Licensing
Every Cribl Stream download package comes with a Free license that allows for processing of up to 1 TB/day. This license requires sending anonymized Telemetry Data to Cribl.
Enterprise, Standard, and Sales Trial licenses are entitled to a defined, per-license daily ingestion volume. These licenses do not require sending telemetry metadata.
This page does not apply to Cribl.Cloud plans. For basic information about Cribl.Cloud Enterprise and Standard plans, see Cloud Pricing.
Managing Licenses – Adding and Renewing
On the Leader (or in a single-instance deployment), after submitting your newly untarred Cribl Stream software’s registration page, you can add and manage licenses at Settings > Global Settings > Licensing. Click Add License to paste in a license key provided to you by Cribl.
This applies to Cribl Stream Standard and Enterprise licenses, which must be renewed annually. Free licenses are already onboard the download package, need not be added or managed here, and do not expire.
Airgapped Deployments
If your environment does not allow internet connectivity, you’ll need to bypass the registration Web form when you deploy or upgrade Cribl Stream. To do so:
On the Leader’s (or single instance’s) host, navigate to
$CRIBL_HOME/local/cribl.Create a file named
license.yml.Paste in your license key in this format, then save the result:
licenses: - <your-license-key-here>
Expiration/Renewal Notifications
In Cribl Stream 4.3 and later, the UI will prompt you to renew your paid license by displaying banner and drawer notifications, starting 30 days before license expiration. When you see these prompts, verify your license’s expiration date and contact Cribl Sales at sales@cribl.io to renew.
Beyond these default notifications, you can configure custom License‑Expiration Notifications. You can send these to PagerDuty, or to other external services via webhook.
Exemptions from License Quotas
Cribl does not require a separate license for sending data from Cribl Stream to Cribl Stream, such as sending from one Worker Group/Fleet managed by Leader Node A to a different Worker Group/Fleet managed by Leader Node B. In such situations, the same license used on Leader Node A can be used on Leader Node B.
Data generated by Cribl Internal Sources normally does not count against your ingestion quota.
If you are connecting Workers/Edge Nodes in a Cribl Stream Cloud hybrid deployment, you are granted additional exemptions to prevent double billing:
- Data transferred between Cribl Stream Workers via the Cribl HTTP and Cribl TCP Sources does not count against your ingestion quota.
- Data sent from Cribl Edge’s Cribl HTTP and Cribl TCP Destinations to Cribl Stream is counted against quota only in Cribl Edge.
- Data generated by Datagens does not count against your ingestion quota.
- Dropped events do not count against your ingestion quota.
License Types
Cribl offers several Cribl Stream license types including Enterprise, Standard, and Free. For a current list of available license types and a detailed comparison of what’s included in each, see Cribl Pricing.
Combining License Types
Multiple license types can coexist on an instance. However, only a single type of license can be effective at any one time. When multiple types coexist, the following method of resolution is used:
- If there are any unexpired Enterprise or Standard licenses – use only these licenses to compute the effective license.
- Else, if there are any Sales Trial licenses – use only Sales Trial licenses to compute the effective license.
- Else, if there exists a Free license – use only the Free license to compute the effective license.
License Expiration
When an Enterprise or Standard license expires, you can remove the old license to fall back to the Sales Trial or Free type. An expired Sales Trial license cannot fall back to a Free license.
To delete your expired license:
- Select Settings then Licensing.
- Locate your expired license, and click Delete license.
- Restart the Leader.
Upon expiration of a paid license, if there is no fallback license, Cribl Stream will backpressure and block all incoming data.
Licensing in Distributed Deployments
With licenses that limit the number of Worker Processes/Edge Nodes, Cribl Stream will attempt to balance or rebalance Worker Processes (threads) as evenly as possible across all licensed Worker Nodes.
You configure licensing only on the Leader Node. (See Managing Licenses – Adding and Renewing.) The Leader will push license information down to Worker Groups as part of the heartbeat (Stream, 
Edge). There is no need to configure or store licenses directly on Worker Nodes.
Telemetry Data
A Free license requires sharing of telemetry metadata with Cribl. Cribl uses this metadata to help us understand how to improve the product and prioritize new features.
Telemetry payloads are sent from all Cribl Stream nodes (Leader and Workers), to an endpoint located at https://cdn.cribl.io/telemetry/.
