The price anchor
| Keymaster | Keygen | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 — no subscription | from $99/mo |
| Annual | $0 after purchase | $1,188 |
| 5-year total | $129 | $5,940 |
| 10-year total | $129 | $11,880 |
Subscription figures from the vendor's published pricing (from $99/mo, ~$1,188/yr); the Keymaster column is the full price, paid once.
Break-even analysis
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.
- After 1 year: Keymaster has cost you $129 total — Keygen has cost $1,188.
- After 3 years: Keymaster is still $129 — the subscription is at $3,564.
- After 5 years: Keymaster is still $129 — the subscription is at $5,940.
What you get for $129 once
- 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.
- Activation webhooks. Per-product URL + secret, HMAC-SHA256 X-Keymaster-Signature header, 3 retries with backoff, and a full delivery log in the dashboard.
- No renewal, ever. The license does not expire and there is no per-seat meter — $129 is the whole price.
Pricing 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.
Keymaster — $129, one time
Or get Keymaster plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.