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Licensing

Choose the License That Fits Your Business

stdapi.ai is available under a dual-license model designed to support both open-source communities and commercial enterprises:

  • AGPL-3.0-or-later (Free & Open Source)

    Free forever for those who share their code

    Best for:

    • Open-source projects
    • Research and education
    • Development and testing
    • Projects that can comply with AGPL

    Includes: Community Docker image, full source code access

    View License

  • Commercial License (AWS Marketplace)

    Production-ready for proprietary applications — 14-day free trial included

    Best for:

    • Internal company tools
    • SaaS products
    • Proprietary applications
    • Commercial integrations

    Includes: Hardened container, security updates, commercial support

    Start 14-Day Free Trial on AWS Marketplace

Why Choose the Commercial License?

A commercial license through AWS Marketplace provides everything you need for production deployments:

Keep Your Code Private

Build proprietary applications without AGPL's source code disclosure requirements. Your intellectual property and modifications stay private.

Deploy with Confidence

No copyleft obligations - integrate stdapi.ai into your products and internal tools without AGPL network use restrictions.

Production-Grade Security

Access hardened and optimized container images with regular security updates, vulnerability patches, and AWS security best practices.

Modify & Distribute Freely

Customize stdapi.ai to fit your needs and distribute it as part of your commercial offerings without restrictions.

Enterprise-Ready Terms

Licensed under the AWS Marketplace Standard Contract (SCMP) - straightforward, trusted terms used by thousands of enterprise products.

Streamlined AWS Billing

Purchase and pay through AWS Marketplace. Consolidated billing with your existing AWS infrastructure costs.

Commercial License Benefits

  • Full Commercial Rights

    Use in closed-source applications, modify freely, and distribute as part of your products

  • No Source Disclosure

    AGPL network use requirements don't apply—keep your modifications private

  • Internal Network Freedom

    Deploy on internal networks without triggering AGPL's source disclosure obligations

  • Streamlined Procurement

    Purchase through AWS Marketplace with familiar terms and billing

  • Hardened Container Images

    Optimized and security-hardened containers built for production workloads

  • Regular Security Updates

    Stay protected with timely security patches and vulnerability fixes

  • Easy Deployment Options

    Quick deployment workflows optimized for AWS infrastructure

  • AWS Best Practices

    Deployment options follow AWS Well-Architected Framework guidelines

Your Path to Production

A typical adoption path from evaluation to production:

%%{init: {'flowchart': {'htmlLabels': true}} }%%
flowchart LR
  eval["<strong>1. Evaluate</strong><br/>Docker Community<br/>(free, AGPL)"] --> trial["<strong>2. Trial</strong><br/>AWS Marketplace<br/>(14 days free)"]
  trial --> prod["<strong>3. Production</strong><br/>Terraform deploy<br/>(pay-per-use)"]
Step What Cost License
Evaluate Run the community Docker image locally Free AGPL-3.0
Trial Subscribe on AWS Marketplace and test in your AWS environment Free for 14 days Commercial
Production Deploy with Terraform — same config, swap container image AWS pay-per-use Commercial

No migration required between steps. Your Terraform configuration and application code remain the same.

Quick Start (3 Steps)

  1. Subscribe — Visit AWS Marketplace and subscribe to stdapi.ai (14-day free trial included)
  2. Accept Contract — Accept the AWS Marketplace Standard Contract during checkout
  3. Deploy — Use the Terraform module to deploy immediately with commercial rights activated

Pricing: The commercial license is billed at $0.10/container-hour through AWS Marketplace — no per-request markup and no markup on model usage. You pay Amazon Bedrock rates directly for inference. The bill therefore scales with how many containers run, and for how long: the Terraform module runs one task per Availability Zone by default, so the container count follows your AZ count unless you set it explicitly.

Monthly cost examples (license only, excluding AWS infrastructure and Bedrock model costs — 720 h/month per running container):

Scenario Containers Container-hours/month License cost
Module default, 3-AZ region, 24 × 7 3 2,160 h ~$216/month
Module default, us-east-1 (6 AZs), 24 × 7 6 4,320 h ~$432/month
Cost-optimized: single container, 24 × 7 1 720 h ~$72/month
Cost-optimized: single container, dev/staging with scheduled stop outside business hours 1 ~165 h ~$17/month

Why the default is more than one container

The Terraform module leaves availability_zones_count unset (it uses all Availability Zones in the region) and autoscaling_min_capacity unset (one task per Availability Zone), so a default deployment runs 3 containers in a typical 3-AZ region and 6 in us-east-1. The two cost-optimized rows above assume autoscaling_min_capacity = 1, which trades the multi-AZ redundancy of the default for a lower floor. See Keeping It Low for the settings that drive this number.

Fargate Spot does not reduce the license cost

The license fee is billed per container-hour regardless of the Fargate pricing model — a default 3-AZ deployment is 2,160 h × $0.10 = $216/month whether the underlying containers run on Spot or standard Fargate. Spot only discounts the AWS infrastructure cost (the ECS/Fargate compute itself), not the Marketplace license. See Cost Management for the full infrastructure-vs-license breakdown.

