pricing page](https://sencho.io/pricing) for current pricing.

### Feature breakdown

**Community** is the complete self-hosted control plane. It includes:

- Unlimited nodes, the Monaco compose editor, the full stack file explorer (browse, view, edit, upload, download, rename, chmod, delete; admin role for writes), and the App Store with 199+ one-click templates
- Real-time container stats, global logs, the interactive network topology graph (Hub, Grouped, and Free layouts), node labels, and stack labels
- Git sources for compose stacks
- Multi-node management in both Proxy and Pilot Agent modes
- Fleet View with search, sort, filter, and node-card drill-down
- Manual and scheduled fleet snapshots (create, browse, restore, delete) and Remote OTA node updates (per-node and **Update all**)
- Actions tab (stop stacks fleet-wide by label, bulk-assign labels to many stacks on a node, prune Docker resources fleet-wide; admin role required), plus fleet-wide bulk Sencho restart
- Bulk actions on a label (deploy, stop, or restart every stack tagged with it)
- Atomic deployments with automatic rollback, and one-click rollback to the previous deployment
- Auto-update policies for stack images and auto-heal policies for failed containers
- Scheduled operations across the full action catalog (lifecycle, updates, scans, snapshots, prune)
- Webhooks (incoming, to trigger deploys from CI/CD) and notification routing (per-stack and per-category rules to Discord, Slack, or any webhook)
- Custom S3-compatible backup target (bring your own AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, MinIO, Backblaze B2, or Wasabi bucket)
- Vulnerability scanning: install, update, uninstall, and auto-update the managed Trivy binary, on-demand scans for vulnerabilities, secrets, and misconfigurations, scan comparison, CVE suppressions, and single-scan SBOM export (SPDX, CycloneDX)
- Private registry credentials for Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry (GHCR), and custom or self-hosted registries (admin role required)
- A 14-day recent-activity audit log with Stream and Table views and filtering
- Alert rules with Discord, Slack, and webhook targets
- API tokens for CI/CD pipelines and scripts (admin role required)
- Unlimited accounts with the Admin and Viewer roles
- Two-factor authentication (TOTP plus backup codes)
- Single sign-on with Custom OIDC (Authelia, Keycloak, Authentik, Zitadel, Pocket ID, or any spec-compliant OIDC provider) and preset providers for Google, GitHub, and Okta

**Admiral** adds governance, security, and fleet control for teams. It includes everything in Community, plus:

- **Governance:** advanced RBAC roles (Deployer, Node Admin, Auditor), scoped permissions per stack or node, and audit log export (CSV, JSON), anomaly detection, and configurable retention beyond the recent window
- **Security:** Fleet Secrets, AWS ECR registry credentials, deploy enforcement (scan policies with `block_on_deploy`), SARIF export, and LDAP / Active Directory authentication
- **Fleet operations:** node cordon, Blueprints, and Sencho Mesh (cross-node container networking)
- **Managed continuity:** Sencho Cloud Backup (a managed, off-site snapshot allowance)
- **Operator access:** the Host Console (a browser-based terminal on the Sencho host)

## Free trial

Sencho offers a **14-day Admiral trial** so you can evaluate the flagship features (Host Console, Sencho Mesh, LDAP / Active Directory, audit log, advanced RBAC) with your real infrastructure before committing. The trial is offered on the monthly and annual Admiral plans.

To start a trial:

1. Visit the [pricing page](https://sencho.io/pricing).
2. Switch to the **Annual** or **Monthly** billing tab.
3. Click **Start 14-day trial** on the **Admiral** card.
4. Complete the checkout. A valid card is required for verification; you are not charged until the trial ends.
5. Your license key is emailed to you within a few minutes.
6. Activate the key in the Sencho dashboard as described in [Activating your license](#activating-your-license).

When your trial ends, the card you provided is automatically charged and your plan continues as a paid Admiral subscription. To avoid being charged, cancel from the **Manage subscription** button in **Settings → License** (or from your receipt email) any time before day 14.

<Tip>
  Fresh installs land on the **Community** tier until you activate a license key. All Community features (unlimited nodes, compose editor, global logs, alerts, Custom OIDC, and more) are available immediately.
</Tip>

## Activating your license

Open **Settings → License** in the Sencho dashboard. When the license is not active, the **Activate** section sits below the Plan card:

<Frame>
  <img src="/images/licensing/license-activate-section.png" alt="The Activate section of the License page on a Community-tier instance, with a License key input field and an Activate button on the right" />
</Frame>

1. Paste your key into the **License key** field.
2. Click **Activate**.

Sencho validates the key and unlocks your tier. If activation fails, the toast surfaces the verbatim error; common causes are an invalid key, a typo, or an activation limit reached on a previous instance.

