Introducing the next era of Duende IdentityServer.
Community Edition is a free license for Duende IdentityServer. It’s feature-equivalent to Advanced, with no watered-down capabilities and no time limit. Available to qualifying startups and non-profits running IdentityServer on their own infrastructure.
Community Edition is not a feature-gated demo. It's the same binaries, the same capabilities, and the same release cadence as the Advanced Edition. Licensed free for organizations that qualify.
Every capability Duende IdentityServer ships with Advanced is available in Community Edition. No artificial caps, no disabled modules, no "contact sales to unlock."
Run on your own infrastructure - your servers, your cloud, your region. Community Edition is a license for self-hosted deployment, not a SaaS tier.
No 30-day trial, no seat limit, no expiring activation. The license is good as long as you meet the eligibility criteria.
Identity is the part of your architecture you don't want to replace later. Community Edition lets early-stage teams build on the right platform from the start, without the usual tradeoff between cost and capability.
Most "free tier" identity offerings are limited on purpose with fewer flows, fewer integrations, and fewer controls. Community Edition is the opposite: the full product, free, so your first identity decision doesn't become your first re-platforming project.
Qualification is clear and revenue-based. If you're a for-profit with under $1M USD projected annual gross revenue and under $3M USD in capital access, or a non-profit or registered charity with a published annual budget under $1M USD, you qualify.
When you outgrow the eligibility thresholds, you transition to a paid license. But you’re on the same platform, same APIs, same deployment. Supported by the same team. No migration, no refactor, no swap-out. Your code doesn't know the difference.
You do not need a license for evaluation, development, test environments, or personal projects. Download IdentityServer and build — the startup warning message in non-licensed mode does not constrain your application.
Once you're ready to run in production. Submit the application with your organization details; eligibility is reviewed against the revenue and capital thresholds.
Deploy to production on your own infrastructure.
As long as you continue to qualify, you can stay on Community Edition. When your organization grows past the thresholds, transition to a paid Standard, Advanced, or Custom license on the same platform.
Pre-revenue or early-revenue companies that need a production-grade identity platform without a platform-grade budget. Build on IdentityServer now; the license scales with you later.
Organizations with an annual budget under $1M USD, where identity is mission-critical but the line item can't be. Same platform that runs enterprise deployments, no cost.
Teams where the person making the identity decision is also writing the code. Community Edition removes the procurement conversation from the first architecture decision.
If you're embedding IdentityServer in software you ship to third parties, you need a redistribution license. If you're building identity infrastructure for an end customer, that customer needs a paid license.
For-profit organizations with less than $1M USD projected annual gross revenue and access to less than $3M USD in capital facilities, or non-profit organizations and registered charities with a published annual budget under $1M USD.
No. Evaluation, development, test environments, and personal projects do not require a license. A startup warning message appears in non-licensed mode but does not constrain the application in any way.
No. Community Edition is feature-equivalent to the Advanced Edition. Same capabilities, same releases, same platform.
You transition to a paid license — Standard, Advanced, or Custom depending on your needs. The platform is identical, so there's no code migration involved.
No. Community Edition is for running IdentityServer on your own infrastructure for your own use. Redistribution and customer-facing deployments require different licensing.
Community support through GitHub Discussions and the documentation. Commercial support is available on paid tiers.
Submit the application form with your organization details. Applications are reviewed against the eligibility criteria above.
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
If you qualify, there's no reason to build on anything less. Apply for Community Edition and ship production identity on the same solution that enterprises deploy.
