OIG FAQs
UNDER $5M REVENUE
FEWER THAN 50 PEOPLE
FREE IN PERPETUITY
ON THIS PAGE
Do I qualify?
I’m an individual. Do I qualify for the OIG?
Yes! You can use it for personal projects. Personal projects you run as an individual are assessed on your own finances, not your employer’s. A side project built by someone who happens to work at a large company is still eligible.
I’m an individual building projects for clients. Do my projects qualify for the OIG?
The grant is based on the end users of the Studio. If only you are logging in and your annual revenue is less than $5 million, you qualify and can use an OIG license. If your client logs in, they must have an annual revenue less than $5 million and less than 50 employees.
Some examples of the kinds of projects you can use an OIG license for:
• Your own website, apps, and projects, provided only you log in
• Products and applications you build on Directus and sell to your own customers, provided they don’t log into the Studio
• Demo sites for sales purposes
• Client projects, provided only you log into the Studio
• Client projects where the client logs in, provided their size meets the terms of the OIG
I’m a small business. Do I qualify for the OIG?
If your annual revenue is less than $5 million and you have fewer than 50 employees, you qualify.
Some examples of the kinds of projects you can use an OIG license for:
• Your own website, apps, and projects, provided only your employees/contractors log in
• Products and applications you build on Directus and sell to your own customers, provided they don’t log into the Studio
I’m a non-profit. Do I qualify for the OIG?
If your annual revenue is less than $5 million and you have fewer than 50 employees (excluding unpaid volunteers), you qualify.
If you don’t satisfy that requirement or are unsure, we’re happy to discuss your situation. Please reach out to us!
You can use an OIG license for (not exhaustive):
• Your own website, apps, and projects, provided only your employees/contractors/volunteers log in
I’m an agency. Do I qualify for the OIG?
If your annual revenue is less than $5 million and you have fewer than 50 employees, you qualify.
Some examples of the kinds of projects you can use an OIG license for:
• Your own website, apps, and projects, provided only your employees/contractors log in
• Products and applications you build on Directus and sell to your own customers, provided they don’t log into the Studio
• Demo sites for sales purposes
• Client projects, provided only your employees/contractors log into the Studio
• Client projects where the client logs in, provided their size meets the terms of the OIG
My clients are large enterprises. Does that make me ineligible?
The grant is based on the end users of the Studio. If only you are logging in personally, eligibility is measured on your size, not your clients’. If you have fewer than 50 employees and less than $5 million in annual revenue, then you qualify for the grant for your own business purposes, no matter how large your clients are. However, if your client will also log into the project, their size will determine eligibility for the grant for that project.
I’m a government customer. Do my projects qualify for the OIG?
No. The Open Innovation Grant is intended for individuals, non-profits, and small businesses that meet our eligibility requirements.
When does an OIG license apply to a project?
I’m using a version prior to version 12.0.0. Do I need to apply for an OIG license?
No. The OIG license is designed for version 12.0.0 and later. Prior versions are governed by the license they were released under.
Will Directus ever require a license key for version 11 or earlier?
No. No key is required to use version 11 or lower, and we have no plans to change that. Keys apply only to the grant on version 12.0.0 and later.
As an agency, can I use an OIG license for my clients?
The grant is based on the end users of the Studio. If only you are logging in, eligibility is measured on your agency’s size, not your clients’. If your agency has fewer than 50 employees and less than $5 million in annual revenue, then you qualify for the grant for your own business purposes, no matter how large your clients are. However, if your client will also log into the project, their size will determine eligibility for the grant for that project.
Can I give my client’s team access to an OIG instance I am managing?
If the client’s size qualifies for the OIG on their own, yes. If they are over the thresholds, you can use the free Core tier, purchase the Team tier, or reach out to our sales team to discuss your options.
I’m an agency that builds and hosts Directus projects. Can I modify Directus under the grant?
