Replicache Licensing

Get a License Key

The Replicache Terms of Service require that anyone using Replicache acquire and use their own license key. A license key is required for any use of Replicache, commercial or non-commercial, including tire-kicking, evaluation, and just playing around. But don't worry: getting a key is fast, low commitment (no credit card), and there is no charge for many uses of Replicache (see Replicache Pricing).

To get a key run:

npx replicache get-license

It will ask you a few questions and then print your license key, eg:

l123d3baa14984beca21bc42aee593064

Pass this key as a string to the Replicache constructor, e.g.:

new Replicache({
    licenseKey: "l123d3baa14984beca21bc42aee593064",
    ...
});

Unit testing

For reasons explained below, Replicache by default pings our server with your license key when Replicache is instantiated. This behavior is almost certainly undesirable in automated tests for a variety of reasons (hermeticity, inflated Replicache usage charges, etc.). For automated tests, pass TEST_LICENSE_KEY instead of your key. For example:

import {Replicache, TEST_LICENSE_KEY} from 'replicache';
...

test('my test', () => {
    const r = new Replicache({
        licenseKey: TEST_LICENSE_KEY,
        ...
    });
  ...
});

Using the TEST_LICENSE_KEY skips the server ping, but a Replicache instance instantiated with it will shut itself down after a few minutes.

License pings

Per Replicache Pricing, we charge post-funding/revenue commercial customers based on Monthly Active Browser Profiles, meaning unique browser instances that instantiate Replicache in a calendar month. The way we accomplish this is to send a ping to our servers containing your license key and a unique browser profile identifier when Replicache is instantiated, and every 24 hours that it is running. We also check at instantiation time that your license key is valid, and complain loudly to the console if it is not. We may in the future add a feature to disable Replicache in the event that the license key is not valid.

The licensing pings explain why you want to pass TEST_LICENSE_KEY to Replicache in automated tests: so that you're not potentially charged for large numbers of Replicache instances used when running tests. (Not to mention network calls are typically undesirable in unit tests).

Disabling Replicache's pings other than via the TEST_LICENSE_KEY is against our Terms of Service. If the pings are a problem for your environment, please get in touch with us at hello@replicache.dev.