Developer experience
Every SaaS company has a free tier that's really a countdown timer. Fourteen days, then a wall. Ours works differently: test mode is unlimited, isolated, and free forever, and it is the real product — not a hobbled preview of it.
What "free forever" costs us
Almost nothing. Sandbox charges settle instantly in our own system and never hit a card network, so there's no per-transaction cost to absorb. The economics of a metered-on-real-value model mean we make money exactly when you do: on successful live charges, at 2.9% + 30¢, with no monthly fee.
Why we'd rather you build first
A developer who has already shipped an integration on test mode is not evaluating us anymore — they're using us. The switch to live is a single key swap. We'd rather earn the live charge by being genuinely good in the sandbox than trap you with a trial clock.
The honest version
In this reference build, live mode is a labelled placeholder backed by a vault-granted test key — no real money moves. But the free tier is not a placeholder: the invoices, events, hosted pages, and 4242 flow are all real and all free. That's the point. See the full pricing →
Ledgerline is a cshell reference venture. Product behavior described here is real in test mode; no real money moves in this build.