Free vs Pro vs Enterprise¶

KubeManta is 3-tier: Free (read-only observability plus one admin), Pro ($49 per admin seat / month), and Enterprise (SSO + governance). Pricing is per paid admin seat — viewers are free and unlimited on every tier, and there is no node counting. The tier of every gateable capability is defined once in the product's feature registry — the table below mirrors it exactly.

Tiers at a glance¶

Feature	Free	Pro	Enterprise
Overview: namespace health, top crashers, recent warnings	✅	✅	✅
Workloads: pods, deployments, statefulsets, daemonsets, jobs, configmaps, and more	✅	✅	✅
Network topology (Ingress → Service → Pod DAG)	✅	✅	✅
Mobula — live cluster containment map	✅	✅	✅
Failure Cascade Visualizer + resource relationships (rule-based, no AI)	✅	✅	✅
Mobula — structural `/graph/*` surface	✅	✅	✅
Helm release viewer (list, values, history, manifest, diff)	✅	✅	✅
Resource Builder — author/edit YAML, PLAN (dry-run)	✅	✅	✅
Container Scanning — read trivy-operator reports, posture grade + trend	✅	✅	✅
Container Scanning — pick scanner source, remove KubeManta scanner	✅	✅	✅
Risk exclusion — exclude a finding with a reason (no expiry)	✅ (admin)	✅	✅
Observability connector — configure sources + Alertmanager receiver	✅	✅	✅
Metrics — live CPU/mem, built-in ~7-day trends, bandwidth via opt-in kubelet scrape, metrics-source picker	✅	✅	✅
PTY terminal with kubectl, k9s, helm, Claude Code CLI	✅	✅	✅
Log workspace · Activity feed · unified audit + hash-chain	✅	✅	✅
IP access control · idle timeout · service-only exposure	✅	✅	✅
Expert mode (`expert`) — opt-in safety toggle (`expertMode.enabled` + runtime toggle), not license-gated	✅	✅	✅
Workload ops — restart/scale/delete (`workload_ops`; `rbac.allowWrites` + admin role)	✅	✅	✅
AI Context — curated docs the AI searches (admin CRUD)	✅	✅	✅
AI Copilot chat (grounded in Mobula)	teaser quota	✅ unlimited	✅ unlimited
AI diagnosis & triage (`ai`)	❌	✅	✅
Scheduled AI SRE reports (wall-clock schedules, PDF export, delivery via alert integrations) (`ai`)	❌	✅	✅
Alert Rules Engine (10 condition types, CRUD, integrations) (`alerts`)	❌	✅	✅
Runbooks & Quick Fix (`runbooks`)	❌	✅	✅
Helm write ops (install, upgrade, rollback) (`helm`)	❌	✅	✅
Resource Builder — Apply (`builder_apply`)	❌	✅	✅
Container Scanning — self-scan (built-in Trivy Job) (`scanning_selfscan`)	❌	✅	✅
Risk exclusion — expiry policy (auto-reactivating) (`risk_acceptance`)	❌	✅	✅
Observability — Prometheus history + inbound-alert auto-investigation (`observability`)	❌	✅	✅
MCP server (expose K8s tools to external agents) (`mcp`)	❌	✅	✅
Multi-cloud network topology (AWS / GCP / Azure) (`multicloud`)	❌	✅	✅
Enterprise SSO (SAML 2.0 / OIDC / LDAP) (`sso`)	❌	❌	✅
AI governance — configurable egress allowlist + session governance (`ai_governance`)	❌	❌	✅
Login white-labeling (custom logo/background) (`branding`)	❌	❌	✅

AI Guardrails egress enforcement is always on

Enforcement of an already-configured AI egress allowlist runs on every tier — a set policy is honored regardless of license. Only configuring it is Enterprise (ai_governance). See AI Guardrails.

Pricing¶

Plan	Price	What you get
Free	$0	One cluster, 1 admin seat, unlimited viewers
Pro	$49 per admin seat / month — or $468 per seat / year ($39/mo billed annually, save 20%)	One cluster, as many admin seats as you buy, unlimited viewers
Enterprise	Contact sales	SSO, AI governance, air-gap, white-labeling, SLA

An admin is anyone who can change the cluster — restart, scale, apply manifests, run Helm, or open the terminal. Viewers see everything and change nothing, and they are free and unlimited on every tier. You only pay for people who can act.

There is no node counting and no per-node charge: a 3-node cluster and a 300-node cluster cost the same.

No self-serve trial. The Free tier already runs the whole read-only product in your own cluster with no time limit, so there is nothing to expire. Paid plans carry a 14-day money-back guarantee from your first payment. For a time-boxed full-Pro evaluation across a team, contact us.

One subscription covers one cluster, and the Paddle quantity is your admin-seat count. Reinstalling or upgrading KubeManta on the same cluster does not consume a new cluster activation. A genuinely different or rebuilt cluster (different kube-system namespace UID) is a new activation.

How to get a license¶

Free license¶

Visit kubemanta.com and click Deploy free.

Enter your email and the key arrives immediately, together with the exact helm commands filled in for your key — the same commands this documentation shows, generated from one source so they cannot drift apart.

Pro license (paid)¶

Visit kubemanta.com and click Subscribe. Billing is handled by Paddle as Merchant of Record, so global tax and VAT are included. The license key is shown on checkout and emailed to you.

License-as-pull¶

Your license key is also your registry password. The chart auto-creates a pull secret from it:

helm install kubemanta oci://registry.kubemanta.com/kubemanta/charts/stable/kubemanta \
  --version 1.0.0 \
  -n kubemanta-system --create-namespace \
  --set license.key=YOUR_KEY

No separate pull token, no kubectl create secret required.

What happens when a license lapses¶

Free tier (core observability) never stops working — including after a trial ends or a paid license expires.

Situation	Premium features	Free / core
Active license	✅	✅
Paid, expired ≤ 7 days (grace period)	✅	✅
Paid, expired > 7 days	❌	✅
Trial expired	❌	✅
License suspended / revoked	❌	✅
Second cluster on same license	❌	✅
License service unreachable ≤ 7 days	last known state	✅
License service unreachable > 7 days	❌	✅

When a premium feature is unavailable, its tab shows a lock icon with an upsell prompt — features do not silently disappear. Gated API endpoints return HTTP 402.

Moving to a new cluster¶

After uninstalling KubeManta from the old cluster, the agent stops sending heartbeats. After 30 minutes the license service automatically deactivates the old machine, freeing the cluster activation for the new one. No manual step required. (This is unrelated to admin seats — activations track clusters, seats track people.)