Consolidated AWS billing — one bill, no separate invoice or procurement (AWS promotional credits do not apply to Marketplace charges).

After Subscribing

Once subscribed, access the hardened container image from AWS Marketplace ECR and deploy using:

Your commercial license activates automatically upon deployment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I try before I buy?

Yes, two ways:

  1. Free AGPL version - Use the community Docker image (AGPL-3.0) for evaluation, development, and testing. No cost, full features.

  2. 14-day free trial - AWS Marketplace commercial license includes a 14-day trial of the license. Test the hardened production container in your environment; AWS resources and model usage bill as usual from the first minute.

Both options give you full access to validate stdapi.ai before committing.

Do I need a commercial license for internal company tools?

Yes, in most cases. The AGPL-3.0 license requires source code disclosure even for software accessed over a network (the "network use" clause).

Examples requiring commercial license: - Internal API gateway for your team - Company-wide AI chatbot - Department-specific automation tools - Private SaaS offering to customers

The commercial license removes these obligations and lets you keep your code and deployments private.

What if I'm okay with open-sourcing my application?

If you're comfortable open-sourcing your entire application under AGPL-3.0 (including making source available to network users), the free community version works perfectly.

AGPL-3.0 is fine for: - Open-source projects that share all code - Research and academic projects - Personal experiments and learning

The commercial license is for organizations that need proprietary code or can't meet AGPL's network disclosure requirements.

Can I switch from AGPL to commercial later?

Yes, absolutely. This is a common path:

  1. Develop & test with free AGPL community Docker image
  2. Subscribe to AWS Marketplace when ready for production
  3. Deploy with commercial container image - automatic license activation

No migration required. Just swap container images and deploy. Your Terraform configuration remains the same.

What's included in the AWS Marketplace Standard Contract?

The AWS Marketplace Standard Contract (SCMP) provides:

  • Clear license grant terms for commercial use
  • Standard warranty and liability provisions
  • Straightforward payment and billing terms
  • Professional indemnification terms

It's the same trusted contract used across thousands of enterprise software products on AWS Marketplace.

I'm building a product for multiple customers. How does licensing work?

One AWS Marketplace subscription per running stdapi.ai deployment. The per-container-hour billing handles this automatically — each instance you run accumulates its own usage.

Common patterns for ISVs and MSPs:

  • One instance per customer — each customer gets their own stdapi.ai deployment in their AWS account (or a dedicated account you manage). Each instance has its own Marketplace subscription billed to the owning account.
  • Shared multi-tenant instance — one instance serves multiple customers. One subscription covers the shared deployment. Use the safety_identifier field (or the deprecated user field) in API requests to tag traffic per customer for audit trails and usage attribution.

For questions about volume deployments or enterprise licensing, contact sales@stdapi.ai.

Where are the third-party licences inside the container image?

The image carries the licence and notice files of everything it redistributes, so a legal or compliance review can be done against the artifact itself:

  • Python dependencies — each package keeps its LICENSE/NOTICE/COPYING/AUTHORS files (and its METADATA and SBOM) inside its own .dist-info directory under /opt/app.
  • FFmpeg — /usr/share/licenses/ffmpeg/, alongside a package entry in the APK inventory so image scanners inventory it like any other installed package.
  • Swagger UI (Apache-2.0) — /usr/share/licenses/swagger-ui-dist/, holding its LICENSE, its NOTICE and the bundled-dependency notice its script carries.
  • ReDoc (MIT) — /usr/share/licenses/redoc/, holding its LICENSE and the bundled-dependency notice its script carries.
  • stdapi.ai — /usr/share/licenses/stdapi.ai/, holding LICENSE-AGPL on the community image.

Swagger UI and ReDoc are the two documentation UIs served at /docs and /redoc. The image ships them itself, pinned to an exact release and verified against a recorded SHA-256 at build time, so those pages render with no outbound request at all.

How do I update stdapi.ai?

Updates are container image redeployments — no data migration or downtime window required.

Using the Terraform module (recommended): the Terraform module is versioned in sync with the application. Bumping the module version in your Terraform config and running terraform apply updates the ECS task definition to the new container image and performs a rolling replacement of running tasks with zero downtime.

Manual ECS deployment: update the container image tag in your ECS task definition and trigger a new deployment.

Security patches are released as new container image versions. Subscribe to GitHub releases to be notified.

Support & Deployment Help

Email Support

Email: support@stdapi.ai

Response time: 1 business day for commercial license subscribers.

For licensing questions, volume pricing, or custom deployment scenarios, contact sales@stdapi.ai.

Managed Deployment Service

If you'd prefer not to manage the Terraform deployment yourself, a managed deployment service is available on AWS Marketplace. Choose between:

  • Guided setup — step-by-step assistance while you retain full control
  • Fully managed — the deployment is handled entirely on your behalf, within your AWS account

Response time is 1 business day during the engagement. All work is performed inside your own AWS account — no data leaves your environment.

View Managed Deployment Service on AWS Marketplace

Next Steps