Can you use Tour Kit without the Pro license?

Update, 15 September 2026 — the free/Pro split described below no longer exists. There is no free MIT core and paid Pro suite any more. Every package is free while you build — development, evaluation, testing, CI and preview deploys, with no feature gates — and serving Tour Kit to end users needs a one-time key: $9.99, $49.00 or $299.00 for 1, 5 or unlimited projects, under BSL 1.1. The breakdown is left up as a record of the old split. See pricing for the current model.

Yes. Tour Kit's three core packages are BUSL-1.1-licensed and source-available: free in development, evaluation, testing, and CI, with a licence key ($9.99 one-time, the same key as Pro) required in production. The free tier isn't a trial. There's no time limit, and development builds carry no watermark. In production without a key, the packages still render but layer a small unlicensed badge.

We built Tour Kit, so take everything below with that context. Every claim maps to a specific package you can inspect on GitHub, and every number comes from bundlephobia or the source code.

npm install @tour-kit/core @tour-kit/react

What is Tour Kit's free vs Pro model?

Tour Kit uses a source-available licensing model where the foundational packages (@tour-kit/core, @tour-kit/react, @tour-kit/hints) are BUSL-1.1-licensed: free for development and non-production use, with a licence key for production. Nine extended packages (analytics, checklists, surveys, announcements, media, scheduling, adoption, AI, license validation) require the same one-time $9.99 Pro license, which also covers production use of the core. Unlike SaaS onboarding tools that charge $129-$599 per month, Tour Kit's Pro is a single payment with no MAU limits, no seat limits, and no recurring fees.

Why this breakdown matters for your team

Picking the wrong tier wastes either money or developer time. Teams that buy Pro when the free packages would have been enough overpay for features they never use. Teams that stick with Free when they need analytics or checklists spend 20-40 hours rebuilding what Pro provides out of the box (at $100/hour, that's $2,000-$4,000 in developer time versus $9.99).

As of April 2026, 78% of finance decision-makers report increased scrutiny of recurring software costs (Getmonetizely, 2026). Understanding exactly what ships for free helps your team make that call without guessing.

What exactly ships in the free tier?

Tour Kit's free tier includes three BUSL-1.1-licensed npm packages totaling under 25KB gzipped. These aren't stripped-down demos. They contain the same position engine, accessibility layer, and component architecture that the Pro packages build on top of.

Here's the full breakdown:

What you can build with the free packages alone

This isn't hypothetical. The free tier covers the same use cases that tools like React Joyride (MIT, ~45KB gzipped) and Shepherd.js (AGPL, ~25KB gzipped) handle, but with a headless architecture and smaller footprint.

With @tour-kit/core + @tour-kit/react, you get:

// src/components/OnboardingTour.tsx
import { Tour, TourCard, TourCardContent, TourCardFooter,
         TourNavigation, TourOverlay, TourProgress } from '@tour-kit/react'

const steps = [
  { id: 'welcome', target: '#sidebar', content: 'Start here.' },
  { id: 'search', target: '#search-bar', content: 'Find anything.' },
  { id: 'profile', target: '#avatar', content: 'Your settings live here.' },
]

export function OnboardingTour() {
  return (
    <Tour tourId="onboarding" steps={steps}>
      <TourOverlay />
      <TourCard>
        <TourCardContent />
        <TourCardFooter>
          <TourNavigation />
          <TourProgress variant="dots" />
        </TourCardFooter>
      </TourCard>
    </Tour>
  )
}

That gives you element targeting, scroll-into-view, keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Escape, Enter), WCAG 2.1 AA focus management, and prefers-reduced-motion respect. No Pro license involved in development (production deployments need a licence key).

Add @tour-kit/hints and you get persistent feature discovery beacons that live outside the tour flow. Think pulsing dots on new features that users can dismiss individually.

Free tier capabilities at a glance

Here's what you don't need Pro for:

• Multi-step sequential tours with branching logic
• Element highlighting with configurable spotlight
• Keyboard navigation and full focus trapping
• Router-aware tours (Next.js App Router, Pages Router, React Router)
• Multi-tour registry (run different tours for different user segments)
• LocalStorage persistence (resume where the user left off)
• Custom storage adapters (cookie, sessionStorage, or your own backend)
• RTL/LTR support with automatic placement mirroring
• Headless mode (bring your own components, keep the logic)
• shadcn/ui and Tailwind compatibility via class-variance-authority variants

That's a lot. For many teams, it's enough.

What does Pro add?

The Pro license ($9.99 one-time per project) adds nine additional packages. These cover the features you'd normally build yourself after the basic tour is working: analytics, checklists, announcements, surveys, and more.

Every Pro package is optional. Install only what you need, and tree-shaking removes the rest. The architecture is modular by design: Pro packages import from @tour-kit/core but the free packages never import from Pro.

When does Pro become worth the $9.99?

The honest answer: when you'd spend more than a few hours building the equivalent yourself. Developer time at US market rates runs $75-150/hour. If @tour-kit/analytics saves you four hours of wiring up PostHog event callbacks, the math already works.

