Linked. Every instance reaches the others across the internet, so one agent query answers from all four.
What stays free
Not a trial tier. These are commitments that won’t change — the license binds us to them, and a test in the repository fails the build if one is removed.
- Any number of nodes, peers, devices and peopleNo registration, no license key, no counter.
- Any number of documents, indexes and queriesYour hardware is the limit.
- A mesh on one network, or one machine, or offlineWorks on a plane and in a room with no internet.
- Searching and serving the public retrieval meshEvery node that joins makes public search better.
- Backups to a bucket you owngnarl repo add against your own S3, R2 or MinIO.
- Running your own relay, and self-hosting all of itNothing here depends on us staying in business.
Your node never asks us for permission. A subscription is a signed file it checks with arithmetic, offline. If it lapses, the node drops to the free tier and keeps running — your data stays readable and your indexes stay intact.
Subscribe
One subscription covers every device you own.
A private mesh across the internet. Your devices find each other from anywhere, over links nobody else can read.
Sign in on the next screen. Cancel any time. Backup needs the subscription; on its own there is nothing for it to attach to.
Already subscribed? Get your key, or cancel.
After you subscribe, the console gives you a key to paste into any one of your nodes — it reaches the rest on its own. If you added backup, you get a bucket with it:
gnarl repo add --endpoint … --bucket …Then gnarl snapshot create works, and so does the restore.
Do I need to buy a license to run Gnarl?
No. Download Gnarl, run it, and keep running it. Run one node or two hundred. There is no key to enter, no account to create, and no trial that expires.
A subscription adds one capability — instances in different places finding each other — to software you already have all of. It is not a limited edition of a bigger product. It is the product.
What about teams, or something commercial?
Teams, hosted nodes, and anything at company scale are quoted rather than listed. So is permission to do something the license does not already allow — mainly selling Gnarl as a service, or building it into a product you sell. Running it for your own company, however much of it, is already free and needs no agreement.
Tell us roughly what you are doing and we will tell you what it would cost — or tell you that the free version already covers it, which is often the answer.
Email gnarl@lucenia.ioWhat the license actually says
Gnarl is source-available under the Lucenia Competitive Extraction License. The full text is here. In plain terms:
You can
- Read the source and learn from it.
- Run it, anywhere, as many copies as you like.
- Change it for your own use.
- Build products, plugins, and integrations on top of it.
- Pass our official binaries along, unchanged — package managers included.
- Use AI coding tools while you work with it.
You cannot
- Sell Gnarl, or a repackaged version of it, as a competing service.
- Use Gnarl — or an AI’s summary, index, or rewrite of it — as raw material to build something that competes with it.
- Publish modified versions or forks.
- Disable or patch out the subscription check.
- Use our name or logo as though we endorsed you.
The second one is the unusual clause and it is deliberate. Reading our work to learn from it is welcome. Pointing an agent at it to reproduce it is not. Ordinary development, research, teaching, and security work are explicitly fine.