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Business model

How OpenHQ makes money.

Everything we build is open source and free to run yourself. We also believe open source has to be commercially viable, or it won't be there when you depend on it. So we earn money in two ways: we run it for you as a managed service, and we send OpenFDEs, open forward deployed engineers, to build it into your product alongside your team.

Talk to us Compare the options

Three ways to use OpenHQ software

  1. 01 · Open source

    Free

    Run it yourself

    Deploy AgentFGA to your own Cloudflare account. You get all of it: the server, the tests and the tools we used to measure it.

    Get started with AgentFGA

  2. 02 · Managed service

    Paid

    We run it for you

    You get an endpoint and API keys. We deploy, upgrade and operate AgentFGA, so your team only writes models and asks questions.

    How the managed service works

  3. 03 · OpenFDE

    Paid

    We build it in with you

    An OpenHQ engineer joins your team, designs your permission model and wires it into your agents until it's running in production.

    What an OpenFDE does

What we believe

Open source has to pay for itself to be worth depending on.

When you build on an open-source project, you're betting that someone will still be maintaining it years from now: fixing security problems, keeping up with the platforms it runs on, answering when something breaks. Projects that run on spare time and goodwill too often stall, get abandoned, or switch to a restrictive license when the money runs out.

We think open source should be commercially viable, so that the people who rely on it are building on something sustainable. OpenHQ charges for running the software and for engineering help, never for the software itself, and that revenue pays for the open-source work.

  1. Customers payfor the managed service and OpenFDEs.
  2. Revenue pays engineersto maintain and improve the project.
  3. The work ships in the openFixes and features land in the open-source release.
  4. Everyone gets itSelf-hosted users get the same releases, free.

A healthier project brings more users, and some of them become customers.

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Who does what.

The software is the same in all three. What changes is who runs it and who builds it into your product.

Task Open source Managed service OpenFDE
Run, upgrade and scale AgentFGA You OpenHQ You or OpenHQ
Design your permission model You You OpenHQ with your team
Wire checks into your agents You You OpenHQ with your team
Own the code and the data You You You
Cost Free Paid Paid

Managed service

The open-source release, run by the people who wrote it.

The managed service runs the same code you can download. You pay us to operate it, not to unlock it.

What we handle

  • Deploys and upgrades. Each release, rolled out for you.
  • Stores for your customers. One isolated store per customer, so capacity grows as you add them.
  • Keeping it running. We watch the service and respond when something goes wrong.

What stays yours

  • Your client code. It's the OpenFGA API, so the official SDKs and CLI work unchanged.
  • Your data. Read back every model and relationship through the API at any time.
  • The way out. Move to your own AgentFGA deployment, or to OpenFGA itself, without changing your code.

OpenFDE

Open forward deployed engineers.

A forward deployed engineer works inside a customer's team instead of handing over a manual. Ours are open: when the work turns up something every user needs, such as a fix, a feature or a better default, it goes into the open-source project, not a private branch. Your product code and your permission data stay yours.

  1. 01

    Map

    What your agents do, which tools they call, whose data they read, and what each one should be allowed to touch.

  2. 02

    Model

    Write your authorization model and the tests that pin it down, with the people who know your product.

  3. 03

    Wire

    Add checks before tool calls, filter what reaches the model, and give agents access that expires.

  4. 04

    Hand over

    Your team owns what we built. Anything general goes back into the open-source release for everyone.

Why this model

We get paid when it works in production.

Nothing held back

There's no paid edition. The open-source release is the whole product, so self-hosting isn't a trial.

Incentives point the same way

We earn by running the software well and getting it into production with you, not by adding features you have to pay for.

You can always leave

Open code and a standard API mean you can take it in-house whenever you choose. We'd rather you stay because it's good.

Talk to us about the managed service or an OpenFDE.

Tell us what your agents do and what they need to be allowed to touch.

Talk to us Or run it yourself