Licensing Models

A plan's license_type and license_model, combined with the support window, express five commercial models. This page explains each and how a license behaves under it.

The status lifecycle

Every license has a status:

Status	Usable?	Meaning
active	✅	Normal, in-force license.
trialing	✅	Inside a trial window.
past_due	✅ (grace)	Payment failed; still usable during grace/dunning.
canceled	until period end	Subscription canceled; usable until valid_until.
expired	❌	Past valid_until + grace.
suspended	❌	Manually paused by an admin.
revoked	❌	Permanently killed.

verify (and other SDK checks) collapse every unusable/unknown case into a single 404 LICENSE_NOT_FOUND — see Security.

1. Subscription

license_type: subscription. Recurring billing via Stripe. The webhook advances valid_until each period; a failed payment moves the license to past_due and starts the dunning email ladder. After the grace period the license expires.

• Set stripe_price_id to a recurring Stripe Price.
• grace_days controls how long a past_due license keeps working.

2. Perpetual

license_type: perpetual. A one-time purchase; the license never expires (valid_until stays empty). The customer owns this version forever.

• Set stripe_price_id to a one-time Stripe Price (or issue manually).
• No renewal, no dunning.

3. Trial

license_type: trial with trial_days > 0. On creation the license gets status: trialing and valid_until = now + trial_days. When the window passes, the hourly checker flips it to expired and sends the trial-expired email.

• Trials can be issued directly (admin API) or via a Stripe checkout on a trial plan.
• An expired trial fails verify (404), so your client falls back to its unlicensed behavior.

Trials don't auto-downgrade

When a trial expires it becomes expired, not "reverted to free." If your model is free-with-trial, keep the free tier as a separate license the client falls back to, rather than expecting the trial license to become a free one.

4. Floating (concurrent)

license_model: floating (on a saas/hybrid product). Instead of node-locking to devices, a floating license allows up to max_activations concurrent sessions. Clients check out a session, send heartbeats, and check in when done; idle sessions time out after floating_timeout minutes and free the slot.

Endpoints: POST /license/floating/checkout, /floating/heartbeat, /floating/checkin.

5. Perpetual + paid support

A perpetual license (never expires) plus a separate, time-boxed support window that gates updates — the JetBrains model, also known as perpetual fallback. The license keeps working forever, but access to new releases stops when support lapses; the customer keeps every version published while their support was active (the "fallback") and renews to receive newer ones.

This is powerful enough to have its own page: The Support Window.

Choosing a model

You want…	Use
Recurring revenue, feature gating	Subscription
Sell-once, own-forever	Perpetual
Time-limited evaluation	Trial
Shared seats across a team/lab	Floating
Sell-once but charge for updates/support	Perpetual + paid support

These aren't mutually exclusive across your catalog — different plans on the same product can use different models.