Pricing, licensing & the free tier

AppRelay is free to download and runs with no account and no sign-up. You can build and ship on the free tier right away; a one-time AppRelay Studio purchase removes every cap. Licensing is an in-app unlock — the download itself is never gated, and nothing about your projects is uploaded to buy or activate.

The two tiers

The free tier

The free tier is a real, offline console: you scan a folder, get working lanes, and build, run, test, and ship your project for real. It's a working tool, not a demo — but it is limited in two different ways, and it's worth knowing which is which.

Caps on how much you can do:

• 1 project of your own, 3 builds, and 1 publish. These are lifetime totals, not per-month allowances.
• Bundled sample projects don't count against the 1-project limit, so you can always explore how AppRelay works.
• A build or publish is counted when it starts, so a run that fails in your own toolchain still spends a credit — the same way it would if you'd run it by hand.

Features that need Studio outright — exporting and importing .relay archives, driving your computer from your phone, automation, launching on a real iPhone or iPad, and one-click rollback. Everything in the table above marked “—” falls here.

AppRelay Studio — one-time, perpetual

A single $99 payment removes all caps. It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription:

• Perpetual. The version you buy is yours to keep and run forever.
• 1 year of updates included. Every update released within a year of your purchase is covered. Builds released after that still run; to keep receiving newer updates past the year, you renew (another one-time purchase that extends your updates window).
• 1 seat. A license activates on one computer at a time — macOS or Windows. Moving takes one click (below).

How buying works

1. Start checkout. On the buy page, choose Buy AppRelay Studio. You're redirected to Stripe's secure hosted checkout — we never see or store your card details.
2. Pay. Stripe handles the payment, your receipt, and any VAT/tax.
3. Get your key. On success you land on a thank-you page that shows your license key, and the same key is emailed to you. Keep it — it's how you activate.

Buying more than one

A license is one seat, so a second machine running Studio at the same time needs a second license. The public buy page sells a single key; to buy several at once, sign in to your AppRelay account and use Buy another license, which takes a quantity of up to 10. You get that many independent keys on one payment — and one receipt covering the batch.

Activating in the app

1. Open Settings → License in AppRelay.
2. Paste your license key and choose Activate.
3. AppRelay binds the license to this computer and unlocks Studio. The card then shows your status, the date your updates run through, and which machine holds the seat.

Activation binds to a non-reversible hash of this computer's hardware id — no personal information, and nothing that identifies the machine to anyone else.

Moving to another computer

Because a license is 1 seat, it runs on one machine at a time — but moving is automatic, and it works across platforms (a key activated on a Mac can move to a Windows PC and back):

1. On the new computer, open Settings → License, enter the same key, and choose Activate.
2. That's it — the license takes the seat over. The machine that held it before drops back to the free tier at its next check-in; you don't need to deactivate it first.

Want to hand the seat back without setting up a new machine — say the old one was wiped, sold, or died? Two ways, both without touching the old computer:

• From your account. The Devices page in your AppRelay account lists every machine that's activated the key and lets you deactivate one, or activate a different one, directly.
• Without an account. The Manage license page looks your license up with just your key and purchase email, and offers Release seat.

Your activated devices

Every computer that activates your key is recorded on your license so the single seat can be enforced and so you can see where it's in use. Each device is tracked by an opaque hardware fingerprint (a one-way hash — never anything that identifies the machine) alongside the name you gave it, its platform, and its app and OS version.

• You can see them. Your account's Devices page lists every machine, which one holds the seat, and when each was last seen — and lets you move the seat between them.
• Deactivating frees the seat immediately. Whether you deactivate in the app or from the web, the old device drops back to the free tier at its next check-in.
• It's licensing only. Nothing about your projects, code, or secrets is part of this — see Security & privacy for exactly what a check-in sends.

Working offline

AppRelay is built to work on a plane. Activation returns a signed entitlement that the app verifies locally — no network needed to stay unlocked day to day. While you're online it re-checks with the server every 15 minutes or so (and when you bring the window to the front, or wake the machine) to catch seat moves, deactivations, refunds, and renewals. Go offline and that saved entitlement keeps you unlocked for weeks, with the card reading “AppRelay Studio — active (offline)” so you know it's running on cached trust. Only after that runs out does AppRelay fall back to the free tier with a “reconnect to verify your license” note — it never hard-locks a paying user who happens to be offline.

Refunds

If a payment is refunded or charged back, the license is revoked and the Studio unlock is removed at the app's next check-in. Nothing about your local projects, secrets, or build history is touched — only the free-tier caps come back.

If your app reports that a license is no longer active and you haven't asked for a refund, don't panic and don't re-buy — open a ticket. Keys can also be put on hold if an automated audit can't match one to its original payment, and that's reversible in one step on our side.

What we can and can't see

Licensing is deliberately privacy-preserving, in keeping with AppRelay's local-first model:

Next steps

• See pricing & buy AppRelay Studio
• Your AppRelay account — manage keys, seats, and receipts
• Installing AppRelay — download and first launch
• Security & privacy — what stays on your machine