Keygen.sh starts at $99/month. Gumroad takes 10% plus 50 cents of every sale you make. Keymaster is a self-hosted licensing server — ed25519-signed keys your apps verify completely offline, seat limits with machine fingerprints, expiring signed download URLs, HMAC webhooks — for a one-time $129 on your own $5 VPS. Your keys, your keypair.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Keygen actually costs over one, two and three years, what Keymaster gives you for $129 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Keygen actually costs you
At from $99/mo, one Keygen subscription adds up to $1,188 every year — $3,564 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Keymaster is $129 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Keymaster | Keygen | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $129 once | from $99/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $129 | $1,188 |
| Cost after 2 years | $129 | $2,376 |
| Cost after 3 years | $129 | $3,564 |
Three years in, the gap is $3,435 — and every year after that adds another $1,188 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Keymaster vs Keygen, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Keymaster | Keygen | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $129 once | from $99/mo ($1,188/yr) — Gumroad: 10% + 50¢/sale |
| Cost at $10k/yr in sales | $129 total | Keygen $1,188/yr · Gumroad ~$1,050/yr |
| Your own signing keypair | Yes — generated on your box | No — managed for you |
| Offline validation | Yes, ed25519 | Yes |
| Seat limits + fingerprints | Yes | Yes |
| Signed expiring downloads | Yes (15-min TTL) | Yes |
| Self-hosted / your data | Yes — SQLite on your VPS | No |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed (hosted) |
What you get for $129, once
Ed25519-signed license keys your apps verify offline, seat limits, signed downloads & webhooks. The highlights:
- 🔏 Ed25519-signed keys — KM1.
. format — self-describing, verifiable offline with just the public key. The keypair is generated on first boot; you own it. - 💺 Seat limits & fingerprints — Activation API with machine fingerprints, idempotent re-activation, deactivate to free a seat, signed activation receipts for offline runs. Stable, versioned /api/v1.
- 📴 Offline validation snippets — Zero-dependency Node and browser/WebCrypto verifiers ship in the repo, and the key format is documented byte-for-byte so you can port it to any language.
- 📦 Products & versions — Semver releases with artifact upload or external URLs. Customers download via signed URLs that expire in 15 minutes — artifacts are never exposed statically.
Against Keygen's $99/mo entry tier, Keymaster pays for itself in about 6 weeks. Against Gumroad's 10% cut, it pays for itself on your first ~$1,300 of sales.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One-time $129 for the packaged, ready-to-run version with a Windows installer and priority support.
- Deploy and integrate. docker compose up on a $5 VPS, then drop the 20-line verification snippet into your app with your public key embedded at build time.
- Issue keys, ship builds. Issue or bulk-issue licenses from the dashboard, wire the webhook into Stripe or Whop, and let customers download through expiring signed URLs.
When paying Keygen is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Keygen's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying from $99/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Keymaster is $129, once. For the deeper dive, read the Keymaster vs Keygen head-to-head or the full Keygen comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/keymaster-mvp, always. $129 buys the packaged installer, updates and priority support. We dogfood it: the onetime-suite's own premium tiers run on Keymaster.
Can offline validation catch revoked keys?
No — and the docs say so upfront. An offline check proves a key is authentic and unexpired; it can't see revocations or seat counts. The shipped snippets show the recommended hybrid: verify offline instantly, check in online periodically, apply a grace period.
Why not just use Keygen?
If you want managed infrastructure, multi-region uptime and someone else holding the pager, Keygen is a solid product — that's what $99+/month buys. Keymaster is for sellers who'd rather own the keypair, the data and the bill: one Node process and a SQLite file on a $5 VPS.
What happens if I lose my signing key?
Back up data/keys/signing.pem — seriously. Your keys verify against that keypair; lose the private key and you can never issue new keys that pass validation in apps you've already shipped.
How hard is the app-side integration?
About 20 lines: copy the zero-dependency verifier snippet, embed your public key at build time, verify offline, then POST one activation call with a machine fingerprint. Full API docs plus a Stripe/Whop key-issuing recipe are in the repo.
More on Keygen pricing
Keymaster — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Keymaster — $129, once
Ed25519-signed license keys your apps verify offline, seat limits, signed downloads & webhooks.