Licensing and trial
What the free tier includes, what Pro adds, how the trial works, and how device activation behaves.
Monghoul is free to use, with a Pro tier for the heavier features. Eligible devices get a 14-day Pro trial, once, with no payment and no signup.
What Free includes
Free is a usable IDE rather than a demo. There is no tab limit and no time limit. Free needs no account. A new install, a deactivated install and a lapsed license all run on Free.
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Saved connections | 8 |
| Favorite queries | 5 |
| Pinned collections | 5 |
| Authentication | No auth, username and password, SCRAM-SHA-1, SCRAM-SHA-256 |
| Schema analysis | 500 sampled documents per run |
| Database Map scans | 500 sampled documents per collection |
| Generated documents | 500 per run |
| Operation log | The 250 most recent entries are readable |
The operation-log figure is a reading window, not a retention setting. Nothing is deleted because of the tier, and your own retention setting still decides what is kept.
Free is not limited on open tabs, split panels, sidebar folders, bulk delete, or JSON, Extended JSON, NDJSON and CSV import and export. A capacity limit blocks new items only. Items above a limit, for example after a downgrade, stay listed and usable. Only the next new one is refused.
What Pro adds
Pro removes the capacity and soft limits above, and adds charts, the Cluster Monitor, user and role management, and AI access.
It also adds detached windows, document comparison, custom themes, Excel import and export, collection copy, and database-level import and export. The four remaining authentication methods, X.509, LDAP, Kerberos and AWS IAM, are Pro as well.
Pro also keeps the Database Map history: the fields of each scan, and what is newly seen since an earlier scan. The map itself is on every tier.
The data generator’s own ceiling of 100,000 documents per run still applies on Pro, and so does a Database Map scan’s ceiling of 1,000 documents per collection.
When Pro access ends, nothing you made under Pro is deleted:
- Connections, favorites and pins above the Free caps stay and stay usable.
- Custom themes stay listed and selectable. Creating or saving one needs Pro.
- A chart keeps the configuration saved with its tab 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 configuration is kept, and its activity trail stays readable.
- The Database Map scans already kept stay stored, and no new one is kept until Pro is active again.
Trial
The trial unlocks every Pro feature for 14 days. The license server decides if a device is eligible. A device that already used its trial, or whose eligibility cannot be checked, is not offered one. The license view shows TRIAL with the start date, the expiry date and the days left. The footer badge shows PRO. The trial ends at its expiry date without a server call, and the app returns to Free and says so. After a reinstall, a trial that the server still counts as active is restored.
Licences and devices
A licence is sold monthly, annually, or as a lifetime purchase, and is active on up to 3 devices.
You activate it by pasting the key from the purchase email into the license view, in the format
XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. The monghoul://activate-license?license_key= link activates a key too. The
footer badge, FREE or PRO, opens the license view. On Free it turns amber when any capacity is at
80% or more, and red when one is full.
A device that has been inactive for 30 days is released automatically when another device needs a slot. To move to another machine, choose Deactivate on this device on the old one and enter the same key on the new one. This returns the install to Free and does not cancel a subscription.
The app checks a licence at startup and every six hours while it runs. A revocation check covers lifetime licenses too. A check that cannot reach the licence server does not remove access you already have, and Pro survives 30 days of them before it reverts to Free. The 30 days run from the last check that confirmed your licence, and a check that succeeds starts them again. A licence record that was altered, or copied from another machine, is not honored, and the app starts on Free.
An inactive subscription gets a three-day grace period from its recorded expiry date before it reverts to Free, while a revoked licence reverts at once. A subscription that becomes active again restores Pro at the next start without a new key. The license view names the cause of a lapse: a refund, a chargeback, a cancellation, a payment failure, an expiry or the end of a trial.
A lifetime licence includes every future update, with no time limit, and activates on any version.
How limits are presented
A gated menu item, view button, format, authentication choice or setting identifies its Pro requirement where you meet it, rather than failing when you use it.
An input with a soft limit shows the Free maximum instead of accepting a value it is going to reject.