Licensing
Meno's visual editor is free and source-available under the Elastic License 2.0. The sites you build with it — the compiled Astro output and the meno-astro runtime — are open source. Creating pages, editing components, styling, localization, branching, comments, and one-click deploy are all part of the free editor. A paid license changes one thing only: how much of the CMS a project can use.
Meno does not tie your plan to your account, and there are no per-user seats to buy for the editor. Licensing is per project: a single CMS license covers one project and everyone who works on it.
Free tier
Every project starts on the free tier — no payment, no expiry. It includes:
Unlimited pages, localizations, and branches — the whole editor, with no page or language caps.
Unlimited collaborators — anyone who can access the repository can edit; there are no editor seats.
One-click deploy and comments — publish your site and leave review comments on the canvas.
A CMS with 1 collection and 3 items — enough to try content-driven pages before you commit.
The free tier is the right place to start and is enough to build and ship real sites. The only limit you'll hit is the CMS: one collection holding up to three items.
CMS plan
The paid plan is the CMS plan: $15 per month, per project — billed per project, not per user. It lifts the free CMS limit so the project can have unlimited collections and unlimited items, with everything else in the editor working exactly as it did on the free tier.
Because the plan is scoped to a project, one subscription covers every collaborator on that project. You don't buy a seat for each teammate — you license the project once.
Activating a license
A paid plan gives you a license key. Activate it from the project directory with the meno-studio CLI:
meno-studio license activate <key>Activation writes a .meno/license.json file — holding the key and an activationId — into your project and commits it to the repository. The license is bound to that one project through its Git root-commit fingerprint and validated against Polar.
Because the license lives in the repo, everyone who clones it is licensed automatically — there's nothing for each teammate to paste or activate again. For that reason, keep a licensed repository private so the key isn't exposed publicly.
Check or remove a license any time with meno-studio license status and meno-studio license deactivate. Signing in with GitHub (meno-studio login) is optional and separate from licensing — it powers repository and collaboration features, not the CMS unlock.
Enterprise
For larger needs, Enterprise adds dedicated support, custom procurement and compliance, and offline license validation for environments that can't reach Polar at runtime. See the Meno pricing page for current details, or get in touch.
Desktop app: organization seats
The per-project license above is how the standalone meno-studio package is licensed. The Meno desktop app additionally offers organization-wide seats billed through Polar for teams that manage many projects from one place. If you use the desktop app, see Organizations for how org seats work; otherwise the per-project model is all you need.
The Meno pricing page always reflects current tiers and prices. For related workflows, see Organizations for shared workspaces, the Dashboard for managing your projects, and GitHub for connecting your account.