Licensing for software that wants to stay simple.

Sell a key. Paste a key. Keep the app.

Bitter License is the control plane for one-time software sales, device seats, entitlements, and tiny synced app state. The product stays simple for the buyer. The ownership surface stays real for the founder.

Open app.bitterlicense.comRead the shape

Customer zero is Arugula. The product is being shaped around real licensing, sync, and device-control needs instead of a generic SaaS template.

Shape

Three primitives. No extra religion.

Bitter License is not trying to be billing, analytics, CRM, support, and a customer data warehouse. It owns the narrow layer after checkout where software needs to decide who can use what, where, and with which small durable state.

01 / Key

Sell a simple key.

One-time purchase or free sync key. The buyer pastes it into the app and moves on. No ceremony-first SaaS identity layer.

02 / Seat

Control devices and entitlements.

Track which machines belong to a customer, what the key unlocks, and when a seat should be rotated or revoked.

03 / State

Keep a tiny box of app state.

Corrections, templates, settings, snippets, or prompts. Small durable state that follows the key without turning into a general cloud drive.

Who It Fits

Built for software that should feel like software.

  • Mac utilities that want a one-time unlock instead of a subscription maze.
  • CLI and agent tools that need device trust and small synced state.
  • Small software products that want ownership after checkout, not just a Stripe webhook.

What Makes It Different

More than activation. Less than account sprawl.

  • The key can be the account. No forced password flow on day one.
  • Licensing and tiny app state live in the same surface.
  • Built for one-time software pricing, not only recurring SaaS plans.
  • Designed to stay inspectable, low-burden, and founder-operable.

Bitter-Aligned

A durable layer, not a decorative wrapper.

The point is to own the entitlement surface, protect value capture, and make the product callable from any front door: native app, browser, CLI, or agent. That is why Bitter License exists as a real property instead of private glue code hidden behind another app.