dbtrail EE & Plans
The commercial edition (forensics, full RBAC, audit export, column redaction, and BYOS) and the plans behind it
dbtrail is open core. The core (streaming capture, the before/after change index, time-travel SQL, recovery SQL generation, the web console, and the MCP server) is free and Apache-2.0 licensed, self-hosted, forever.
dbtrail EE is the commercial edition built on top of that core. Every paid plan unlocks the same, complete EE: there is no feature matrix to compare. The only thing that changes between the paid plans is who runs it: you, or us.
What EE adds
Four licensed features, activated by claims in your signed license file:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
Forensics (forensics) | Who changed each row, when, from which host and client program. Every answer carries an honest confidence label. The open-source index records each change's raw connection_id; EE turns that number into a name. Read more |
RBAC (rbac) | Per-user roles and data profiles in the web console, enforced server-side per session: who may do what (viewer → admin), and who may see what, down to withheld tables and redacted columns. Read more |
Audit trail (audit) | A JSONL record of every historical-data access and every recovery script generated: evidence for PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or SOC 2, written to a file your log shipper already watches. Fail-closed at startup. Read more |
SSO (sso) | An OIDC "Continue with …" login for the web console, with claim→role mapping when rbac is licensed too. Read more |
These four are identical in Standard and Managed. Every paid plan unlocks the complete EE. See Enterprise features for the canonical registry and exactly how each one activates.
BYOS (row images going to your own S3 bucket while dbtrail sees only metadata) is not a license-gated feature but a property of how you deploy; it ships in the open-source core and comes with every paid plan. Under Managed, it is what preserves data residency while we operate the index.
The recovery safety net is never licensed
A missing, expired, or invalid license still runs the full open-source core: capture, index, query, recover, reconstruct, verify, time-travel. Licenses gate the enterprise features above and nothing else. You can never be locked out of your own recovery. The one deliberate exception is the audit trail's fail-closed policy.
The documentation
Install dbtrail EE
From a delivered binary and .lic file to a running, licensed install, including the drop-in upgrade from the open-source core.
Licensing
Installing and verifying a license, the status words, expiry, grace, and the updates window.
Enterprise features
The canonical feature registry and how each feature activates at startup.
Forensics
Who changed this row: attribution tiers, confidence labels, and audit-plugin setup.
Audit trail
What gets recorded, the JSONL format, and the fail-closed startup policy.
RBAC
Per-user roles and data profiles in the web console, plus SSO claim→role mapping.
Plans
| Plan | Price | You get |
|---|---|---|
| Community | $0, forever | The open-source core (Apache-2.0), self-hosted. Unlimited databases and retention. Community support on GitHub. |
| Standard | $9,000/year | Full dbtrail EE, self-hosted. Email support with one business day to first reply. We triage every bug you file and tell you which release carries the fix. |
| Managed | Contact us | Full dbtrail EE, operated by dbtrail end-to-end. See below. |
See the pricing page for the full breakdown. Paid plans are not open for self-serve checkout yet. Join the waitlist from the pricing page and we'll reach out, or email hello@dbtrail.com.
The Managed plan
On Standard, you run dbtrail. On Managed, we run it:
dbtrail takes care of
- The index infrastructure. The store where your change history lives. We provision and size it; you set up nothing.
- Updates and upgrades. Versions, schema migrations, and patches. No maintenance windows for you to plan.
- Backups, disk, and recovery of the index. Sizing, disk-full, corruption: we carry it.
- Monitoring the capture pipeline. Keeping dbtrail from falling behind your change volume is on us.
Stays 100% yours
- Your production database. We never touch it. dbtrail reads your changes as a read-only replication client, nothing more. Managed operates our side, never yours.
- Your data, if you want it. With BYOS on, row images still go to your S3 even while we operate the index, so you don't lose data residency.
For the trust boundary, the security model, and exactly what dbtrail's side stores under Managed, see The Managed Plan.
Support boundary for the free core
Community support covers the dbtrail software itself (bugs, unexpected behavior, documentation gaps) via GitHub issues and discussions. Operating the index database you point dbtrail at (sizing, backups, disk, upgrades) is on you in the free core; SUPPORT.md describes the boundary in detail. Taking that operational load off you is exactly what the paid plans (and Managed in particular) are for.