Plans & Limits
ALTCHA Sentinel is self-hosted software: you run it on your own infrastructure, and hosting is never part of the license. What a license does is lift capacity limits (instances, accounts, users) and unlock tier-gated features. This page goes deeper than the pricing page on exactly where those lines fall.
Trial
Sentinel runs on a 30-day trial automatically when no license key is configured — nothing to sign up for. The trial exists for evaluation, so it's deliberately constrained:
- Up to 3 instances — enough to test a clustered setup. See Clustering.
- A single account and a single user.
- Not for production traffic — the EULA restricts the trial to testing and evaluation.
- One trial per IP address within any 60-day window.
Every protection feature and every API is available during the trial — it's the capacity and the account/user model that are limited, not the detection capability.
Plan comparison
| Trial | Professional | Enterprise | Enterprise Lifetime | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, 30 days | €99 / month (€990 / year) | €799 / month (€7,990 / year) | On request, one-time |
| Instances | Up to 3 (testing only) | Up to 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Accounts | 1 | Up to 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Users | 1 | Up to 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Domains | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Verifications | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Production use | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| All protection features & APIs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clustering / high availability | Up to 3, testing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, LibSQL, Turbolite | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| ClickHouse (logs & analytics) | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Single sign-on (SSO) | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| OpenTelemetry | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Software updates | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Enterprise Multi-Tenant is a separate arrangement for running one deployment across several organizations — including offering Sentinel-backed protection as a service to third parties. Contact us for terms.
Understanding the limits
Instances
An instance is one running Sentinel process (one container / pod). The limit is enforced per cluster, not across your whole estate — a separate staging cluster and a production cluster each get the full instance allowance. See Clustering.
Exceeding the licensed instance count doesn't fail immediately: the license server allows a grace period to absorb normal churn like pod rescheduling. Stay over the limit and the oldest instances beyond your allowance are shut down automatically. In a clustered deployment the license key must be set via the LICENSE_KEY environment variable — it can't be entered through the admin UI.
Accounts and users
- An account is a tenant boundary inside one Sentinel deployment — its own API keys, Security Groups, and settings. See Users & Accounts.
- A user is a person who signs in to the dashboard, with a role (Root, Admin, …) governing what they can do.
When you hit the account or user cap you simply can't create more until you upgrade — nothing already running is affected, unlike the instance limit.
Domains and verifications
There is no metering on either. Sentinel runs entirely on infrastructure you control, so there's no per-verification billing and no domain count to manage — every tier, including the trial, is unlimited here.
Feature gating
Detection and enforcement are identical across every tier — Adaptive Captcha, Threat Intelligence, the Classifier, Human Interaction Signature, Autopilot, Phishing Detection, Rate Limiters, the Email Spam Filter, and the full management API all work on the trial.
What a paid tier unlocks is operational scale and enterprise integration:
| Capability | Minimum plan | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| More than one replica / HA | Professional | Clustering |
| PostgreSQL / MySQL / MariaDB / LibSQL / Turbolite main DB | Professional | Databases |
| External Redis / Valkey KV store | Professional | Databases |
| Microsoft SQL Server / Oracle main DB | Enterprise | Databases |
| ClickHouse for logs & analytics | Enterprise | ClickHouse |
| Single sign-on (SAML / OIDC / LDAP) | Enterprise | SSO |
| Audit logs | Enterprise | Monitoring & Logging |
| OpenTelemetry tracing export | Enterprise | OpenTelemetry |
Database support by tier
| Backend | Trial | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| SQLite (embedded default) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| PostgreSQL 15+ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MySQL 5.6+ / MariaDB 10.6+ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| LibSQL / Turbolite (S3-backed) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Redis 7+ / Valkey 7+ (KV store) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft SQL Server 2022+ | — | — | Yes |
| Oracle 21c+ | — | — | Yes |
| ClickHouse 22.6+ (logs & analytics) | — | — | Yes |
The embedded SQLite default needs no configuration and is fine for evaluation or a single small instance. Any multi-replica deployment needs a networked main database plus a shared KV store — see Databases.
Support plans
Basic support — email, best-effort response — is included free with every license, including the trial. Paid support is a separate add-on that only changes your response-time SLA and channels; it never unlocks product features, and the tier you can buy depends on the license you hold.
| Support plan | Requires license | Channels | Response SLA | Typical resolution | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Any (incl. trial) | Best-effort | — | Free | |
| Standard | Professional | < 12h | Within a day | €39 / month | |
| Standard Enterprise | Enterprise | < 6h | Within hours | €300 / month | |
| Priority Enterprise | Enterprise | Email, live chat | < 4h | Within hours | €600 / month |
Enterprise support engagements also include an integration review and periodic health checks. See the Support Policy for scope and definitions.
Choosing a plan
- Evaluating, or a single non-production instance — the trial covers it; no license needed.
- Production, one or a few instances, one team — Professional. Covers up to 3 instances, 10 accounts, 10 users, and every external database except MS SQL / Oracle / ClickHouse.
- Large or multi-team deployment, SSO, audit logs, OpenTelemetry, MS SQL / Oracle / ClickHouse, or unbounded instance count — Enterprise.
- Long-term deployment where a one-time cost beats a subscription — Enterprise Lifetime.
- One deployment serving multiple organizations, or reselling protection — Enterprise Multi-Tenant (contact us).
Related
- Pricing — current prices and the buy flow.
- License — configuring
LICENSE_KEY, and offline (LICENSE_JSON) verification. - Clustering — how the instance limit is enforced across replicas.
- Databases — the full backend matrix and connection setup.
- Users & Accounts — what accounts and users are, and roles.
- EULA and Support Policy — the binding terms.