Guide / Plans, privacy and help

Plans and licence

Penstock is free, and what only Penstock does is Pro or Team. One rule decides which one a feature needs.

Free

Choose a plan

Free

No charge

The editors, checks, deploy, Monitor, export, share and import. Every new machine also starts with 30 days of Pro.

Get Penstock

Pro

USD 9.00 per month

USD 90.00 per year

For your own machine. Adds what only Penstock does: auto layout, flow analysis, code links, test-case runs, the visual diagram diff and more.

Buy Pro

Team

USD 29.00 per seat per month

USD 290.00 per seat per year

Everything in Pro, inside a pipeline as well: the review bot, pull request reports, baselines and SARIF.

Buy Team

The price you pay is the one shown at checkout. You choose monthly or yearly at checkout. A Buy button opens the checkout on Polar's own page. See Security and privacy.

The one rule

Everything that earlier releases had, and everything other tools give away, is free. What only Penstock does is Pro or Team.

A paid feature needs Pro on your own machine and Team inside a pipeline. A pipeline is any run where the environment variable CI is set. There are no exceptions for a single feature or a single flag.

Every machine starts with 30 days of Pro. A pipeline gets no trial.

What each plan gives

Plan What it includes

Plan	What it includes
Free	In the editors: the BPMN, DMN and form editors, the properties panels, element templates and the connector browser, scripts in a code editor of your tool, token simulation, the diagram check with the drawing and the bpmnlint rules, deploy, Monitor, export, the hand-drawn look, opening a run that already exists, going from a Camunda 7 delegate to its class or bean, sharing a diagram as one HTML file, and importing from draw.io, Visio, Signavio and Bizagi. The Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 analysis and its report are free too. The command palette and every action in it, the sidebar, the check card and the Problems tab, transaction boundaries, the first-run tour, and the findings in your tool's own Problems window. On the command line: `init`, `doctor`, `check` (the drawing, rules and form sections), `migrate analyze` and `migrate report`, `fmt`, `diff`, `export`, `show`, `deploy`, `share`, `import`, `connectors`, `license`, `trust`, `templates check`, `update`, `mcp` (the server itself), and `edit --schema`. The MCP tools `list_diagrams`, `show_diagram` and `check_diagram`, which only read and explain.
Pro on your machine	Auto layout. Flow analysis, and the decision table check. The form check is lint, so it is free. The visual diagram diff, and pictures of what changed. Modelling conventions from `penstock.yaml`. Converting Camunda 7 to Camunda 8: the preview, `penstock migrate convert` and the job worker skeletons. Scenarios: test cases on a local engine, step by step. The link between diagrams and code: code links. From a step to its worker and back, usages, hints above the code, variables and error codes across both, tests run from the diagram, coverage on it, the debugger's position on the diagram, linked repositories, and Check Workers. In the command line: `layout`, `check --only flow`, `scenarios list`, `junit`, `scenarios run`, `scenarios generate`, `code`, `templates generate`, `docs`, `diff --images`, `edit`, `report`, check baselines, and findings as SARIF or GitHub annotations. The review bot, when you run it on your machine. The MCP tools `analyze_flow`, `list_scenarios`, `check_code_links` and `edit_diagram`. Each needs the same plan as its command line twin.
Team in a pipeline	Everything in Pro, inside a pipeline. That includes the review bot in pull and merge requests, the pull request report, check baselines, and findings as SARIF or GitHub annotations in the code review. Every paid command in a pipeline needs Team.

Free

In the editors: the BPMN, DMN and form editors, the properties panels, element templates and the connector browser, scripts in a code editor of your tool, token simulation, the diagram check with the drawing and the bpmnlint rules, deploy, Monitor, export, the hand-drawn look, opening a run that already exists, going from a Camunda 7 delegate to its class or bean, sharing a diagram as one HTML file, and importing from draw.io, Visio, Signavio and Bizagi.

The Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 analysis and its report are free too.

The command palette and every action in it, the sidebar, the check card and the Problems tab, transaction boundaries, the first-run tour, and the findings in your tool's own Problems window.

