License
Notarium is free, open-source software under the GNU AGPL-3.0-only license. Every capability is open: there is no paid edition, no stripped-down "community" build, and no features held back for paying customers. One codebase, fully open, for everyone. For most users, AGPL-3.0 is all you need — and it's free.
A separate commercial license is required in only one case: if you're building a business on Notarium itself as a product and the AGPL's source-disclosure obligations don't work for you.
When AGPL-3.0 is enough (free)
You can use, run, self-host, study, and modify Notarium for free — including inside a company as an internal tool for your own work. The only thing AGPL adds on top of a permissive license is reciprocity: if you've modified Notarium and let other people work with it over a network, you must give those users the source code of your modified version under the same license (AGPL-3.0, section 13).
Examples that fit fully within AGPL and are free:
- an individual or a team deploying Notarium for their own notes;
- a company that runs Notarium internally as a knowledge base for its employees;
- contributing changes back to the project, or running a modified fork whose source you make available to its users, as AGPL requires.
Notarium is deliberately not an E2EE product: to provide search, semantic features, version history, and agent workflows, the server needs access to the contents of your notes. Privacy comes from you holding the server and the files yourself, not from end-to-end encryption. More in the Roadmap.
When you need a commercial license (paid)
You need a commercial license if you want to build a business on Notarium itself and the AGPL's copyleft obligations don't work for you — typically because you can't or won't open the source of your derivative work under AGPL. For example:
- reselling Notarium or a derivative as your own product;
- offering Notarium as a hosted / managed service (SaaS) to third parties;
- embedding Notarium into a proprietary product that you distribute or sell;
- running a competing commercial service built on Notarium without meeting AGPL's source-disclosure terms.
A commercial license lifts the AGPL-3.0 copyleft obligations for your scenario under separately agreed terms.
Using Notarium inside your organization as a tool (when your business is about something else) does not require a commercial license: that's covered by the AGPL described above. What draws the line is whether you monetize Notarium itself, not whether your organization is commercial.
How to get in touch
If your scenario requires a commercial license, write to commercial@notarium.ai with a short description of your case, and we'll find terms that fit.
In brief
| Scenario | License | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Personal notes, team, self-host | AGPL-3.0 | free |
| Internal company tool | AGPL-3.0 | free |
| Fork with source disclosed to users | AGPL-3.0 | free |
| Reselling Notarium as a product | commercial | by agreement |
| Hosted SaaS for third parties | commercial | by agreement |
| Embedding into a proprietary product | commercial | by agreement |
This page explains the licensing model but is not legal advice. The governing terms are the text of AGPL-3.0 in the LICENSE file and any separately signed commercial agreement. The copyright holder is Sergey Padurets (© 2026).