Testing the Telemetry Endpoint’s Connectivity
To manually test connectivity to the telemetry endpoint, especially if you are needing to configure a proxy, you can use the following command:
$ curl https://cdn.cribl.io/telemetry/
Expected response:
cribl /// living the stream!
If you get a 302 response code, check whether you’ve omitted the URL’s trailing /.
Disabling Telemetry and Live Help
With an Enterprise or Standard license, you have the option to disable telemetry sharing from on-prem Cribl Stream. With a Free license, disabling telemetry will cause Cribl Stream to block inbound traffic within 24 hours.
If you would like an exception to disable telemetry in order to deploy in your environment, please contact Cribl Sales at sales@cribl.io, and we will work with you to issue licenses on a case-by-case basis.
Once you have received a license that removes the telemetry requirement, you can disable telemetry in Cribl Stream’s UI at Settings > Global Settings > System > General Settings > Upgrade & Share Settings > Share telemetry with Cribl. Set the toggle to No.
Metadata Shared Through Telemetry
Your Cribl Stream instance shares metadata with Cribl per interval (roughly, every minute).
Details sent for nodes in any mode:
- Version
- OS Distribution/Version
- Kernel Version
- Instance’s GUID
- License ID
- Earliest, Latest Time
- Number of Events In and Out, overall and by Source type and Destination type
- Number of Bytes In and Out, overall and by Source type and Destination type
- Number of Open, Closed, Active Connections
- Number of Routes
- Number of Pipelines
- Runtime Environment Indicators (AWS and Kubernetes)
Additional details sent for Leader nodes (when Cribl isn’t sending managed node data):
- Runtime Environment
- OS Distribution / Version
- Version
- Kernel Version
How We Use Telemetry Data
With telemetry enabled, Cribl software sends usage data directly to Cribl. We securely store and encrypt this data on Cribl-managed servers, with restricted access.
Cribl fully anonymizes and aggregates this usage data in our systems of analysis. There, we use the aggregated metrics to improve Cribl products and services by analyzing circumstances around disruptions, opportunities for ingest efficiencies, and ways to optimize performance. Access is restricted to only those Cribl employees and contractors who require anonymized data to perform their jobs.
Cribl collects License IDs only to ensure that all data is being sent by a Cribl product. These IDs cannot be used to personally identify any user of Cribl software or Cribl cloud services.
For further details, see the Cribl Privacy Policy.
Licensing FAQ
How do I check my license type, restrictions, and/or expiration date?
Open Cribl Stream’s Settings > Global Settings > Licensing page to see these details.
How can I track my actual data ingestion volume over the last 30 days?
Use the dashboard at Monitoring > System > Licensing to review your license consumption. For higher-fidelity metrics, you can enable the Cribl Internal Source’s CriblMetrics option to forward metrics to your metrics Destination of choice, and run a report on cribl.total.in_bytes.
How does Cribl enforce license limits?
If your data throughput exceeds your license quota:
Free and Standard licenses enforce data ingestion quotas through limits on the number of Worker Groups/Fleets and Worker/Edge Node Processes.
Enterprise license keys turn off all enforcement.
When an Enterprise or Standard license expires, Cribl Stream will attempt to fall back to a trial or free license, or – only if that fails – will block incoming data. For details, see Combining License Types.
I’m using LogStream 2.3.0 or higher, with its “permanent, Free” license. Why is LogStream claiming an expired license, and blocking inputs?
This can happen if you’ve upgraded from a LogStream version below 2.3.0, in which you previously entered this earlier version’s Free (time-limited) license key. To remedy this, go to Settings > Global Settings > Licensing, click to select and expand your expired Free license, and then click Delete license. Cribl Stream will fall back to the new, permanent Free license behavior, and will restore throughput.
If I pull data from compressed S3 buckets, is my license quota applied to the compressed or the uncompressed size of the file objects?
To measure license consumption, Cribl Stream uses the uncompressed size.
Troubleshooting Resources
Cribl University offers a Troubleshooting Criblet on Switching from Free to Enterprise. To follow the direct course link, first log into your Cribl University account. (To create an account, click the Sign up link. You’ll need to click through a short Terms & Conditions presentation, with chill music, before proceeding to courses – but Cribl’s training is always free of charge.) Once logged in, check out other useful Troubleshooting Criblets and Advanced Troubleshooting short courses.