Access & billing

Three ways in. Two of them cost nothing.

1 · Free, right now

No account, no card, no sign-up. Nothing to request.

uv tool install --force mcpgawk && mcpgawk

That gets you scan, verify, the guard hook, decide, mcpgawk changes and the panel — free forever, not a trial. Go to the Quickstart.

2 · A beta seat, for the paid capabilities

The gateway is still in beta, so you ask for a seat rather than buy one. It costs nothing while the beta runs, and your key carries an expiry date — every gated run prints it, so you always know how long you have.

Request a seat at mcp.gawk.dev/trial.html.
You get back one thing: your key, by email. No GitHub account, no invite, nothing to build. The key alone fetches the paid capabilities as a pre-built, checksum-verified package:
```
uv tool install --force mcpgawk
mcpgawk login 'YOUR-KEY'
```

The grant announces itself: mcpgawk status tells you it is a beta grant and when it expires, rather than quietly behaving like a paid licence.

3 · Paying for it

Subscribe at the pricing page, or go straight to mcp.gawk.dev/subscribe. Payment is handled by Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record, so they handle VAT and invoicing. The price is shown at checkout; 7-day free trial, cancel any time.
Your licence key arrives by email from Lemon Squeezy. That is the only email, and there is no repository to join.
Activate on any machine — install once, then log in with your key:
```
uv tool install --force mcpgawk
mcpgawk login 'YOUR-LICENCE-KEY'
mcpgawk status
```
On a free install, login fetches the paid engine as a checksum-verified package, installs it where mcpgawk already runs, and writes the key to ~/.gawk/config.json at mode 0600, so you do not have to export it in every shell.
Check it took. mcpgawk status names the tier. mcpgawk enforce status should no longer exit 3.

Prefer to check before touching a terminal? The activation page verifies a key is live and walks the same steps, including the Windows path.

If activation fails

What happened	What it means
A paid command exits `3`	The paid engine is not installed on this machine. Run `mcpgawk login 'YOUR-KEY'` to fetch it, then try again.
The key is rejected	Check it on the activation page first. If it is live there and rejected locally, tell us — that is a real defect.
It worked, then stopped	Your beta key has an expiry date and says so in `mcpgawk status`. A subscription that lapsed does the same.

Cancelling and refunds

Cancel any time from the Lemon Squeezy portal linked in your purchase email; access runs to the end of the period. See refunds and terms. Cancelling never disables the free tier, which is not licence-gated at all.