About Licensing

About Licensing

About Licensing

Tolgee offers multiple ways to use its localization platform, each with its own licensing and terms. This guide explains the licensing for Tolgee’s cloud service, self-hosted solution, core platform source code, and various integration libraries. It also clarifies which legal documents (like terms of service or license agreements) apply in each case. The aim is to provide a clear overview that is accessible to both developers and potential customers.

Tolgee Cloud

Tolgee Cloud is the hosted SaaS version of the platform. It includes a Free plan with basic localization features, as well as several paid plans that unlock higher usage limits and advanced features. All Tolgee Cloud users are required to agree to Tolgee’s Terms & Conditions when signing up. These Terms & Conditions govern the use of the cloud service—by using Tolgee Cloud, you enter into a legal agreement with Tolgee under those terms. Be sure to review the Terms & Conditions document, along with the Privacy Policy, when creating an account on Tolgee Cloud.

Self-Hosted Tolgee (On-Premise)

Tolgee also supports self-hosting for users who prefer to run the platform on their own servers. Tolgee is open-source, so self-hosting the core platform is free—you can download the official Tolgee server binaries or Docker images and run them without paying license fees. This free self-hosted option includes essential localization features. However, some advanced features require a paid license even in self-hosted deployments. Tolgee offers commercial self-hosting plans (various paid tiers) which come with a license key to unlock enterprise-only features and higher usage limits on your instance.

It’s important to note that the Tolgee Terms & Conditions apply to self-hosted instances as well when you use Tolgee’s official binaries or Docker images. In practice, this means that by downloading and running Tolgee’s official server package, you agree to the same general Terms & Conditions (covering things like not misusing the software, complying with license restrictions for the enterprise features, etc.).

Tolgee Platform Source Code

The Tolgee platform’s source code is mostly open-source but uses a dual licensing model for different parts of the codebase. The vast majority of the Tolgee code is released under a permissive open-source license (Apache License 2.0). However, certain directories in the repository are covered by the proprietary Tolgee EE License.

This dual licensing ensures that Tolgee remains an open-source project at its core while enabling us to offer additional value-add features under a commercial license. The official Tolgee server binaries contain both the Apache 2.0‑licensed core and the proprietary enterprise modules. You may run these binaries for free—enterprise features remain inactive by default—but the very presence of the EE code means the Tolgee EE License applies. You can unlock the advanced functionality at any time by entering a Tolgee Enterprise license key. If you require a build governed only by Apache 2.0, you can always clone the repository, delete the ee/ directories, and compile your community edition build.

Note that Tolgee’s official server binaries and Docker images always bundle the proprietary enterprise (ee/) modules. You are free to run these images without charge—the enterprise functionality is disabled unless you provide a Tolgee Enterprise license key—but because the EE code is present, your deployment is also governed by the Tolgee EE License.

Tolgee Integrations and SDKs

Tolgee provides various integration libraries and SDKs for different platforms (such as JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Angular, and more). All of these Tolgee integration packages and SDKs are distributed under the permissive MIT License. This means you can use, modify, and distribute them freely, even in commercial projects, with minimal requirements (primarily attribution).