Perspective · Pricing
What the paid unlock buys.
There is exactly one thing to buy in the whole Airlive stack, it costs $14.99 once, and it does not unlock a feature. That is an unusual enough choice that it deserves an explanation rather than a pricing table.
The line, stated plainly
Free, with no asterisk: the full camera app, local recording with no watermark, as many cameras in one show as your network carries, tally, remote camera control, Airlive Bridge, both OBS plugins, every output — NDI, SRT, RTSP, HDMI — and the wire protocol under a permissive licence.
Paid: $14.99 one-time removes the watermark from your live stream. Recordings never carried one.
No subscription. No tiers. No per-camera fee. No account.
Why not charge for capability
The obvious model would be to gate cameras or outputs — two free, pay for more. It converts well, and it is what the category trained people to expect.
It also breaks the product. The entire argument for using phones is that you can add another angle because you already own the device. Charging per camera reintroduces the exact accounting that made multicam expensive in the first place, just with smaller numbers. The moment a volunteer team has to ask permission to add a fourth camera, we have rebuilt the problem we set out to remove.
Why a watermark, specifically
A watermark is the one thing that costs you nothing until the moment your work is public. Record all day, rehearse, test, run internal feeds, learn the software — none of that is affected. It only shows up when you are broadcasting to an audience, which is also the point at which the tool has clearly done its job.
So the trade is legible without a comparison chart: the software is free, and if it earns you a public stream, the finish costs fifteen dollars once. If you never stream publicly, you never pay, and that is a legitimate outcome rather than a loophole we intend to close.
The part that only means something if we keep it
Research into what people actually complain about in this category turns up subscriptions and abandoned apps near the top — tools that were bought, wound down, or moved behind a monthly fee after people built workflows on them. Saying "no subscription" is easy. Being unable to renege is better.
That is what publishing the protocol is for. The wire format is open under Apache-2.0, the reference receivers are open source, and you can write your own. If we ever became a company you did not want to depend on, the format would still be there and your setup would still work. It is a commitment with a mechanism behind it, not a promise in a footer.
What this does not promise
Two honest limits, because a page about trust shouldn't overreach:
- "Free" means the functionality, not unlimited support, and not a guarantee that every third-party integration someone builds will keep working. Those belong to whoever builds them.
- Future products may cost money. If something genuinely new ships, it can carry its own price. What will not happen is fencing off what is free today and selling it back.
The price is early pricing and may change. If it does, it changes for new purchases — not for something you already bought.
The short version
We take money for the polish on a finished public result, not for the ability to do the work. Everything that makes the thing possible is free, and the parts you would need in order to leave us are published.