But there are specific inflection points where the free tier stops being enough:

You need analytics integration. The free packages emit tour lifecycle events (step viewed, tour completed, tour skipped), but routing those events to your analytics provider is your job. @tour-kit/analytics handles PostHog, Mixpanel, GA4, Plausible, and Amplitude with a plugin interface. Without it, you're writing callback plumbing for each provider.

You need onboarding checklists. Tours are sequential (step 1, step 2, step 3). Checklists are non-linear: users complete tasks in any order, with dependencies between them. @tour-kit/checklists handles the task dependency graph, progress calculation, and persistence. Building this from scratch takes 2-3 days for a senior React developer.

You need product announcements. Modal, toast, banner, slideout, spotlight. Five display variants with frequency rules, dismissal tracking, and queue management. That's a week of work if you're doing it right.

You need in-app surveys. NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys need scoring engines, fatigue prevention (don't survey the same user twice in a week), and context awareness (don't show a satisfaction survey during an error state). Building survey infrastructure from scratch is its own project.

If none of those apply, if you just need tours and hints, the free tier is the right choice. No asterisk.

How Tour Kit's model compares to alternatives

Tour Kit's core is source-available and fully functional. Premium features extend it without limiting the base.

Two things stand out. First, Tour Kit's free tier is more complete than most open-core offerings. AG Grid Community doesn't include row grouping or server-side row models. MUI X Community doesn't include the Date Range Picker. Tour Kit Free includes the entire tour engine, every hook, every component, every router adapter.

Second, $9.99 one-time is lower than one month of most SaaS alternatives. Appcues starts at $249/month. Over three years, that's $8,964 versus $9.99.

Appcues and Pendo are different products, to be fair. They include a visual builder, a no-code editor, and a managed backend. Tour Kit requires React developers. If your team doesn't have them, Tour Kit isn't the right tool regardless of pricing.

The licensing details that matter

The BUSL-1.1 licence on Tour Kit's source-available packages means:

• Use them free in development, evaluation, testing, CI, and any non-production environment, no key needed
• Copy, modify, and redistribute the source: the code is fully visible on GitHub
• Ship to production with a licence key ($9.99 one-time, the same key as Pro)
• No copyleft obligations (unlike Shepherd.js's AGPL, which requires you to open-source your entire application if you distribute it)
• Every version converts to MIT on its Change Date, four years after release

Pro packages use a proprietary license tied to a Polar.sh license key. One key covers one project (defined as a single deployable application). You get up to 5 domain activations per key (enough for production, staging, preview, and a couple of development environments). Localhost and *.local domains bypass activation entirely during development.

No MAU limit, no seat limit, no usage cap. $9.99 is the total cost. Updates and patches are included for the major version you purchased.

Common mistakes when choosing a tier

Buying Pro before you need it. If your app is in early development and you just need a basic onboarding tour, start with Free. You can add Pro packages later without any migration. Premature purchasing is low-cost ($9.99 isn't devastating), but it adds complexity you may not need yet.

Building Pro features from scratch to avoid the $9.99. We've seen teams spend 40+ hours rebuilding analytics integration, checklist state management, or survey fatigue prevention. At $100/hour, that's $4,000 in developer time to avoid a $9.99 purchase. Run the math before committing to DIY.

Assuming Free means limited. Tour Kit's free tier includes the full position engine, every accessibility feature, all router adapters, headless mode, and the complete component library. It's not a demo. Some teams evaluate Pro thinking they need it for basic tours when Free already covers their use case entirely.

Ignoring the AGPL on alternatives. Shepherd.js is "free" but uses the AGPL license, which requires you to open-source your entire application if you distribute it. Tour Kit's BUSL-1.1 licence is not copyleft either, so it carries no such obligation. Free doesn't always mean the same thing across libraries.

FAQ

Can I start with Free and upgrade to Pro later? Tour Kit Free and Pro are additive, not replacements. Pro packages import from @tour-kit/core, the same core you're already using. Adding @tour-kit/analytics to an existing project is npm install @tour-kit/analytics plus a provider wrapper. No migration, no breaking changes.

Does the free tier have a watermark or usage limit? In development, no: no watermark, no usage limit. In production without a licence key, the packages render normally but layer a small unlicensed badge. Add your key once and it's gone. There is never a crash or blank screen.

What happens if my Pro license expires? It doesn't expire. The $9.99 is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. You keep access to every Pro package version released under that major version. When Tour Kit releases a new major version (v2, v3), you'd purchase a new license if you want to upgrade. But v1 Pro continues working indefinitely.

Can I use Tour Kit Free in a client project I'm building for someone else? Yes. Development is free and unrestricted. The production deployment needs a licence key, and the Pro license is per-project, so the key would be tied to the client's project domain.

Is Tour Kit Free just a trial that gets worse over time? No. The free packages are actively maintained alongside Pro. Security patches, React version support (React 18 and 19), and bug fixes ship to all packages equally. We have no incentive to degrade the free tier because it's the foundation Pro builds on.

Get started with Tour Kit. The free packages cover most product tour use cases out of the box. Install them now and evaluate whether Pro features would save you enough development time to justify the $9.99.

npm install @tour-kit/core @tour-kit/react @tour-kit/hints

Full documentation: https://usertourkit.com/docs | GitHub: https://github.com/domidex01/tour-kit

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