Pricing & Licensing

QECTOR Decoder v3 is source-available: free for non-commercial, academic, and personal use under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. Commercial deployment requires a paid license. All prices are in US dollars (USD) and exclude tax.

Tax: prices are in USD and exclude tax; Stripe adds applicable sales tax, GST/HST, or VAT at checkout based on your billing location. Delivery: your license token is emailed within 10 minutes of payment: check your spam folder before contacting support. Refunds: tokens are delivered instantly, so all sales are final: see the refund policy; the $499 evaluation is the creditable way to try before committing.

Activating your license

Everyone installs the same wheel: there is no separate commercial build and no feature gating. If QECTOR_LICENSE is unset a licensing notice prints on import, which is expected for non-commercial use. Setting the token stops the notice; decoding runs either way, with no hard stop.

# Commercial use: activate with the Ed25519 token from your licence email
export QECTOR_LICENSE=""

# Optional: suppress the licensing notice in CI logs
export QECTOR_SILENT=1

# Verification is offline against a public key in the package.
# No licence server, no phone-home, works air-gapped.

Frequently asked questions

How is the license delivered, and does the package change once I have a token?

Automatically, by email, within minutes of payment: if nothing arrives within 10 minutes, check your spam folder, then email [email protected] with your Stripe receipt. Everyone installs the same wheel via pip install qector-decoder-v3; there is no separate commercial build and no feature gating. If QECTOR_LICENSE is not set, a licensing notice prints on import: this is expected and correct for non-commercial use. For commercial use, set QECTOR_LICENSE to your Ed25519 token and the notice stops; set QECTOR_SILENT=1 if you also want quiet CI logs. The token verifies offline against a public key embedded in the package, so it works air-gapped and in CI with no license server and no phone-home. There is no hard stop: decoding runs either way. The token plus your Stripe receipt are what procurement and audit need.

What exactly happens when the 60-day evaluation expires?

The $499 evaluation is a flat, non-recurring 60-day license: it is not a subscription and it does not auto-renew. The token carries a 60-day expiry. After that date your commercial evaluation rights end and the licensing notice returns on import, but nothing is disabled, no code stops working, and your data and results remain yours. To continue commercial use you move to an annual tier. The $499 is 100% creditable toward any annual license purchased within 90 days of your evaluation start: buy Solo/Indie at $1,299/yr within that window and you pay $800, not $1,299. Email [email protected] with your Stripe invoice number and we invoice the difference.

How many seats does each tier cover, and what counts as production?

The $499 evaluation covers unlimited internal seats for 60 days, but it is scoped to evaluation and pilot work: benchmarking, integration testing, threshold studies, and architecture assessment. It does not grant production rights. Annual tiers grant production rights for internal use and are seat-counted: Solo/Indie $1,299/yr (1 named user), Startup/Growth $4,499/yr (up to 10), Professional/Lab $11,500/yr (up to 25), Enterprise R&D $28,000/yr (unlimited seats and logical qubits, dedicated support engineer, custom builds). A Solo/Indie perpetual license is also available at $3,299 one-time for v3.x (all v3.x patch/minor updates included; major version upgrades such as v4.0 are a new license).

Is a hosted or customer-facing API covered by an annual tier?

No. Annual tiers cover internal use: your own team, on your own infrastructure. The moment QECTOR sits behind an API, product, or service that anyone outside your organization can reach, that is SaaS or redistribution and it requires an Enterprise/OEM agreement, regardless of which annual tier you hold. Internal hosted endpoints used only by your own employees are fine under an annual tier. If you are unsure which side of the line you are on, email [email protected] and describe the deployment.

Can I redistribute QECTOR inside my product?

No: standard tiers cover internal use only. Enterprise OEM licenses cover redistribution, SaaS hosting, and hardware bundling. Email [email protected] for a custom agreement.

Do I need a license for non-commercial research?

No. Non-commercial, academic, and personal use is free under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Only commercial deployment requires a paid tier. The licensing notice on import is informational: it does not restrict non-commercial use, and QECTOR_SILENT=1 suppresses it.

What currency are prices in, and is tax included?

All prices are in US dollars (USD). Listed prices are exclusive of tax. Stripe calculates and adds any applicable sales tax, GST/HST, or VAT at checkout based on your billing location: Canadian, UK, and EU buyers should expect tax on top of the listed price. If your organization is tax-exempt or has a valid VAT/GST registration number, enter it at checkout, or email [email protected] with your Stripe invoice number for a corrected invoice.

What is your refund policy?

License tokens are delivered immediately on payment, so all sales are final and commercial licenses are non-refundable. That is precisely why the $499 60-day evaluation exists: it is the low-cost, fully creditable way to validate QECTOR against your own workloads before committing to an annual tier. If a token never arrives or fails to verify, that is a delivery fault rather than a refund matter: email [email protected] and we will reissue it. This policy does not limit non-waivable statutory rights where they apply. Full terms are on the refund policy page.

Can we get a signed corporate EULA or tax form?

Yes. If procurement requires a signed PDF agreement, vendor profile, W-8/W-9, or a security questionnaire, email your request with your Stripe invoice number to [email protected].

Contact: [email protected]