Am I eligible for a free license?

How DFIRe decides who qualifies for a free license, and how to ask.

The short version: Free licenses are for individual, educational, and community use, and for smaller organizations doing genuine public-interest work without the means to license commercial tooling.

If DFIRe is part of how your organization runs its operations, that's a licensed deployment, and we keep it affordable, including for small teams.

Nothing here is a guarantee. It's an invitation to get in touch and tell us about your use.

Worth asking about a free license if you are

An individual. An independent researcher, a practitioner sharpening their skills, or someone exploring incident response on their own.
A student. Using DFIRe for coursework, a thesis, a lab, or self-study.
An educator or training program. Teaching incident response with DFIRe as part of a school, university, or other non-commercial program, where it's used for learning rather than live casework.
A small charity or non-profit carrying out public-interest work without a budget for commercial security tooling.
A community or volunteer effort. A volunteer-run CERT, an open-source project's security response, or a similar not-for-gain group.

The common thread: the work is individual, educational, or community-driven, and it isn't part of a funded operation. None of these is an automatic yes; they're the situations we're glad to hear from.

A licensed deployment is the right fit if

DFIRe supports your operations. Your team uses it, or would use it, to run real investigations or incident response as part of its work. This is what the license is for, and it's priced to be reachable for a team that does this work: one fee, unlimited users, unlimited cases.
You're building an offering around DFIRe. If DFIRe is part of a product or service you provide, for example a commercial training course or a service you charge clients for, that's a licensed use, regardless of whether the activity itself looks educational.
You're a small team or working within a tight budget. You may not need a free license so much as a fair one. Tell us about your team and we'll find a number that fits. This is common, and we almost always can.

The same organization can fall on both sides

Eligibility follows the use, not the name on the door.

One organization might have an instructor teaching an incident response course with DFIRe and, elsewhere in the same building, a security team that wants to run its actual incident response on DFIRe. The first might be a good fit for a free license; the second is a licensed deployment. A free license granted for one use doesn't cover the other.

A large organization isn't ruled out for the right use, and being a single team doesn't make every use free. We look at the specific thing you want to do.

Free licenses may come with conditions

A free license is usually scoped to the use it's granted for. Depending on the situation, that can mean:

A cap on the number of users.
Individual use only, rather than a shared or networked deployment.
A requirement to stay on online licensing, so the terms can be kept in view.

We'll be clear about any conditions if we grant one, and if your needs grow beyond them, a full license is the way to expand.

Logo in exchange for a license

In some cases we're glad to provide a free or reduced license in exchange for showing your organization's logo on our website as a DFIRe user. If that's something you'd be open to, mention it when you get in touch and we'll see if it's a fit.

How to ask

Email contact@dfire.fi and tell us a little about yourself or your organization and what you'd like to use DFIRe for. A few honest sentences is plenty.

Free licenses are granted at our discretion, case by case, and getting in touch is a request rather than a qualification met.

If a free license fits, we'll set you up, with any conditions spelled out. If a small-team or discounted license makes more sense, we'll say so and try to land somewhere that works.