Skip to content

Keygate

Self-hosted software license management. Keygate is a single Go binary plus PostgreSQL that handles the full lifecycle of software licensing — key issuance, device activation, offline verification, usage quotas, software update distribution, team seats, and Stripe billing — all behind one admin dashboard, running on your own infrastructure.

Keygate admin dashboard

What this documentation covers

Installing and configuring Keygate, the concepts behind products/plans/licenses, integrating a client application against the SDK, wiring up Stripe, distributing signed updates, and operating a self-hosted deployment. If you just want to run it, start with Installation.

Why Keygate

Commercial licensing platforms charge per seat and hold your customer data on their servers. Building your own means months of work — activation logic, payment reconciliation, quota tracking, and every 2 a.m. edge case. Keygate is the middle path: a production-ready license server on your own infrastructure, wired to your own Stripe account.

Core capabilities

Area What you get
Licensing models Subscriptions, perpetual, trials, floating (concurrent), and perpetual + paid support — see Licensing Models
Activation Per-device or per-user activation with atomic limit enforcement; offline verification via signed Ed25519 tokens
Usage metering Atomic quota enforcement (hourly/daily/monthly/yearly) with threshold warnings
Software distribution Signed release feeds for Sparkle, Velopack, and Tauri; license-gated downloads
Billing End-to-end Stripe: checkout, webhooks, dunning, refunds, and support-window renewal
Team seats Customer-managed teams with roles and per-plan seat limits
Administration Products, plans, licenses, customers, API keys, webhooks, analytics, audit logs, email templates

How the pieces fit

                    ┌─────────────────────────────┐
   Your app / SDK ──┤  Public SDK  (license_key)  │
   (desktop, CLI)   │  activate · verify · usage  │
                    │  download · support/checkout│
                    └──────────────┬──────────────┘
                                   │
   Your backend ────┤ Admin API (Bearer kg_live_) ├──► Keygate ──► PostgreSQL
   (Stripe hooks,   │  licenses · plans · products │       │
    automation)     └──────────────────────────────┘      │
                                                            ▼
   Stripe ──────────► /webhook/stripe ──────────────► license created / renewed
  • Public SDK endpoints are authenticated by the license_key itself — nothing secret is embedded in your distributed binary. See SDK & Public Endpoints.
  • Admin endpoints require a kg_live_… API key (or an admin session) and drive everything under /admin/*. See Admin API & API Keys.
  • Stripe creates and renews licenses automatically through the webhook. See Stripe Integration.

Deployment shape

One binary, one database, optional S3-compatible object storage for release artifacts. No Redis, no microservices. Auto-migrates on startup, ships a first-run setup wizard, and supports custom branding, email templates, and English/Chinese UI. See Deployment.

Next steps