Editions
Context Engine comes in two editions. Same platform, built for a different scale.
Every edition shares the same codebase, connector library, and visual pipeline designer. Your license key determines which features are active.
- Editions
- Foundation · Enterprise
- Codebase
- One, shared
- Features set by
- Licence key
- Deployment shape
- Chosen separately
Foundation
Adds the Unified Namespace, the Audit Trail, access control, SSO, API Clients, and Custom UNS Infrastructure (the TimescaleDB historian). Built for production single-node deployments.
Enterprise
Everything in Foundation, plus multiple workspaces, Advanced Access Control and multi-node Kubernetes. For regulated, multi-site operations.
Compare Editions
| Foundation | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | ||
| Scale | Single node | Multi-node, HA/DR |
| Deployment | Binary and Docker | Kubernetes |
| Historian | Pebble or TimescaleDB | TimescaleDB |
| MQTT broker | Built in | Built in, served by every UNS replica |
| Connectors | All | All |
| Features | ||
| Unified Namespace (UNS) | Yes | Yes |
| Audit Trail | Yes | Yes |
| Access Control | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Access Control | No | Yes |
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | Yes | Yes |
| API Clients | Yes | Yes |
| Custom UNS Infrastructure (TimescaleDB historian) | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple Workspaces | No | Yes |
- No edition limits pipeline executions or how long topic history is kept. Any edition can keep a topic's history for up to 32 days.
- Approvals (human in the loop) is an add-on that can be added to a license of either edition.
- The Demo Plant is an add-on for demos and education. No edition includes it by default; the free trial does.
- App Studio is an add-on in release 3.0 as Beta. No edition includes it by default; it can be added to a license of either edition, and a trial licence can include it. The free trial a fresh install runs does not.
- Advanced Access Control (custom roles, groups, the granular feature roles, sharing, stewardship, access requests, deny rules and time-bound grants) is available in Enterprise and in the free trial. It is not in Foundation.
- The free trial runs the Evaluation edition: the features in the table above for 2 hours, with up to 20 pipelines, 20 connections and 5 users, and the semantic layer for up to 100 topics with a meaning.
- The semantic layer is in Foundation and Enterprise with no limit on topics with a meaning. If a licence without it takes over (it expires, or another licence is applied), the meanings already given keep translating values and raising alarms, and a strict branch keeps refusing values that break its rules, but nothing in the semantic layer can be changed until a licence with it is applied again.
See Architecture for how Context Engine runs as a single binary or on Kubernetes.
Upgrading
Upgrading is instant and zero-downtime. Go to Admin › License, paste your new license key, and submit. The edition changes immediately, with no restart and no data migration. Your pipelines, dashboards, connections, and user accounts stay exactly as they are.
For fleet deployments, upload a master license to Fleet Manager and it automatically distributes per-instance entitlements.
Start with a free trial: no license key needed. On first start, MaestroHub runs a 2-hour trial of the Evaluation edition: the features in the table above, with up to 20 pipelines, 20 connections, and 5 users. See Licensing & Activation for details.