Markdown stays free
Flow Base, which is reading, writing, searching, organizing and saving Markdown, is free forever. Relay Core and direct use are free. Flow Import and Flow Publish are paid add-ons to Pro.
Our promise
What you pay for, and what you never lose.
Flow, Relay and Arena are built on one rule. The part you run is free or yours for good. The part you pay for is the AI’s work, maintained content, or a proven year of upkeep. Anything that ships free stays free, and nothing you own ever has to call home to keep working. This page is the standing promise we hold every product to.
The short version
Free stays free. What you own keeps working on your own machine. You pay for the AI, the content or the upkeep, never for the right to use what is yours.
You pay for the work, not the right
Flow Pro is the AI doing work: proposing changes, drawing charts, routing models. A Relay Pack is maintained content. An Arena Field Edition license is a proven, receipted year of a lab. Flow Import and Flow Publish add file conversion and publishing to Pro.
What you own keeps working
Licenses are checked on your own machine. A lapsed Flow plan leaves every document open and editable. Installed Relay packs keep running. An Arena box keeps running with your data on it.
Flow: Markdown stays free. Choose the work you need.
That sentence is the whole Flow deal, and the app enforces it: Your Markdown stays free. Pro and its add-ons extend what you can do.
Flow Base has no trial, no expiry, no account and nothing to buy. You can read, write, search, organize and save plain Markdown files in your own folders for as long as you like. You can also read every receipt, timeline and evidence score the AI ever produced, free, forever.
If a model runs, it is part of the subscription. Proofreading, rewriting, drawing charts and diagrams from your text, and routing work to local or cloud models are Flow Pro. Flow Pro is $10 a month or $96 a year, and every install starts with 10 Pro Days. One license covers one person on their own Macs.
Flow Import brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF into Markdown. Flow Publish produces PDF, GitHub Pages, EPUB, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Each add-on is $10/month or $96/year per seat and needs Flow Pro. Add or remove it in Flow’s Billing settings. Cancelling Pro also ends its add-ons. Try every paid feature, including Import and Publish, free for 10 Pro Days. Subscribe when you're ready.
When Pro ends and you ask its AI to run, Flow says: “Your text wasn't checked. Subscribe to keep using Flow's AI features — your documents stay open and editable either way.” Here is what a lapse does not do, each line enforced in the app rather than promised on a page:
- No document locks and no read only mode
- Markdown editing and saving stay free; Import and Publish need their add-ons
- Your files stay plain Markdown in your own folders
- App updates keep arriving, including security fixes
Your license is checked on your Mac. Flow does not need a connection to use it, and it never has to check in with us to keep working.
What Flow tells us about itself
Your documents never leave your Mac for us. Your document text, your file names and what you use Flow to work on are not something we can see. That does not change.
What Flow does send, starting with version 1.8, is a short anonymized count of how Flow itself behaved: which features ran, which settings were on, and how long the model work and your review took. It is numbers about the app, never your document text, and it carries nothing that identifies your copy of Flow or ties a day back to you.
It covers one finished day at a time and never the day you are in, so the day you install Flow sends nothing at all. Flow shows you the exact text before it goes. Both switches live together in Settings ▸ Observations, under the heading What leaves this Mac, and both start on: one stops the sharing, the other stops Flow keeping the counts at all.
We turned this on by default because a tool nobody measures is a tool we improve by guessing. If you would rather we did not, one click is enough, and Flow works exactly the same either way.
Relay: the engine is free, the packs are the content
Relay Core, direct Cells, installers, schedulers and the public Cell image ship free for everyone. There is no tier that turns the free engine into a working product; direct use is complete on its own.
A Pack license unlocks the premium packs you own and keeps them current: ready-made agents, blueprints and setups we maintain for you. You are buying the upkeep, not the ability to run it. A separate Relay Host license covers managed customer Cells within its signed capacity and never makes the free path a trial.
Here is a real example of free staying free. While building the first paid pack, the Agency pack, we found the engine was missing two things: packs could not add their own triggers, and blueprints could not be scheduled. We shipped both free, for every user, in the same release that put the paid pack on sale.
If a Pack license lapses, everything you installed keeps working exactly as it did; renewal is only about the year’s new and updated packs and priority support. If a Host term ends, running Cells keep running and export and recovery stay available; new managed capacity, forward paid updates and re-download stop, and compatible critical-security fixes remain included.
Arena: a proven year, on a box you own
Arena Field Edition turns the NVIDIA DGX Spark you own into a private AI lab. It installs in one pass, proves itself on first boot with a verifiable receipt you can read, and the twelve-month window re-gates and re-receipts the box so it stays proven.
The box is yours, your data is on it, and your license works offline. If Orionfold went away tomorrow, your lab keeps running. Every release ships with a signed record of where it came from and a full parts list, and the install is checked against a fingerprint before it runs.
What we will never do
So the promise is concrete, here are the things we have decided against, on purpose, for every product:
- No database licensing. Your right to use what you own is not a row we can flip off.
- No nag banners. Relay’s command-line tools never advertise. Flow tells you one thing, only at the moment you ask its AI to run without a plan, and your documents stay open and editable either way.
- No online re-validation. The license is checked on your machine, and your software never has to check in with us to keep working. Your documents and your working data are never sent to Orionfold. Flow reaches the network only for things you can see, switch off, or whose outcome you control.
- No expiry that disables what you installed. A lapsed Flow plan leaves every document open. Installed Relay packs keep running. An Arena box keeps running.