You can modify the software freely for your own use. Extensions, hooks, endpoints, custom interfaces, layouts, panels, modules, and configuration of any kind are all normal use of the grant for your own projects and client projects. Modifying provided source code is also fine, under the limitations imposed by the MSCL. The line isn’t how heavily you modify Directus; it’s whether you hand Directus itself to someone else as a product of its own. Reselling or white-labelling the Studio, removing or replacing Directus branding, or modifying the source to bypass the express limits of the OIG license, isn’t covered by the grant.
I’m building a commercial product or SaaS on Directus. Can I use the OIG?
Yes, as long as your organization is under the thresholds. Using Directus as the backend or data layer of your own product is exactly what the grant is for, and you can charge your customers for that product.
What you can’t do is hand them Directus itself: reselling, redistributing, sub-licensing, or white-labelling Directus as a product or service is out of scope, whether standalone or bundled with your own offering. The practical test: do your customers use your application, or do they use Directus? If it’s your application, you’re fine.
Do my app’s users, customers, or website visitors count toward eligibility or seats?
No. Eligibility looks only at the organizations whose people log into the Directus Studio to administer a project. People who interact with your application, even where your app authenticates them against Directus behind the scenes, aren’t Studio users. They don’t count toward eligibility, and the grant has unlimited seats regardless.
Thresholds: what counts, and what happens if you grow
My client is over the thresholds. What are my options?
You can use the free Core tier, purchase the Team tier, or reach out to our sales team to discuss your options.
I’m over the thresholds. What are my options?
You can use the free Core tier, purchase the Team tier, or reach out to our sales team to discuss your options.
Who counts as an employee?
See the OIG for the latest definition, but in practice it’s your full-time and part-time staff. Unpaid volunteers at a non-profit or students at a school don’t count.
If you’re unsure, reach out to our sales team and we’ll work it out with you.
What counts towards my annual revenue?
See the OIG for the latest definition, but this is your annual revenue from sales of products or services. Donations, grants, and other funding are not considered revenue. If you’re part of a group of companies under common ownership, it’s measured across the group.
What happens if we grow past $5M or 50 people?
Congratulations! We’re excited to be part of your growth. We ask that you reach out to our sales team within 90 days to determine the best path forward.
Our goal is to work together with you to continue your journey with Directus.
We’ll periodically review our OIG grantee registry to ensure that folks are using the grant honestly and may reach out to request proof of eligibility. If, after multiple attempts, we’re unable to reach your license contact or ensure the compliant usage of our grant, we do reserve the right to disable license keys as a method of last resort.
Keys, activations, and renewal
How long is the license valid for?
The OIG is granted in perpetuity. Licenses will be issued with no expiration date and require no renewal process.
We’ll periodically review our OIG grantee registry to ensure folks are using the grant honestly and may reach out to request proof of eligibility. If, after multiple attempts, we’re unable to reach your license contact or ensure the compliant usage of our grant, we do reserve the right to disable license keys as a method of last resort.
How do activations work? Can I get keys for multiple projects?
Each grant key includes 5 activations, designed to cover one project’s environments — local, dev, staging, production, plus a spare. Running multiple projects? Apply for a separate free key per project. An activation binds to your project database and PUBLIC_URL, not to containers, so replicas and autoscaling share one activation. Always deactivate a license before destroying an instance, or the slot stays consumed. We plan to make it easier to manage activations in the future.
My CI pipeline / ephemeral environments keep using up activations. What do I do?
Fully ephemeral pipelines, where each run recreates Directus and its database, create a new binding per run and will exhaust activations. Until we ship better support for this pattern (it’s actively in development), use one of these:
• Persist the database and keep PUBLIC_URL constant across runs so all runs share one activation
• Point licensed-feature tests at a long-lived staging instance
• Run throwaway pipelines on the free Core tier and reserve licensed testing for a persistent environment
We know per-run CI is a real pattern and we’re working on a licensing solution for it.
I have multi-container scaling for my project. How do I make sure that works properly?
