Eight.ly: What You Get, What It Costs¶
Eight.ly ships as one product: Eight.ly OS, installed by booting the image — on bare metal or in a VM. There's no separate Docker-container edition and no install-on-your-existing-Debian edition anymore. If you're coming from one of those, see Eight.ly Standard (retired) or Professional Edition (retired).
What you get¶
One license, everything in the product: the full 3,200+ app catalog, ranked search, three deploy modes, Nova AI, the web terminal, KVM/QEMU virtual machines, LXC containers, SnapRAID + MergerFS or ZFS storage, native SMB/NFS sharing, monitoring, and clustering (Breezeway live migration, Rehome high availability). See Eight.ly OS for the full feature list.
The Eight.ly Backup Server (EBS) and the remote Agent are included at no charge with every license. Nothing else in Eight.ly is free — there is no free tier and no community edition of Eight.ly itself.
Want a free option?
HomelabARR CE is a separate, free, open-source Docker project that feeds Eight.ly's app catalog and carries the whole catalog for people who only want a Docker manager. See Eight.ly vs Competitors.
Pricing¶
Buy once. The version you install keeps running for as long as you want it, at no further cost. A year of updates is included with the purchase; extending updates afterward is optional. Lifetime is available for either license.
| Single (1 node) | Cluster (up to 3 nodes) | |
|---|---|---|
| Buy | $79 | $159 |
| Extend updates (optional, per year) | $39 | $79 |
| Lifetime | $199 | $399 |
| Add a node | — | $49 ($99 on a Lifetime cluster) |
Early access: the $199 Lifetime price is locked through 31 December 2026.
See eight.ly for current pricing and to buy. Launch is in November 2026. Until then, eight.ly offers early access rather than a Buy button.
What the license gates¶
A license gates two things: the App Store catalog and product updates. Nothing else.
- An installed system never stops working. Whatever you installed keeps running end to end, indefinitely — including if you never activate.
- An unlicensed, unactivated, or lapsed install still receives security fixes.
Full detail: Licensing.
Trial vs. paid¶
A fresh install starts a 30-day trial. While the trial runs, every feature works, App Store included. When the trial ends, creating new things — apps, VMs, LXC containers, shares, backup jobs, stacks, clones, imports — needs an activated license. Everything already running, your data, reading, the activation screen itself, and security fixes are never touched by a lapsed trial.
Activate any time from Settings > License.
Checkout¶
Checkout is handled by LemonSqueezy; your license key is minted by Eight.ly's own server and emailed to you.