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Editions and plan limits

OpenWatch ships in three editions that share the same features but differ in how they are licensed and how plan limits are unlocked. This page explains which edition you are running and what the plan limits mean.

The three editions

Edition How you run it Plan source Licence
Community Self-hosted, free and open-source Locked to the essential plan None
Enterprise Self-hosted Limits decoded from a signed licence key LICENSE_KEY (Ed25519 JWT)
SaaS Hosted for you on openwatch.cloud Limits from your subscription Managed by us (Stripe)

The edition is baked into the container image at build time through the OPENWATCH_EDITION build argument and written to a read-only file inside the image. It cannot be changed at runtime by setting an environment variable.

Community

The free, open-source edition. It always runs in community mode and is locked to the essential plan. No licence key is required. This is the right choice to evaluate OpenWatch or to run it for a single team.

Enterprise (self-hosted)

The self-hosted edition for organisations that need higher plan limits and gated features. It runs in self-hosted mode and requires a valid LICENSE_KEY. The key is an Ed25519-signed token whose payload carries your plan limits; OpenWatch verifies the signature offline against a public key embedded in the image.

Where the licence comes from

Enterprise licences are issued by OpenWatch. Set the value in the LICENSE_KEY environment variable (see Configuration). If the key is missing or invalid, the edition falls back to the essential limits.

SaaS

The hosted service on openwatch.cloud. It runs in saas mode and reads plan limits from your subscription. You change plans through the app; see Billing (SaaS).

What a plan controls

A plan is a set of limits plus a set of feature flags.

Limits

Quantitative caps enforced as you use the product, for example:

  • the number of OpenStack projects you can connect,
  • the number of members in an organisation.

When you reach a limit, OpenWatch blocks the action (for example adding another project) and points you at your plan. On the hosted SaaS you can lift the limit by upgrading; self-hosted, you raise it with an Enterprise licence.

Feature flags

Some capabilities are gated behind a feature flag on the plan, for example:

If a feature is not part of your plan, its page is hidden or shows an upgrade prompt instead of data.

Seeing your current usage

On the SaaS, the billing area shows your live usage (projects, members) next to the limits of your current plan, so you can see how much headroom you have before upgrading.

Which mode am I in?

  • Community: no licence, everything runs on the essential plan.
  • Enterprise (self-hosted): a LICENSE_KEY is set and its limits apply.
  • SaaS: hosted on openwatch.cloud, limits follow your subscription.

The feature set (dashboard, explorer, alerts, notifications, tags) is identical across editions. Only the limits and gated features change.