Kirby does not charge until the site is public

The Kirby homepage looks finished. "Kirby is the CMS that adapts to you." A Panel of projects. Team photos. Try now. Kirby 5 in the banner. Bounce there and you will think you bought an admin.

The developers page is less polite. A `content` tree. `1_photography`. An `album.txt` beside the pictures. The numbered prefix is the sort order. The folder name is the URL. Open the file in any editor. There is no `wp_posts` table waiting behind a login. If Git can see it, it is the site.

Stay in control of your data. Kirby stores your data in files and folders. Universally accessible on all operating systems and editable with any text editor.

— getkirby.com/for/developers

Neckargemünd, a company named after a folder

Content Folder GmbH & Co. KG sits at Böhmer Weg 22 in Neckargemünd, up the river from Heidelberg. The general manager is Bastian Allgeier. The commercial register is Mannheim. Copyright on the contact page runs 2009–2026. EuroMakers files the listing under Developer Tools because you run it on a server you bring. The company name is the product: a folder of content you host yourself.

Kirby is not free software. The PHP is on GitHub. You can read it. You can run it locally for as long as you need. The commercial licence has kept the shop open since 2012. Their line, not ours:

You only need to pay when you're actually going live with a Kirby project.

— getkirby.com/for/developers

That is the opposite of a SaaS meter. No seat. No month. A one-time licence for one installation on one domain. On the buy page today that is €99 for Kirby Basic and €349 for Kirby Enterprise, plus VAT. Basic is only for end customers whose yearly revenue or funding is under €1 million. If you are an agency, it is the client's number, not yours. Three years of feature updates start when you activate. After that you may keep running the last version you have, or pay for more years — €59 Basic, €249 Enterprise. Nothing renews itself.

The licence hub will notice

Here is the claim a directory card cannot give you. On 2 July 2026, Kirby 5.5 shipped free development licences. Bastian Allgeier posted it on the Kirby forum the same morning. Local installs and staging servers can drop the Panel banner without buying. Staging has a condition. The install has to sit behind a password, or not be reachable from the public internet.

Our license hub will check this on registration and the Panel will then reevaluate this regularly.

— Bastian Allgeier, Kirby forum, 2 July 2026

The GitHub release is colder. If the site is not local, Kirby regularly checks that the development install is not publicly accessible. The EULA dated 2 July 2026 says the same: they may check on renewal. A live URL you still call "staging" is a production licence. They built a check that treats that as a fact.

Kirby 5, shipped 24 June 2025, put unsaved Panel edits on the server instead of in the browser. Editors can preview someone else's draft. Sharing a preview link does not require a posts table. Collaboration moved into the filesystem. The July 2026 licence work is the same instinct applied to money: the public URL is the event.

Who should not buy it

Buy something else if you need a shop plugin universe, a hosted canvas with no server, or a database as the source of truth for a hundred thousand rows. Kirby will talk to a database if you make it. The product you are paying for is still files.

• You want WooCommerce, a theme shop, and a plugin for every Tuesday. Wrong product.
• You want a hosted visual editor marketers log into without PHP. Look elsewhere.
• Your client already turns over more than €1 million and you are about to tick Basic. That box is about them, and they ask you to confirm it.
• You planned to leave the site on a public URL and call it development. They check.
• You need a CMS that bills itself every month so you can cancel. Kirby sells a launch. After three years, staying current is another decision, not an auto-debit.

If you want content in Git, a Panel your client can use, and a bill that starts when the domain goes live — start with the listing, then read the buy FAQ and the 5.5 notes. The homepage will show you an admin. The licence hub will ask whether anyone else can see the URL.

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