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Vein

Pricing

Effective: 2026-07-30 - Non-negotiable

Vein is a side project. It stays free and open source because that was the entire point of building it instead of pointing everything at somebody else’s SaaS. This page exists only because people don’t believe “$0” until it’s formatted like a pricing table.

Self-Hosted

$0/forever

The actual product. Run it on a laptop, a spare box, or your router.

  • RubyGems, crates.io, and npm on one endpoint
  • Smart caching, quarantine, the admin dashboard
  • CycloneDX SBOMs, full source, single binary
  • MIT for individuals, AGPL-3.0 for companies - see License
  • No SLA
  • No seats, no usage metering
  • No apology for the premise

This is the whole product. It costs nothing.

Enterprise

$0/forever

Same binary, converted into a format procurement can survive.

  • Everything in Self-Hosted
  • A PDF that says “Enterprise”
  • Your logo, pasted onto the PDF with excessive seriousness
  • Same AGPL-3.0 terms, same lack of SLA
  • Your CTO may now say “self-hosted package governance layer” in a meeting without flinching
  • I will not interrupt to correct them

Identical registry. Superior slide deck.

Whale

$8,346/month

For organizations that trust invoices more than source code.

  • Everything in Self-Hosted and Enterprise
  • Nothing operationally different - same binary, same code path
  • The number is the default port (8346) with three zeros added, because that’s how enterprise pricing works
  • Still no SLA, still no support
  • An invoice large enough to justify a “strategic vendor” line item

Pay a lot, run the same open source binary.

Agent

$0/version published today

For whatever’s publishing 200 versions of a package before your coffee’s done.

  • Price recalculates live based on how unhinged your publish cadence is
  • Every new version still lands in quarantine for the configured window regardless of what you paid
  • bundle update won’t see it until quarantine clears; direct installs still work
  • Refunds processed exactly as fast as your CI reads changelogs (never)

Publish all you want. Quarantine doesn’t negotiate.

License

Section titled “License”

Vein is dual-licensed - pick whichever applies to you:

FAQ

Section titled “FAQ”

What does Vein actually cost? $0. That’s the whole answer. Everything above is decoration.

Is Enterprise a different product? No. Same binary, same AGPL-3.0, one extra PDF.

Why does Whale cost exactly $8,346/month? The default port is 8346. I added three zeros and called it enterprise pricing.

What do I get for $0? The full binary - RubyGems/crates.io/npm proxying, caching, quarantine, the admin dashboard, SBOMs, and the source code.

Is Whale a joke? Yes. If finance insists on paying it anyway, that’s between you and finance.

What happens if my AI agent publishes 200 versions before breakfast? Quarantine holds every one of them for the configured window (3 days by default). Your CI keeps resolving against whatever was already promoted.

Do you offer startup discounts? It’s already free. A discount on $0 is still $0.

Do you offer open source discounts? Vein is the discount - MIT license, no invoice, at all, ever, for individual use.

Can I get a refund? If you paid $0, it’s already been refunded in full. If you paid for Whale, that was a personality test.

What if I need support? Open an issue on GitHub. Companies that need a contract instead of an issue tracker should see Why Vein for the Plabayo option.

Who’s paying for the infrastructure this runs on? You are - it’s on your laptop or your router. That was the point.

Pricing set by nobody, enforced by nothing.
Rama compiles on FreeBSD. Pingora still doesn’t. I haven’t forgotten.