The platform is free.
And it stays yours.
BW2 is licensed under the Elastic License 2.0: no platform license fee, no per-user cost, source included. Add the NuGet reference and build your product on top. The license holds back exactly one thing — providing BW2 itself as a platform for other developers.
The Whole License in Four Points
ELv2 is a source-available license: everything a permissive license gives you, minus the one thing that would put us out of business — and it is written to stay that way, with no expiry date on either side of the deal.
No Platform License Fee
The complete platform costs nothing to use, for one client or ten thousand, in development and in production.
Source Available, Not Required
You consume the platform as packages. The source is there to read, debug against or fork — never something you have to build.
The Same Terms, Permanently
No expiry, no conversion date, no re-licensing later. The rights you get on day one are the rights you keep, for every version you hold.
Three Limitations
Do not offer BW2 itself as a hosted service, do not tamper with license keys, do not strip our notices. Nothing else is held back.
Reference the packages
Add the BW2 NuGet packages to your solution and build your product against the API, exactly as you would with any commercial library. Upgrades are a version bump. You never compile the platform, and you never maintain a copy of it.
Step into the source
Read it during an architecture review, debug straight through platform code, or fork it if a customer contract demands it. Most partners never do more than the first two — the point is that the option is yours, not ours.
What the License Covers
Everything we ship: the platform — the NuGet packages you build against and their complete source — and the cloud services it runs on. Everything you build on the platform is yours.
Discovery — the solutions directory, resources and the App Store — runs under the only license key in the platform and the cloud services. It is included in every subscription, free in Manual Mode for up to 1,000 production databases per solution, and keeps working for the versions you hold, permanently.
Third-party commercial components — a mail engine, a document editing engine, a spellchecker, editor extensions — are not part of the platform license; they come with a subscription or under your own license. The platform is licensed under the Elastic License 2.0, permanently; the service containers — identity, mail integration, messaging, documents, document processing, the AI gateway — are source-available, and the license of each version is in its repository.
What Changes for Your Business
The platform is free, in full, with the source included — which removes the two questions that slow every enterprise deal down: what will this cost us per user, and what happens to us if BW2 changes its mind.
Keep 100% of Your Revenue
Set your own price — whether that's $50 or $450 per user per month — and keep every cent of it when your own team builds the product. No platform royalty, no revenue share, no seat count to report. Co-created products follow the funding agreed with BW2.
Margins You Can Quote
Your platform cost no longer moves with your customer count. A ten-seat pilot and a two-thousand-seat rollout carry the same zero platform cost, so your pricing is yours to design.
Bespoke Work Included
Custom logic, custom fields and custom UI are part of the platform — for a product sold to thousands or a solution built for a single client.
Audit and Debug Yourself
Your architects can review what they are betting on and your developers can step from their own code into ours when a bug is hiding there — without a support ticket, and without leaving their normal build.
Continuity Without an Escrow
The source is already in your hands and your license to the versions you hold does not expire, so you are never one vendor decision away from a dead product. That answers the survivability question in enterprise tenders on its own.
Your Services Stay Yours
Implementation, customization, training and support you sell around BW2 sit entirely outside the license's limitations — and none of it is licensable by us.
Where the Line Sits
The test is simple: are you selling your product, or selling BW2? The first is what the platform is for. The second is the single thing the license holds back — everything you build, sell and run on BW2 is yours.
Permitted
- Building and selling your own vertical product, ERP, CRM or industry solution.
- Running BW2 in production for your customers — on-premise, in any cloud, or as your own SaaS.
- Modifying platform source, extending the object model and shipping the result.
- Selling implementation, customization and support services — and hosting operations under a Management Tools license.
- Publishing add-ons in the App Store for clients of any partner.
Not Permitted
Providing the BW2 platform itself to other developers, so that they can build their products on it — including hosting it for them.
That is the single line: becoming a BW2 platform provider in our place. It applies whether you call it BW2 or rename it, and whether you offer it as a hosted or managed service, a development platform, a low-code service or a PaaS.
Plus two housekeeping rules
- You may not circumvent the license key that gates discovery.
- Don't remove the licensing, copyright or attribution notices in the source code. They live in the code itself — your customers never see them unless you hand them the source. Nothing has to appear in your product's UI, and you brand it entirely as your own.
