Licensing in plain words
ASTra is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. This page explains it. If this page and the LICENSE disagree, the LICENSE wins. This page describes version 0.4.0 and later; earlier versions keep the terms they were released with. The full version with worked examples is LICENSING.md.
In one minute
- You can read, run, modify and redistribute the source code.
- Free production use if you are a person who works alone (a freelancer, consultant or sole proprietor, in any legal form, at any revenue) for their own work and client deliverables, a school or researcher, a non-profit using it for its mission, a public body doing governmental work, or a small organization using it for its own work (up to 10 people and under USD 250,000 revenue, counted with affiliates).
- Free to build on and ship while the product or service that has ASTra inside it earns under USD 250,000, whatever the size of your company, even in a commercial product with its own functionality.
- Everyone else needs a commercial licence: an internal plan, priced by headcount, or an Embedded licence, priced by product revenue. See pricing.
- Trying it out is always free, with no time limit: evaluation, development, testing and demos on sample documents.
- Your documents are yours. The licence puts no restriction on what you create with ASTra.
- Each version becomes Apache-2.0 four years after it is first made public.
ASTra is source-available, not open source in the sense of the Open Source Definition, because the free use is limited.
Three questions
- Do you work alone? Free, at any revenue, for your own work and your client deliverables. This covers freelancers, consultants, sole proprietors and one-person companies. It does not cover a product or service of yours that has ASTra inside it and that you offer to others (question 2 applies, with its USD 250,000 limit, even if you work alone), and it never covers a competing offering. An employee who uses ASTra for an employer's work is making the employer's use, not their own.
- Is ASTra part of a product or service that you ship or host for others, with substantial features of its own? Free while that product's revenue is under USD 250,000, whatever the size or headcount of your company. Above that you need an Embedded licence. Your customers may use ASTra only as part of your product.
- Otherwise, do your own people use ASTra for your own work? Free up to 10 people and under USD 250,000 revenue, counted with affiliates. Above either limit you need an internal plan.
What counts as internal use
Internal use is your own people, systems and agents using any part of ASTra for your own operations: the MCP server, the command-line tool, the engine used as a library, and the validator. It covers scripts, CI/CD jobs, batch jobs, internal pipelines, internal tools and AI agents that run for your organisation. One licence covers all of it, on any number of computers, servers, agents and pipelines. Headcount counts people (employees, working owners and partners, and regular contractors), not servers or agents. A pipeline that produces documents for your customers is not internal use: it is part of a product, or a competing offering if its value is mainly ASTra. Running your own tests and CI to build and check your code is free for everyone.
Open-source projects
The MIT, Apache or other licence on your project's own code does not change ASTra's licence. ASTra stays under its own licence, and each person's use of it is judged by that person's own category.
- An individual maintainer, a qualifying non-profit or foundation, a school: free.
- A company or business behind the project: the project is free while its revenue is under USD 250,000 (a free project has none). The company's own internal use of ASTra is judged separately, by its size. A project that earns USD 250,000 or more needs an Embedded licence.
- ASTra bundled in the project: users may use ASTra only as part of the project, for as long as the maker qualifies or holds the licence.
- Users install ASTra themselves: ASTra is not part of the project, so each user's use is governed by that user's own category.
- Forks and redistribution: you may copy, modify and redistribute ASTra free of charge, provided every copy keeps the LICENSE and the copyright and licence notices. Selling ASTra itself, or a product or service that is mainly ASTra, is a competing offering.
Trying ASTra on real files
Trying ASTra on a few of your real files, to see whether it works for you, is free for everyone. It becomes production use when you rely on the results in your regular operations.
What always needs a commercial licence
A competing offering: a product or service offered to others whose value is mainly ASTra itself. That includes hosting ASTra as a service, exposing its operations through an API or MCP endpoint, a desktop or web editor that is mainly ASTra, and selling ASTra or a product that is mainly ASTra. This applies at any size. A product that uses ASTra to implement features of its own is not a competing offering. That includes an AI agent or agent platform that uses ASTra as one of its tools: it is a product, free while its revenue is under USD 250,000, and it needs an Embedded licence after that.
