The engine is free.
Forever, and local.
Spike runs on your own machine, so the app itself costs nothing to operate — and the free tier reflects that. Paid tiers fund the parts that genuinely recur: advanced analysis, continuous model support, and the encrypted cloud service.
The full local-first assistant, running entirely on your device.
- Ask — cited answers across all your files
- Documents — grounded, fact-checked drafting
- Capture — local transcription and minutes
- Brain — the readable knowledge graph
- Any Ollama or Hugging Face model
- Remote model host (LAN, tunnel, Ollama Cloud)
- Thai + English, end to end
- Backup & restore
For work that has to be defensible — and an archive you can't afford to lose.
- Advanced analysis: ML forecasting, survival & risk models, GLM
- Vertical pack library — finance, insurance, medical
- Continuous model & engine support as the local-model landscape shifts
- Priority support
- License verifies offline — 21-day grace with zero network
- Encrypted cloud backup & multi-device sync — joins this plan when it ships, at no extra cost
Verifiable data work and shared knowledge, with local-first guarantees.
- Everything in Spike Local Pro, for every seat
- Volume licensing
- Deployment support
- Encrypted team vaults — in development
- Multi-device sync — in development
Three honest notes: optional cloud models are pay-your-own-provider (bring your own key — we never resell inference, so we've no reason to nudge you off your own machine). Nothing in any tier changes the privacy model — paid features run just as locally as free ones. And if you cancel, the app keeps working: the core is free and your data never left your disk.
Before you ask.
Why is the core free?
Because it runs on your hardware — your electricity, your disk, your model. Charging rent on compute we don't provide would be dishonest. We charge for the advanced analysis engine, the ongoing model support, and the cloud service we actually operate.
Why a subscription for software that runs on my own machine?
Fair question, and it's the one we'd ask too. The subscription isn't rent on the binary — it funds the things that genuinely recur. Keeping "any local model" true is real ongoing work: the Ollama and Hugging Face landscape shifts week to week, and so do the engine and the models each job depends on. On top of that sits the encrypted backup and sync service, which costs real money to run every month.
The test of whether that's honest is simple: stop paying and the app keeps working. It does.
Does the license phone home?
No. A license is a cryptographically signed key that the app verifies offline. Activation sends nothing, and a machine with no network keeps working through a 21-day grace window.
What happens if I stop paying?
Pro analyses stop; everything else keeps working, forever, because the core is free. Your files, index, and knowledge graph were always on your own disk — there's nothing to export and nothing to lose.
If you were using encrypted cloud backup, your archive stays available to download for 60 days after cancelling, then it's deleted.
Start with free. It's most of the product.
Download the preview, point it at a folder, and ask it something only your files could answer.