Sudden license change of Axon Server?

Axon Server
1

So I upgraded one of our Docker environments from Axon Server 2025.1.5 to 2025.2.1 using official image. When starting the server I see that it is now licensed through AxonIQ Software Subscription Agreement Terms which essentially says that free version cannot be used in production environment and that it expires in 14 days. No warnings in neither 2025.2.0 release notes, nor in 2025.2.1. No warnings during the upgrade process too.
What the hell?

Previous pricing link https://www.axoniq.io/pricing/axon-server doesn’t exist anymore, and AxonIQ Pricing lists only “Community” edition which also listed as for non commercial use, along with “Pro” and “Business”. In the Annex on that page below it lists completely different plans and says “Developer plan”:

Commercial use Developer plan forbids production use; production requires Professional, Team, or Enterprise per eligibility criteria.

On the FAQ for Axon Server it lists a different third set of plans:

  • Developer plan (formerly called the “Axon Server Standard Edition”)
  • Starter plan (adds the capability for Clustering)
  • Pro plan (adds the capability for Multi-context and additional authentication features )
  • Enterprise plan

And below:

We love our active developer community. So developers can feel comfortable that our Axon Server Developer plan is and will always remain free.

Now on the server UI itself it also lists Developer, Starter, Pro and Enterprise but on the left says:

IMPORTANT: Production use and/or continued deployment after 14 days requires a commercial license.

What a mess! Can someone from AxonIQ comment on what’s going on? Is it the end of free version of Axon Server?

2

Hi Vilius,

Thank you for flagging this. We recognized the discrepancies and made adjustments to ensure the message is consistent.
Over the past few years, we have been restructuring our plans. The FAQ for Axon Server outlines a change that was made in 2024, introducing the concept of a developer plan and several paid plans. The intent hasn’t changed, but we’re making it crystal clear:

What the Developer plan is (and isn’t):

  • The Developer plan is for development and testing only; local work, CI/CD, demos, short-lived PoCs.
  • It is not licensed for production. Any production use requires a paid plan.

To avoid ambiguity about what production use is, we also put a time limit on active use of Axon Server. If it’s running for 14 days, which is typically not the case on a developer machine or as part of a continuous integration build cycle, then that is a clear indicator of production use.

We remain committed to providing developers with a free version of Axon Server. At the same time, we want to be transparent about the fact that production use of Axon Server is only permitted under a paid plan.

3

Thank you for your response @allardbz . It’s still not clear to me what “running for 14 days” mean. Does this mean running axonserver.jar without stopping it for 14 days? Or does this mean 14 days from the installation on the developer machine even if it was not used on, let’s say, day 3 and 4?
Given you said:

To avoid ambiguity about what production use is, we also put a time limit on active use of Axon Server. If it’s running for 14 days, which is typically not the case on a developer machine or as part of a continuous integration build cycle…

I assume the former? If so, what technically happens after 14 days? Do we need to start scheduling a restart of Axon Server on developer machines or centralized development environment?

And last but not the least, which last version of Axon Server without commercial license is still licensed without limitations to run it in production? I went through all release notes, but other than combining Standard/Enterprise versions into one, I didn’t find anything about WHEN the license was changed. Sure I remember that developer plan was introduced, but as FAQ suggest there is always assumption that if you don’t need HA or other commercial features, you can use it in production.