Examples
| Case | Result |
|---|---|
| Freelancer prepares documents for clients | Free |
| Student uses ASTra for assignments, a thesis or a course project | Free |
| Hobbyist builds a personal tool | Free |
| Open-source project runs its own tests with ASTra in CI | Free (testing is non-production use) |
| Startup of 6 people with a product that earns USD 200,000 and has ASTra inside it | Free, for the product and for its own internal use |
| The same startup grows to 12 people | The product stays free. Its internal use needs a licence after the end of that fiscal year and 90 days |
| Funded startup of 200 people with no revenue ships an app built on ASTra | The product is free (no revenue). Building and testing is free. The staff's own internal use needs an internal plan |
| Company of 6 people with USD 400,000 revenue runs internal reports through ASTra | Needs an internal plan (revenue is above USD 250,000) |
| A developer imports the ASTra engine into the company's CI pipeline that builds reports for its own operations | Internal use. The company's size decides. One licence covers every part of ASTra |
| Company of 200 people runs its real contract workflow through ASTra "as a pilot" | Production use; needs a licence |
| Company of 200 people tries ASTra for six months on sample documents | Free (non-production) |
| Eight-person startup offers a "document API" that calls ASTra's operations | Competing offering; needs a licence |
| The same startup builds a contract-review app that edits documents with ASTra | Free while its product revenue stays under USD 250,000 |
| Sole proprietor with no employees and a large web business uses ASTra for planning and documents | Free, at any revenue |
| The same person hires an employee, and the business has USD 5M revenue | No longer works alone. Needs a licence for its own use |
| Sole proprietor sells a contract-review app with its own features, built on ASTra, under USD 250,000 product revenue | Free |
| Person who works alone sells an app with its own features, built on ASTra, with USD 600,000 product revenue | The app needs an Embedded licence (above USD 250,000 product revenue). The person's own use of ASTra for their own work stays free |
| The same product reaches USD 250,000 revenue | Free until the end of that fiscal year, then 90 days to buy an Embedded licence |
| Anyone, even a solo person, hosts ASTra and sells API access, or sells a thin tool that mainly edits Word files | Competing offering; needs a licence at any size |
| Three-person company publishes an MIT project with ASTra bundled in | Free while the product's revenue is under USD 250,000. Users may use ASTra only as part of the project |
| The same project, but users install ASTra themselves instead of receiving it with the project | Free for the maker. ASTra is then not part of the product, so each user's use is governed by that user's own category |
| A company pays a maintainer to build a project for the company's own use | The company's use; it needs a licence for its size |
| An AI agent or agent platform that uses ASTra as one of its tools | Not competing. It is a product: free while its revenue is under USD 250,000, then an Embedded licence |
| Employee uses ASTra for their employer's work | The employer's use; free only if the employer is within the free categories |
| Large company publishes a free open-source project that depends on ASTra | The project is free (no revenue). The company's own staff need an internal plan if they use ASTra for the company's work |
Commercial licences
See the pricing page and the commercial licence terms. One licence covers the whole ASTra suite, in the version available on your start date, every version released during the term, and any earlier version. Internal plans are chosen by headcount. An Embedded licence (for a product or service of yours that has ASTra inside it) is chosen by that product's revenue, covers one named product, and also covers your own internal use up to 49 people. A Custom plan can combine internal, Embedded and support in one contract. Competing offerings and Custom plans are agreed with us: astra@attentionform.com.
Not sure? Ask first
Ask before you build or buy. Write to astra@attentionform.com with your use case. We aim to reply within 5 working days. To get a quote, share the details: your product's revenue band, how ASTra is used in your product, how many people use it, and how you deploy it (cloud, on-premises or desktop). If our written answer says your use does not need a licence, you have our permission for that use for one year from the date of our answer, without paying anything. Ask again before the year ends if the use continues. We will renew a written confirmation on request for the same use. We may decline only if the use has changed materially so that it no longer qualifies, or our terms for new versions have changed materially. If your use does need a licence, the terms and the price are negotiable.
Does the licence get stricter?
The terms of a released version never become stricter. A later version may carry different terms.
Last updated 9 November 2026. Questions: astra@attentionform.com.