Operating Systems · pricing
NixOS pricing
NixOS publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the operating systems tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, NixOS 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
NixOS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NixOS | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where NixOS stops being free
NixOS, Free
- No licence fee or registration
- All packages and channels
- Binary cache hosted by the project
- Community support via Discourse and Matrix
No paid tier on record
NixOS lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full NixOS 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
- Declarative configuration
- Rollbacks by generation
- Reproducible builds
- Nixpkgs
- Development shells
- Home Manager
People bring NixOS in for fleets where every machine must be provably identical rather than approximately identical, build and ci infrastructure that has to reproduce an old toolchain exactly, years later, developer workstations where each project pins its own compiler and library versions, servers where an unattended upgrade must be revertible at boot without a restore. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to NixOS are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Operating Systems
Too few operating systems 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NixOS (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Alpine Linux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
| Rocky Linux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
| AlmaLinux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
| openSUSE | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
| Qubes OS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
| OpenWrt | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NixOS |
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 NixOS badges page.
Before you pay for NixOS
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.
NixOS runs on x86-64, arm64, wsl, containers, cloud images, macos via nix package manager, and is published by NixOS Foundation of Netherlands. The full record is on the NixOS review, and the rest of the category is under best operating systems tools.
NixOS pricing questions
- How much does NixOS cost?
- NixOS publishes a single tier, NixOS, at Free.
- Does NixOS have a free plan?
- Yes. The NixOS tier costs nothing and covers no licence fee or registration, all packages and channels, binary cache hosted by the project.
- Which operating systems tools can I use without paying?
- 7 of the 8 operating systems tools listed alongside NixOS have a free tier: Alpine Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, openSUSE, Qubes OS.
- What am I actually paying for with NixOS?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for fleets where every machine must be provably identical rather than approximately identical, build and ci infrastructure that has to reproduce an old toolchain exactly, years later, developer workstations where each project pins its own compiler and library versions.
- Does NixOS 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 NixOS 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 NixOS against before paying?
- The closest operating systems tools in this directory are Alpine Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, openSUSE. Each has a side-by-side comparison with NixOS covering price, platforms and features.