## The Plan section

When a license is active, **Settings → License** opens on the **Plan** section. The page masthead at the top exposes three stat pills, and the section below lists the metadata for the active license.

<Frame>
  <img src="/images/licensing/license-admiral-active.png" alt="License page showing an active Sencho Admiral license, with the Plan section listing the Customer, Product, and masked License key fields and a Deactivate button" />
</Frame>

The masthead pills are:

| Pill | Meaning |
|------|---------|
| **SCOPE** | Reads `operator` when you are signed in as an admin. |
| **PLAN** | The current tier: `community` or `admiral`. Trial licenses show `admiral`. |
| **RENEWS** / **TRIAL** / **STATUS** | `RENEWS: <date>` for active subscriptions, `TRIAL: Xd left` for trials, and `STATUS: expired` for expired licenses. |

The **Plan** card lists:

- **Tier name** (e.g. `Sencho Admiral`) with a short status line, such as "Active license on this control plane", "Trial: X days remaining", or "Your license has expired."
- **Customer**: the customer name on the purchase.
- **Product**: the purchased product (e.g. `Sencho Admiral`).
- **License key**: the last four characters of your key, displayed as `****-****-****-XXXX`. The full key is never re-displayed after activation.

## Managing your subscription

When the license is an active subscription, the Plan section action row exposes **Manage subscription** alongside **Deactivate**. **Manage subscription** opens the billing portal in a new tab, where you can update your payment method, view invoices, cancel, or switch plans.

The same portal is reachable from the profile menu in the top-right corner of the app:

<Frame>
  <img src="/images/licensing/profile-menu.png" alt="Profile dropdown popover showing an identity header with the admin role and Admiral tier badges, a navigation strip with Settings, Documentation, and Feedback entries, an Appearance theme picker, and a Log Out button" />
</Frame>

Click your initials in the top-right corner to open the popover. For active subscription licenses, a **Billing** row appears between **Settings** and **Documentation** that opens the same portal as **Manage subscription**.

## License validation

Active licenses are re-validated every **72 hours**. If your instance goes offline, there is a **30-day grace period** before it degrades to the Community tier.

## License states

The License page renders differently depending on the license status:

| Status | Plan section | Activate section | Pricing section |
|--------|--------------|------------------|-----------------|
| **Community** | `Sencho Community` with "Free tier with the core experience." | Visible | Visible |
| **Trial** | `Sencho Admiral (Trial)` with a countdown chip | Visible (so a paid key can replace the trial) | Hidden |
| **Active subscription** | Tier name with Customer, Product, License key, plus `Manage subscription` and `Deactivate` | Hidden | Hidden |
| **Expired** | `Sencho Community` with "Your license has expired. Renew to restore paid features." and a destructive **Status: Expired** field | Visible | Visible |
| **Disabled** | `Sencho Community` with "Your license has been disabled. Contact support for assistance." | Visible | Visible |

The **Pricing** section, when visible, holds a single **See pricing** button that opens [the pricing page](https://sencho.io/pricing) in a new tab so you can pick a tier and billing cadence.

<Frame>
  <img src="/images/licensing/license-community.png" alt="License page on a Community-tier instance, with the masthead showing SCOPE operator and PLAN community, then the Plan section reading 'Sencho Community · Free tier with the core experience.', the Activate section with the License key input, and the Pricing section with the See pricing button" />
</Frame>

## Multi-node license enforcement

If you manage multiple servers through Sencho's [multi-node feature](/features/multi-node), you only need a license on your **control instance**. All remote nodes automatically inherit the control instance's license tier for proxied requests. No per-node activation is required.

For details on how this works, see [License enforcement across nodes](/features/multi-node#license-enforcement-across-nodes).

## Deactivating a license

To transfer your license to a different instance:

1. Go to **Settings → License**.
2. Click **Deactivate** in the Plan section.
3. On your new instance, paste the same license key into **License key** and click **Activate**.

Deactivation reverts the current instance to the Community tier immediately.

Having trouble with your license? See the [Troubleshooting](/operations/troubleshooting#license-tier-shows-the-wrong-name) page for solutions to common licensing issues.
