Do I need a subscription to get a license key?

Serverless Framework
1

Do I need a subscription to get a license key?

I’m thinking of starting for free, but when I try to get a license key from Serverless
I’m asked for a subscription.

I want to start using it for free first.

Is a subscription necessary, but do I actually need one?

2

Hey there. License keys are not required to use Serverless Framework V4. You can use the command serverless login or make use of Access Keys which is the tab next to License Keys in Serverless Dashboard settings if you need a headless log in.

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3

Thank you for your responce.

Is it correct to issue and use an access key for CICD pipelines as well?
(Because you can log in and run headless with an access key.)
I don’t really understand the difference between an access key and a license key.

4

Access Keys and License Keys are similar but have some differences.

TLDR:

  • If you plan on using features of Serverless Dashboard such as Providers, Parameters, CI/CD, etc, or are a free user, you should use Access Keys.
  • If all you will ever want is to ensure that your deployments are correctly attributed to your org and you never want to use the other features of Serverless Dashboard, then use License Keys

Access Keys:

  • Were a mechanism originally created for users of Serverless Dashboard prior to V4’s release to allow for deployments via headless environments such as CI/CD
  • Are created against the user and not the org. If that user is removed from the org or their account deleted the key will fail. Other users in the org cannot see the access key created by another user
  • Allow the use of the org and app properties in the serverless.yml to connect to Serverless Dashboard for features such as Providers and Parameters, so allowing the user with an access key the equivalent of user access to Serverless Dashboard and all its settings.

License Keys:

  • Are a new feature added for use by users with active subscriptions to make authenticating for the subscription a little easier either by individual developers or in headless environment such as CI/CD.
  • Are created against the org itself and other users added to that org can see that a License Key exists, create new ones and delete previous ones.
  • DO NOT allow the use of the org and app properties and DO NOT authenticate to Serverless Dashboard in a way to make use of Serverless Dashboard. This results in a pattern of requests to Serverless that is much more limited in scope and offers a better security posture. License Keys do not permit any action beyond identifying a specific service deployment or removal that should be attributed to a specific org.
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