This summary is here to be useful, not to be the contract. The ELv2 text governs.
Operating installations of a partner's product — for that partner or its customers — is allowed under a Management Tools license. Providing the platform to other developers to build on stays excluded, hosted or not. That your own SaaS is permitted is a written additional permission in our license notice — not our interpretation of ELv2.
So How Do We Make Money?
Worth asking of anything free. Two subscriptions — Managed Hosting, or the Management Tools for self-hosting — and, for Manual Mode above 1,000 production databases per solution, a flat license for the solution, negotiated with its publisher — never per user. Cloud services come with the subscriptions, not as a separate product. Engineering we do for partners in the Co-Creation Program is agreed separately.
Hosting and Management Tools
What you buy from us: managed high-availability clusters, or a license for the management tools that automate databases, storage and application servers on your own infrastructure. Cloud services are included.
Hosting and Management ToolsCloud Services — Included
Discovery, identity, email, messaging, document sharing and processing, plus App Store access for your clients. Discovery — the solutions directory, resources and the App Store — comes with the free key; the rest comes with your hosting or management tools rather than being ordered and billed on their own.
Cloud FeaturesFrequently Asked Questions
Is the platform really free?
Yes. The full platform — framework, developer tools, customization and unlimited end-user distribution — is licensed at no charge under ELv2. We charge for hosting, management tools, metered third-party services and — only in Manual Mode above 1,000 production databases per solution — a flat license for the solution. Co-creation engineering is agreed separately.
Do I have to pay anything?
Not for the platform. The cloud service it needs to run — discovery: the solutions directory, resources and the App Store — is free up to 1,000 production databases per solution; non-production databases are always free, and databases on Managed Hosting or under Management Tools don't count. Above that, Manual Mode needs a flat license for the solution, negotiated with its publisher — never per user. Managed Hosting and the Management Tools are the two subscriptions; cloud services come with both, not as a separate product.
Do we have to build the platform from source?
No. You reference the BW2 NuGet packages and build only your own code, the same as with any commercial library. The source is a right you hold, not a step in your pipeline.
Is ELv2 an open source license?
No — it is source-available. You may read, modify, distribute and commercially exploit the platform, and the three limitations stay in force permanently. That permanence is the point: it is what lets us publish the source and charge nothing for the platform at all.
Can I offer my product as SaaS?
Yes. Hosting your own application for your own customers is what the platform is built for. The limitation concerns offering BW2 itself — the platform and its features — to third parties as a hosted or managed service. The same applies to the cloud services: run them for your own products as much as you like; offering them to other developers as a service is the one thing the license holds back. This is a written additional permission in our license notice, not an interpretation. Running on rented infrastructure your own staff operate is likewise covered. What needs a Management Tools license is a third party operating installations for other organizations — a hosting provider or IT outsourcer.
Does my customer's ERP count as a competing service?
No. Selling business applications built on BW2 is exactly what the platform is for. The limitation concerns offering BW2 itself — the platform and its features — to other software vendors as the platform they build on.
Do I have to host with BW2?
No. Self-host on-premise or with any cloud provider. Discovery — the solutions directory, resources and the App Store — comes with the free key in every installation; identity and the other service containers are yours to run, or ours to operate.
Can I use my own providers?
Yes. Usage-based services run in our gateway under your own provider credentials wherever the provider offers it, metered per customer as usual, with no BW2 charge for the usage. If a customer requires everything on their own infrastructure, we support that as a paid engineering engagement.
What if BW2 disappears?
You hold the source of everything you run — the platform and the service containers, identity included — and your license to use, modify and ship the versions you have does not expire; neither do the keys issued for them. Today an installation reaches the BW2 cloud for discovery and resources. Local discovery, checked against your key offline, is planned; with it an installation runs without us. You could maintain your installed base and your product without us, which is precisely the assurance your enterprise customers ask for.
Does BW2 build products that compete with partners?
Our own solutions date from before BW2 became a platform company. We don't build against a partner who is building with us. Whatever we learn while co-creating your product stays in your product.
Build on it, free.
The platform ships in 2027. Talk to us now about the license, the source and what your first solution looks like on BW2.