Free Forever: Licensing and Activation with neo activate
Neo requires a free license key but has no paid tier — what activation actually checks, and what works offline.
Activate once
neo activate
No key to paste — you're asked for an email, and Neo registers a free license automatically. Every command except neo activate, neo help, neo version and a handful of others is gated behind having a valid license, so this is the first thing you run.
There is no paid tier
Multi-server support, backups, parallel image uploads, unlimited device activations — everything is unlocked on the free key. If you're holding an older paid plus/team key from before Neo went free, it's grandfathered and still validates; you don't need to re-activate.
What happens without internet
Activation itself needs network access once. After that, Neo caches the validated license locally (~/.neo/license.json) with a 3-day offline grace period — so a flaky connection or a firewalled deploy server doesn't block you mid-task. Past that window, Neo needs to reach the license API again.
Where the key lives
~/.neo/config.json stores the license key alongside your configured servers. It's per-machine, not per-server — the same key activates Neo on your laptop and in CI, and device activations are unlimited, so you don't need a separate key for each place neo runs.
Try it yourself — Neo is free, with every feature unlocked.
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