Pricing and licensing: Free, and Pro for $199 once
Two plans. Free runs the full SQL engine against one cluster. Pro is paid once, per user, and never renews.
Free versus Pro#
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $199 once, per user |
| Clusters | 1 | Unlimited |
| Worksheets | 1 | Unlimited, with projects |
| SQL engine (joins, window functions, CTEs, QUALIFY) | Yes | Yes |
| Show as DSL and Cluster SQL mode | Yes | Yes |
| Charts and pivots | Yes | Yes |
| MATCH, index patterns, nested flattening | Yes | Yes |
| Ask FlatQL | 20 questions a day | No displayed limit, fair-use cap |
| Query history | 1 day | Everything |
| Export (CSV, TSV, JSON, Excel, streaming) | No | Yes, any size |
| Load data from files and APIs | No | Yes |
| Saved queries | No | Yes |
| Users per workspace | 1 | 1 |
Free needs no card and does not expire. The engine is the same on both plans: a JOIN across two indices or a ROW_NUMBER() runs identically on Free. What Pro adds is capacity (clusters, worksheets, history) and the features that move data out of or into the cluster (export, load).
The lifetime licence#
Pro is $199, paid once, for one user. It never renews, there is no annual plan, and there is nothing to cancel. The licence belongs to the workspace that bought it and covers one seat; a second person needs their own licence.
Pro licence $199 one-time
Renewal none
Seats 1 per licence
Monthly and annual Pro subscriptions were sold earlier and are no longer offered; see Legacy subscriptions below.
Buying inside the app#
- Sign in and open Billing & plan from the rail. Only the workspace owner or an admin can buy.
- On the Pro card, press the purchase button. The checkout opens at Dodo Payments, FlatQL's payment provider; card details are entered there and never touch FlatQL.
- After payment you return to the Billing page, which confirms the purchase with the provider and switches the workspace to Pro. If the confirmation takes a moment, the page keeps checking and tells you when it is done.
- The plan line then reads Pro · lifetime licence · paid once · never expires.
From the desktop app the checkout opens in your browser and the plan updates in the app when payment completes. A receipt comes from Dodo Payments by email.
If a Free workspace hits a limit (a second cluster, a second worksheet, an export, a data load), the upgrade prompt that appears links straight to the same checkout.
Teams#
Shared connections, named roles with per-index grants and the audit log belong to a Team workspace, which has no member limit. Team workspaces are not sold through the in-app checkout at the moment. If you need one, use the contact page and say how many people you have.
Legacy subscriptions#
Workspaces that bought monthly Pro ($19 a month) or a Team subscription before the lifetime licence was introduced keep them. They renew as before, can be cancelled from the Billing page, and stay active until the end of the paid period before dropping to Free. Annual billing is no longer sold; existing annual subscriptions remain valid. A workspace with a legacy subscription can buy the lifetime licence; the lifetime licence then applies when the subscription ends.
Ask FlatQL limits#
Free shows a counter of 20 questions a day. Pro has no displayed limit; a fair-use cap applies, and a team that needs more can request a higher limit from inside the panel for approval.
Questions#
Is the licence per cluster? No. Per user. Connect as many clusters as you like.
What happens to my data if I stay on Free? Nothing is removed except history older than one day; the Free plan keeps one connection and one worksheet.
Is there a trial of Pro? Free is the trial: the engine is complete, so you can verify that your statements work before paying for exports and capacity.
The public pricing page has the short version; to see what the engine does before deciding, start with querying Elasticsearch with SQL.