Free and Pro
What the free tier includes forever, which limits are hard and which are soft, and exactly what a Pro licence adds.
The free tier is not a trial that expires. It stays free, and it is a usable MongoDB client on its own. Pro removes the capacity limits and adds the features listed below.
Separately from both, every eligible device gets a 14-day Pro trial, once, with no payment and no signup. Open the licence view and click Start Free Trial. The trial unlocks every Pro feature. The footer badge reads PRO. The licence view reads TRIAL and shows the start date, the expiry date and the days left. A device that already used its trial, or whose eligibility cannot be checked, is not offered one. A trial that ends returns the install to Free.
What free includes
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Saved connections | 8 |
| Favorite queries | 5 |
| Pinned collections | 5 |
| Open tabs | No limit |
| Authentication | No auth, username and password, SCRAM-SHA-1, SCRAM-SHA-256 |
| Schema analysis | 500 sampled documents |
| Database Map scans | 500 sampled documents per collection |
| Generated test documents | 500 |
| Operation log entries | 250 |
Free is not limited on open tabs, split panels, sidebar folders, bulk delete, or JSON, Extended JSON, NDJSON and CSV import and export.
Schema analysis, Database Map scans and generated documents are soft limits: the feature works, and it stops at that size. Inputs that have one show you the free maximum rather than letting you type a number they will reject. Pro still caps generated documents at 100,000.
The operation log works differently. Nothing is deleted because of the tier, and your own retention setting still decides what is kept. Free reads the newest 250 entries and Pro reads the whole store. That window is 250 entries in total rather than 250 for each filter, so filtering narrows what you can see instead of reaching further back.
Where you see your tier
The footer shows a FREE or PRO badge. Click it to open the licence view. On Free, the badge turns amber when any capacity is at 80 percent or more, and red when one is full. Its tooltip names the three counts against their maximums. The licence view shows a bar for each capacity, and the bar turns amber from 80 percent and red at the limit.
A Pro feature has a PRO badge, or “(PRO)” after its name in a list. Click it to open the licence view. When you try to add a connection, favorite or pin at the limit, Monghoul warns you and opens the licence view instead.
What Pro adds
Pro removes every limit above, and adds:
- Charts, six types with stacking, dual axis and PNG export
- Cluster monitoring, live metrics, replica set health, slow queries and the profiler
- User and role management
- AI access, the built-in MCP server with its permission and approval model
- Detached windows, document comparison, and custom themes
- Excel import and export, cross-instance collection copy, and database-level import and export
- Four more authentication methods: X.509, LDAP, Kerberos and AWS IAM
- Database Map history: the fields of each scan, and what is newly seen since an earlier scan. The map itself is free.
Anything gated says so where you find it, rather than failing when you press it.
How a licence behaves
Pro is sold monthly, annually, or as a one-time lifetime licence. A licence activates on up to 3 devices.
- Devices you no longer use can be freed. A device inactive for 30 days can be removed automatically, and you can deactivate the current device without cancelling the subscription.
- Subscriptions validate at startup, and a network failure does not take away access you already have. Being offline on a plane does not downgrade you. Pro survives 30 days of checks that cannot reach the licence server, and reverts to free after that until one succeeds.
- An inactive subscription gets a three-day grace period before reverting to free. A revoked licence reverts immediately.
- A lifetime licence includes every future update, with no time limit, and activates on any version.
Moving a licence to a new machine, and what to do when activation fails, are covered in Licence activation.
What happens to your data if you stop paying
Nothing. Your connections, queries, tabs and themes are in a local database on your machine. Falling back to free re-applies the capacity limits to what you can create from then on; it does not delete what you have. Only the next new item is refused.
- Connections, favorites and pins above the free limits stay listed and usable.
- Custom themes stay listed and selectable. You cannot create a new one.
- A chart keeps its saved setup and draws again when Pro is active.
- A Cluster Monitor tab stays open, stops polling, and resumes when Pro is active.
- AI access switches off. Its settings are kept, and the activity trail stays readable.
- Database Map scans already kept stay stored, and no new one is kept until Pro is active again.
To start again, see Licence activation. A subscription that becomes active again restores Pro at the next start without a new key.