Licensing

Free and BoxLang+

BxLens is freeware with limits. Everything you need to see what one request did, and most of what you need to run one server, is free, including in production. BoxLang+ lifts the limits and adds the features that keep history, act on the server, read other servers and call a model.

Free is one server only. Multi server observability is BoxLang+.

This page is the one place that says what is free and what is not. It describes the current split and may change. The server checks one list, Licensing.PLUS_FEATURES, in one place, Licensing.has().

At a glance

Why BoxLang+

• History that survives a restart. Errors, reports, HTTP rollups and AI runs are saved to disk, so Monday morning still knows what happened on Saturday. Free forgets when the server stops.
• Longer and deeper. Ranges of 24 hours to 15 days, series up to 3 days, more requests in memory, and totals since first install.
• See every server. Servers that share a store folder appear in one selector. Totals add up and the p95 is merged from the histograms, not averaged. Read only, with no agent to install.
• Know what a request cost. CPU time and allocation per request, and a sample of the slow ones, so you find the request that burns the server and not only the one that waits.
• Act, with a record. Run a task, clear a cache, reap, evict or take a heap dump from the console. Admin only, and every action is in the audit log.
• Hand support a complete picture. The diagnostic bundle and log downloads in one click, secrets hidden.
• Ask the server. Lensy answers questions with the real numbers of this server, proposes actions you approve one by one, and can read the documentation through MCP servers you allow.
• Watch your agents. Runs, traces, tokens, cost, failing tools and the MCP servers you host, with what to check when something fails.
• A subscription for the whole platform. The same license unlocks the other BoxLang+ modules, and it comes with the support described on the BoxLang plans page.

Get BoxLang+

You need the bx-plus module and a license. A trial license works the same way and shows as Trial in the console. Plans and trials are on boxlang.io/plans.

1. Install bx-plus on the server that runs Lens.

   # BoxLang binary
   install-bx-module bx-plus
   
   # CommandBox
   box install bx-plus
   

2. Activate with the email of the subscription and the license key. Pick one way.

   # Command line
   boxlang module:plus activate --email "$BX_LICENSE_EMAIL" --licenseKey "$BX_LICENSE_KEY" --serverType Production
   
   # CommandBox, for example when you build a Docker image
   box boxlang cli module:bx-plus activate --email=$BX_LICENSE_EMAIL --licenseKey=$BX_LICENSE_KEY --serverType=Production
   

   // From code, once
   boxlangLicenseActivate( email = "you@company.com", licenseKey = "your-license-key", serverType = "server" );
   

   Keep the key out of source control: read it from an environment variable or a secret store. The license is a token that bx-plus refreshes by itself on the day it expires. You can refresh it by hand with boxlangLicenseRefresh() or boxlang module:plus refresh.

3. Check it. boxlang module:plus info or boxlangLicenseInfo() shows the status. In the console header the label changes to BoxLang+ active (or Trial, with the days left). Lens asks again at most every 5 minutes, so the locked items open without a restart.

   boxlang module:plus info
   

4. Turn on what you want. Some Plus features are also off until you choose them: AI needs ai.enabled, the AI page needs the bx-ai integration switched on, heap dumps need console.allowHeapDump, and the disk store needs store.enabled (on by default).

If bx-plus is missing or the license is not valid, Lens reports Free and carries on. Nothing breaks, the locked items show a BoxLang+ note.

How a locked item behaves

On Free, a locked item shows a "BoxLang+" note or chip next to it, and the server answers 403 with a message that names BoxLang+ (the AI chat answers 409). A trial or a valid license unlocks all of it. If a trial ends or a license expires, the locked features stop at the next license check. The disk store stops writing, the request history returns to 25, and request cost and the slow request sample stop being collected. Data already on disk stays on disk.

Details per feature

The audit log keeps writing on Free. There is no page that reads it, so nothing about it is gated.

The console also has an Upgrade page (until the license is BoxLang+) that lists everything above, with a link to the plans. It describes the current split and may change.

The disk store (store.enabled, on by default) writes to store.dir (default lens-data in the BoxLang home), in a subfolder for this server. It keeps data for store.retentionDays (15, at most 30), limits the whole folder to store.maxMB (500) and hands changes to the store every store.flushSeconds (30). One owner writes everything on its own thread, and each file is replaced atomically. See The store and Errors and Reports. Without the license the store settings have no effect. The bar layout file and the settings overrides file are small files for your own choices, and the settings file works on Free.

BoxLang AI (bx-ai) ships inside the module, in its modules folder, so there is nothing else to install. It is Apache 2.0 licensed. Using it from Lens still needs ai.enabled and, for the server calls, BoxLang+.

The license

BxLens ships under a BoxLang+ proprietary license, in the LICENSE file of the module. It is freeware with limits: the free features can be used without a subscription, including in production, but not redistributed or modified. The BoxLang+ features and the removal of the free limits need a BoxLang+ subscription or an active trial. The same terms apply to every Ortus BoxLang+ module, such as bx-redis. The exact text is the LICENSE file, not this page.

License states

Lens detects the state through the bx-plus module, the same way other BoxLang+ modules do. It asks the global BoxlangLicenseService whether the license is valid and whether it is a trial (isValidLicense, isTrialMode), and reads the expiry from BoxlangLicenseInfo.

The state shows in the console header.

Safe by design

• The answer is cached for 5 minutes.
• A missing, invalid or failing license check never breaks Lens. It reports Free and carries on.
• Lens makes no network call for licensing. It only talks to the bx-plus module in the same runtime.

Show a state for a demo

Set dev.license to trial, plus, expired or none to force a state. An empty value detects the real one. The harness reads the LENS_LICENSE environment variable for this:

LENS_LICENSE=trial harness/start.sh

Third-party notices

The console and the bar use Alpine.js and Phosphor Icons. Phosphor Icons are MIT licensed, the notice is in src/main/bx/assets/ICONS-LICENSE.txt.