Licensing

CedarDB is available in three editions to suit different needs, from free usage to full enterprise:

Type	Description
Community Edition	Free version of CedarDB with a 64 GiB database size limit and no enterprise features. Includes access to documentation and Slack for support. Find the license terms here.
Enterprise	Full-featured CedarDB with all enterprise capabilities. License must be renewed as negotiated. Includes dedicated Enterprise support.
Enterprise Trial	Time-limited trial of CedarDB Enterprise with all features. Includes Community Edition support (documentation and Slack).

Obtain a license

Community Edition is available free of charge under the Community Edition license.
To obtain an Enterprise license, contact sales.
To start an Enterprise Trial, visit the self-service console for a 90-day trial license.

Activate your license

After receiving your license key, activate it by setting the license.key option to the token provided. In the following, we show the concrete steps needed to configure the license setting. For more information on setting configuration options, see our configuration reference.

Add a line with your license key to the CedarDB configuration file. The server will automatically load it at startup. In this example, we will use the default configuration path, which is automatically loaded at CedarDB startup when no other config file is specified.

echo "\"license.key\" = \"<your_key>\"" >> ~/.cedardb/config

An alternative is to set the license in an environment variable. If you are running CedarDB directly on your host machine, then export your license key before starting CedarDB like this:

export LICENSE_KEY='<your_key>'
./cedardb <your args>

If you use docker, then pass the license key as environment variable when starting CedarDB (e.g., via docker run):

docker run --rm -p 5432:5432 -e CEDAR_PASSWORD=test -e LICENSE_KEY='<your_key>' cedardb/cedardb

At startup, CedarDB logs the license activation:

LOG:     initializing license.key=<your_key> from config file
INFO:    License registered to Customer Name, valid until 2025-08-20.
INFO:    You're running CEDARDB ENTERPRISE EDITION.

Monitor your license

You can see your license expiration date at the CedarDB console:

console license page

Renew your expired license

To renew your Enterprise license, contact sales.
Enterprise Trial licenses cannot be renewed. To upgrade to an Enterprise license, contact sales.

FAQs

What happens if I exceed the Community Edition data size limits?

Your database will enter read-only mode. You won’t be able to insert, update, or delete data, but:

You can still query your data.
You can export it using SQL statements like COPY OUT (to CSV) or tools like pg_dump (to SQL).

What happens when my Enterprise trial license expires?

Your database automatically reverts to the Community Edition:

Enterprise features are disabled.
If your database exceeds the 64 GiB limit, it will become read-only.
You retain all your data, even if it exceeds the Community Edition limit.

Can I chain multiple trials?

No, you can only obtain and activate a single trial license per database.

Can I use CedarDB for academic research?

Yes. CedarDB has strong academic roots, and we’re happy to support research use cases. If you would like to use CedarDB in your own research, contact us.

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