On the command line: init, doctor, check (the drawing, rules and form sections), migrate analyze and migrate report, fmt, diff, export, show, deploy, share, import, connectors, license, trust, templates check, update, mcp (the server itself), and edit --schema.

The MCP tools list_diagrams, show_diagram and check_diagram, which only read and explain.

Pro
on your machine

Auto layout.
Flow analysis, and the decision table check. The form check is lint, so it is free.
The visual diagram diff, and pictures of what changed.
Modelling conventions from penstock.yaml.
Converting Camunda 7 to Camunda 8: the preview, penstock migrate convert and the job worker skeletons.
Scenarios: test cases on a local engine, step by step.
The link between diagrams and code: code links. From a step to its worker and back, usages, hints above the code, variables and error codes across both, tests run from the diagram, coverage on it, the debugger's position on the diagram, linked repositories, and Check Workers.
In the command line: layout, check --only flow, scenarios list, junit, scenarios run, scenarios generate, code, templates generate, docs, diff --images, edit, report, check baselines, and findings as SARIF or GitHub annotations.
The review bot, when you run it on your machine.
The MCP tools analyze_flow, list_scenarios, check_code_links and edit_diagram. Each needs the same plan as its command line twin.

Team
in a pipeline

Everything in Pro, inside a pipeline. That includes the review bot in pull and merge requests, the pull request report, check baselines, and findings as SARIF or GitHub annotations in the code review. Every paid command in a pipeline needs Team.

Not sure what a page needs? The tag under its title says. Free means free. Pro means a paid feature.

What you see when you reach a paid feature

Nothing else in the editor changes. When you reach for a paid feature you do not have, Penstock explains what it does and offers to buy it or to sign in, at that moment.

In an editor, a dialog says, for example, Auto layout is part of Penstock Pro. and offers Buy Pro, I Already Bought It and Not Now. If your trial has ended it says so.
In a terminal, the command prints what the feature gives and the commands penstock license buy and penstock license login. In a pipeline it says the feature needs Team and to give the pipeline a key in PENSTOCK_LICENSE.
An MCP tool called without the licence says the same in its error result. It also shows in the tool list with a note on what it needs.

A terminal running penstock scenarios run on a machine without a licence. It says Process test runs are part of Penstock Pro, and gives two commands: penstock license buy and penstock license login — What a paid command prints in a terminal without a licence.

Paying

Payments are handled by Polar, the reseller and merchant of record. Polar also takes care of VAT and invoices. You can cancel at any time from the link in the receipt. After you pay, Penstock notices by itself and sends a sign-in code to the address that paid. There is no key to copy. One key covers three machines, and you can cancel at any time. Team is priced for each seat, and its seats are given out in Polar's customer portal. See Buying and signing in.

How the licence is checked

The licence is a signed token, not a flag. A small licence service turns Polar's answer into a token signed with a key only it holds, and the plugin, the command line and the editor carry the public half and check the signature themselves, offline. A file edited by hand, a redirected address or a server pretending to be the licence service cannot make a machine Pro.

What is on the machine is the token and nothing else: no key, no tier, no date you could edit. penstock license says which licence this machine has and where it comes from, and during the trial it says the trial is on and until when, instead of saying there is no licence. See Buying and signing in.

Free Pro for students, teachers and open-source maintainers

Students, teachers and open-source maintainers can get Pro for free. Penstock shows it in three places, and only when the application address is set: the licence dialog, the message that explains a paid feature, and the output of penstock license. While no address is set, nothing about it is shown anywhere. See Buying and signing in.

Common problems

A feature that worked yesterday now asks me to buy Pro.: Your 30-day trial has ended, or your licence was released or ended. Run penstock license to see which licence this machine has.
It works on my laptop but the pipeline says it needs Team.: That is the rule: a pipeline needs Team for every paid feature. penstock init --ci writes a pipeline for the licence on the machine that ran it, so its first run does not fail on something nobody bought.
Which plan do I need for the review bot?: Team in a pipeline. Pro is enough to run it on your own machine.

Plans and licence

See also