Developer Tools · pricing
Nix pricing
Nix publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the developer tools tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, Nix pricing is free. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
Nix plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nix and NixOS | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where Nix stops being free
Nix and NixOS, Free
- LGPL-2.1 licensed, no commercial tier
- Public binary cache at cache.nixos.org
- Community support via forum, Matrix and GitHub
- Third-party paid services such as Cachix and Determinate Systems exist separately
No paid tier on record
Nix lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Nix feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Content-addressed store
- Declarative system configuration
- Atomic upgrades and rollback
- nix develop shells
- Flakes
- Nixpkgs
- Binary caches
- Home Manager
People bring Nix in for a team that wants every developer and ci runner to use byte-identical toolchains without shipping a container for local work, reproducing a research computation or a build years later from a pinned commit rather than a written recipe, managing a fleet of linux servers declaratively with atomic rollback if a deployment breaks a service, building minimal container images from precise dependency closures instead of a base image plus a package manager. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Nix are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Developer Tools
Too few developer tools tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nix (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Tilt | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Nix |
| Hookdeck | Free, then $39/month | Per month by delivered event count | - | vs Nix |
| Jitsu | Free, then $99/month | Per month by event volume | - | vs Nix |
| Ona (formerly Gitpod) | Free, then $20/month | Per month by compute unit | - | vs Nix |
| Restate | Free, then $300/month | Per month by durable action count | - | vs Nix |
| Cloud Native Buildpacks | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Nix |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Nix badges page.
Before you pay for Nix
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Nix runs on linux, macos, windows (via wsl), and is published by NixOS Foundation of Utrecht, Netherlands. The full record is on the Nix review, and the rest of the category is under best developer tools tools.
Nix pricing questions
- How much does Nix cost?
- Nix publishes a single tier, Nix and NixOS, at Free.
- Does Nix have a free plan?
- Yes. The Nix and NixOS tier costs nothing and covers lgpl-2.1 licensed, no commercial tier, public binary cache at cache.nixos.org, community support via forum, matrix and github.
- Which developer tools tools can I use without paying?
- 8 of the 8 developer tools tools listed alongside Nix have a free tier: Tilt, Hookdeck, Jitsu, Ona (formerly Gitpod), Restate.
- What am I actually paying for with Nix?
- The record lists 8 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for a team that wants every developer and ci runner to use byte-identical toolchains without shipping a container for local work, reproducing a research computation or a build years later from a pinned commit rather than a written recipe, managing a fleet of linux servers declaratively with atomic rollback if a deployment breaks a service.
- Does Nix charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Nix prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Nix against before paying?
- The closest developer tools tools in this directory are Tilt, Hookdeck, Jitsu, Ona (formerly Gitpod). Each has a side-by-side comparison with Nix covering price, platforms and features.