Air-gapped software monetization

What you can enforce with no network

In an air gap the license check itself still works: the vendor signs a file, and the software verifies the signature with a public key it ships with. No callback is needed, so nothing looks like traffic to an outside server. Established on-premises products enforce exactly this much. HashiCorp Vault Enterprise, for example, will not start, restart or unseal a version released after the license expires. What they rarely enforce offline is quantity.

Carcha Seal works the same way. The app checks an Ed25519-signed lease on the device, and a computer that never reaches the server is activated by file: the app writes a request file, the customer uploads it on any connected device, and the license file that comes back works only on that computer. These pricing terms hold with no network:

Pricing term	Enforced offline	How
Seats	Yes	Each license file is bound to one computer, and seat limits apply as they do online. A deactivation file gives the seat back.
Features and editions	Yes	The lease lists the licensed features. Code or data encrypted for a feature opens only with a license that includes it.
Term or subscription	Yes	A license file lasts the policy's offline days and never past the license expiry.
Updates included until a date	Yes	The lease carries the end of updates, so the app can refuse versions released after it.
Floating or concurrent seats	No	Not in version 1.
Usage or consumption	No	Seal has no signed usage report yet; see usage-based pricing.

The Electron, C++ and .NET SDKs all support offline activation and feature decryption, and the SDK flags a clock that has been turned back. The details are in Offline license verification and the documentation.

Renewals and upgrades: every sale is a file round trip

Revenue after the first sale is where air gaps cost the most. A renewal, an extra seat or a new module cannot reach the customer's machine by itself, so someone carries a file. Thales Sentinel LDK asks the customer to email the machine's C2V file with the renewal order. GitLab's offline licenses do not sync additional purchases, and each one needs a new license file.

Carcha Seal has the same round trip, kept short. The customer uploads a request file on the license server's offline page and gets the new license file at once. Plan for it in your pricing: annual terms with a renewal date the customer's team expects work better than monthly ones in a network where every renewal crosses on removable media.

When the customer runs many machines inside one network, the license server can run there too: a private image under a written agreement with Carcha Labs. It renews its own server license by the same request and license file exchange, so it never calls home. See self-hosted servers.

Usage-based pricing without telemetry

Metered pricing needs usage numbers, and an air-gapped network sends none. Vendors that sell on usage fall back to reports the customer prepares by hand, backed by contract:

GitLab asks offline customers to provide usage data manually every month, by email.
HashiCorp offers manual utilization reporting for Vault, intended primarily for air-gapped environments; the license agreement sets how often.
Mistral AI, for models on customer infrastructure, requires quarterly reports, allows one audit a year on ten business days' notice, and may charge fees for unauthorized use and require copies to be destroyed.
Splunk does not switch off search for license stacks of 100 GB or more after repeated overages, and adds: “Your legal obligations remain unchanged.”
Thales Sentinel LDK states that usage data for applications that run offline or with detached licenses is not currently collected.

A few products make offline usage verifiable. Reprise RLM authenticates its report logs and names post-use billing as their purpose. Microsoft's Azure AI disconnected containers write usage records to a local volume, report them through an endpoint, and are sold on a calendar-year commitment charged in full up front.

Carcha Seal does not produce signed usage reports yet. For an air-gapped customer, price on what the license enforces (seats, features and term) or on a prepaid commitment, and keep usage in the contract.

Models and containers

On-premises AI is mostly sold by contract today. One documented exception ties the license to the files: in Azure AI disconnected containers, license files are used as keys to decrypt certain files inside each container image. Distribution channels leave protection to the vendor. The US DoD's Iron Bank container registry answers that it does not support license keys or any other method to protect your IP, and that you must bring your own.

Carcha Seal's feature encryption gives the same shape to any file: model weights, templates or code encrypted for a feature open only on a device with a valid license for it. That makes a copied file useless without a license. It does not stop a licensed user who already has the decrypted weights in memory; see limits.

Updates and the EU Cyber Resilience Act

Selling into the EU adds a duty that air gaps make harder. Under the Cyber Resilience Act the support period is at least five years, or the product's expected use time when that is shorter, and each security update must stay available for at least ten years after it is issued, or for the rest of the support period if that is longer. In an air gap those updates cross on removable media.

A paid updates window and these duties meet in the license. Carcha Seal's lease carries the end of updates, so the app knows which releases a customer has paid for. Seal does not package signed offline update bundles yet. See Carcha Seal and the Cyber Resilience Act.

What offline monetization cannot do

Revoke at once. An offline application cannot immediately discover a later block, renewal, feature change or device removal. A license file works until its offline days run out, so shorter offline periods mean more renewals and a shorter window.
Trust the clock. A signed file cannot tell whether the device's clock is correct. Seal flags a clock turned back by more than a day, which narrows the problem but does not remove it.
Stop someone who edits the app. A signature stops forged licenses, not a patched binary. Encrypting feature code makes a patched app useless for that feature.
Protect weights from a licensed user. Once a model is decrypted on the customer's hardware, licensing cannot stop that user from copying it.
Count usage. Offline usage stays a report the customer sends, until signed usage reports exist.

Offline license verification · Moving from Sentinel LDK · Try the live demo

Sources

Each page was checked on 8 November 2026.

Air-gapped software monetization: getting paid for software that never goes online