In this scenario, make sure all containers use the same database, public URL, and license key. They will not trigger additional activations in this scenario.
What’s included, and what you’re agreeing to
Can I opt out of telemetry?
For the Core and OIG licenses, anonymous product usage telemetry is required. This data is covered by our data policies and is used to improve the product and validate grant compliance.
If you want to opt out of sending this data, we offer licenses that allow you to do so.
What is the difference between Core and the OIG? Are there restrictions on what’s being offered for free?
Core is our no-registration free tier with limits (3 seats, 25 collections, no SSO). It is intended to allow anyone, particularly large organizations, to test out, build proof of concepts, or smaller projects on Directus without being blocked by licensing.
The Open Innovation Grant is different: if you’re under $5M revenue and 50 employees, it gives you the entire platform free forever: unlimited seats, unlimited collections, SSO, custom access policies. Aside from the required telemetry, it’s an unlimited version of the same software our paid customers run. If you’re an individual or smaller organization worried about the limits of Core, the Open Innovation Grant was designed for you!
What are the limits of the OIG?
The OIG license requires telemetry, cannot be used in offline mode, and does not include product support. Otherwise, everything is included with no limits. There are unlimited seats, unlimited collections, and unlimited Flows. Flow and collection caps are associated with the Core and Team licenses, not to the grant licenses.
What exactly am I agreeing to?
Beyond attesting that you meet the eligibility requirements, the short version is:
• Telemetry is required and can’t be disabled on a grant license
• Support isn’t included. You’ll get help from the community; paid support is a separate agreement
• Offline / air-gapped operation requires an Enterprise license
• We may list your name and logo as a Directus user
Can my key be revoked? What would actually trigger that?
We’ll periodically review our OIG grantee registry to ensure folks are using the grant honestly and may reach out to request proof of eligibility. If, after multiple attempts, we’re unable to reach your license contact or ensure the compliant usage of our grant, we do reserve the right to disable license keys as a method of last resort.
The reasons we would revoke, suspend, or disable a key are as follows:
• The eligibility information you gave us was inaccurate
• The project/license owner(s) no longer meet the revenue or headcount qualifications of the grant
• The usage terms of the grant were being violated
What happens if my instance can’t reach the license server?
If your instance can’t reach the license server from the start, it can’t activate. If the license key is provided via an env variable, the instance will fail to start. Otherwise, it will start on Core.
After activation, if your instance can’t reach the license server for more than 7 days, it downgrades to Core.
When downgrading to Core, if you’re over any Core limit, the instance locks.
Is Directus Cloud free under the grant?
The grant makes the software free while you remain eligible. Self-hosting is completely free. If you’d rather we run it for you, Directus Cloud is available to grant holders at a monthly rate that covers hosting and infrastructure only, not the software license.
Why the license changed
Why isn’t Directus open source anymore?
Directus hasn’t been open source since we re-licensed previously under the BSL. We made this change then to strengthen our ability to fund further development. Under that license, we granted broad usage and the MSCL is an evolution of that intended to strengthen our ability to enforce eligibility. Under the BSL, licensees operated purely on the honor system and unfortunately, there was documented persistent abuse of that by large enterprise organizations. As a small start up, we lacked the resources to enforce the fair use of our product. The primary difference with the MSCL is that we’ve implemented ways to enable us to validate and enforce the terms of the agreement. We still provide the source code, and after four years, the source code is converted to GPL-3.0.
Who can end my grant license and why?
You can terminate for convenience at any time by giving us notice. We can only terminate for cause, meaning the eligibility information you gave us was inaccurate, you no longer qualify, or the grant terms are being violated. We can’t withdraw a license from a compliant grantee, so whether you keep using it stays in your hands.
Is the grant going to disappear, or could the terms change on me?
The Open Innovation Grant is a standing program, not a promotion. While we may evolve the terms over time, when you accept a grant, the associated license is granted in perpetuity under those terms unless you choose to accept updated grant terms.
