Keygen is a licensing and software distribution API that describes itself as built for developers, by developers. It is Fair Source, the code is on GitHub, and the Community Edition is free to self-host including for commercial work. Alongside licensing it ships a distribution API that signs and delivers releases and handles automatic updates.
Pick Licentry if your problem is people running your software without paying, and you want the enforcement layer to be the strong part.
Free trial, then 19 dollars a month. Studio is 59. Prices exclude VAT, which is added at checkout where it applies.Pick Keygen if you want to self-host at no licence cost, or if getting builds and updates to customers is the actual job.
Free Dev tier, with paid plans listed from 49 dollars a month at the time of writing.Figures about Keygen were checked in July 2026 against their own published pages, or, where they do not publish a figure, against the public listings named alongside the price above. Pricing changes, ours is on the pricing section, and if anything here is out of date we want to know at [email protected].
Licentry assumes someone is actively trying to run your software without paying, and is built around that.
A check that returns true or false is one instruction for someone to flip in a debugger. Licentry holds a signed session open while your app runs and keeps it alive with heartbeats, so revoking a licence stops a copy that is already running rather than waiting for the next launch.
Sessions are bound to the device that opened them using DPoP, which is RFC 9449. Each request carries a proof signed by a key that never leaves that machine, so lifting the token out of memory and pasting it somewhere else gets you nothing.
Windows executables are watermarked per customer as they are downloaded. When a copy shows up on a forum, the mark names the account it was issued to, which turns a rumour into something you can act on. Someone who repacks the file can strip it.
Every row is written so a tick is the answer you want, and their ticks are still ticks. Where we could not confirm something about Keygen from their own documentation it is marked as not advertised, rather than as a no.
| Capability | Keygen | Licentry |
|---|---|---|
| Starts under 20 dollars a month | –Listed from 49 | ✓19 |
| Stolen token fails on another machine | ~Not advertised | ✓DPoP, RFC 9449 |
| App can prove the reply came from us | ~Not advertised | ✓Signed, P-256 |
| Leaked build points back to one buyer | ~Not advertised | ✓Watermarked, Windows |
| Evidence when a key gets shared | ~Not advertised | ✓Devices, IPs, geography |
| Licence checked while the app runs | ✓Heartbeats | ✓Signed session |
| Works in any language on day one | ✓ | ✓Five HTTPS calls |
| Free to self-host | ✓Community Edition | ~Dedicated server, Studio |
| Ships releases and auto-updates | ✓Distribution API | ~Hosted builds |
| Official SDK for your language | ✓Five languages | ~HTTPS instead |
✓ does it ~ partly, or depends on the tier – not what it is for
We would rather lose the signup than have you switch and regret it. These are real reasons to buy theirs instead.
Keygen CE is free to run on your own hardware, commercial use included. Licentry runs your account on a dedicated server on request, but that sits on the Studio plan and is not free. If owning the whole stack at zero licence cost is the requirement, Keygen wins outright and we would rather you knew that now.
Keygen has a distribution API with engines for npm, PyPI, RubyGems, Docker and Tauri, plus a CLI for signing and publishing releases. Licentry hosts your builds and watermarks each Windows download per buyer, but it is not a package registry and does not pretend to be one.
Keygen publishes SDKs for Go, Python, Node, Ruby and PHP. Licentry deliberately has none. Integration is five HTTPS calls in whatever language you already use, which is better if your language was never going to get an SDK and worse if you wanted one handed to you.
Keygen is a good product and the free self-hosted edition is a genuinely strong offer. If you want to own the infrastructure, or distributing builds is the job, buy theirs. If the thing keeping you up is people running your software without paying, that is the part we build for, and it is where the two products actually diverge.
Five HTTPS calls and no SDK to install, so you can have this working before you decide.
Keygen is a trademark of its respective owner. Licentry is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Keygen. This comparison is our own opinion, based on publicly available information at the date shown, and is offered so you can make your own decision.