Open-core model

An open-core model is a business strategy in which a vendor releases the core of a product as open-source software, free to use and inspect, while selling proprietary add-ons, such as enterprise security, managed hosting, or advanced features, as a paid layer built on top of that open core. Many widely used data tools follow this pattern, offering a genuinely usable free version alongside a commercial edition.

This differs from fully open-source software, where the entire product, including advanced capabilities, remains open and any commercial offering is primarily support or hosting, and from purely proprietary, closed-source software, where nothing is open at all. Open core sits between the two, and the specific boundary — what stays free versus what moves behind the paid tier — varies significantly by vendor and can shift over time as a company's strategy evolves.

The open-core model matters because it changes the shape of vendor lock-in risk: the core is portable and auditable, but production-critical features may live only in the proprietary layer, so evaluating one without the other during a proof of concept can be misleading. When comparing options through a request for proposal or total cost of ownership analysis, it is worth asking specifically which capabilities are open versus paid, since a headline "open-source" claim can understate how much of the useful product actually requires a commercial license.