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Licentric vs Stigg
An honest, side-by-side comparison so you can pick the right monetization platform for your team. Stigg facts sourced from stigg.io public material on 2026-05-12; pricing-at-scale estimates exclude Stigg's event-metering fees (see comparison table). Written by the Licentric founder.
TL;DR
- Choose Stigg if: you're a pure-SaaS product (no desktop, CLI, or binary distribution), you need a mature entitlements engine with embedded paywall/portal/checkout widgets, you can absorb $448/mo entry pricing, or you need SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 compliance evidence today.
- Choose Licentric if: you need license keys, machine activation, or offline license files (Stigg ships none of these), you ship AI agents that need per-agent identity + token budgets + MCP auth, you want production capabilities on a free tier (100 licenses, no card), or you ship outside the browser (CLI tools, desktop apps, embedded software, AI agents).
| Aspect | Stigg | Licentric |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Sandbox $0 (non-prod) + Growth from $448/mo (annual, +per-customer/event) + Scale custom | Free tier (100 licenses, production), then $5 / $29 / $199 (CAD, monthly) |
| Positioning | Monetization Control Layer for AI Products (SaaS-first) | Monetization platform for the AI era — from license keys to agent tokens |
| License keys | Not supported | Core primitive — generate, validate, revoke, suspend, ban, rotate |
| Machine activation | Not supported | Per-license fingerprinting with concurrent-activation caps |
| Offline license files | Not supported | Ed25519-signed + AES-256-GCM encrypted, configurable TTL |
| Entitlements / feature flags | Mature first-class primitive (their core) | Entitlements per policy + per license; less explicit per-feature UI |
| Usage metering | Real-time event metering ($0.55/GB processed) | Built-in metering on every tier; per-agent + per-customer attribution |
| Stripe integration | Stripe + Zuora + Salesforce subscription management | Declarative product → license-policy mapping; zero webhook glue code |
| Embedded UI widgets | Paywall, portal, checkout widgets built-in | End-user self-service portal (no in-app widgets yet) |
| AI agent identity | Not supported | Per-agent credentials (suspendable, revocable, rotatable) |
| Per-agent token budgets | Not supported | Per-agent + per-team + per-workflow caps with hard limits |
| MCP auth layer | Not supported | OAuth 2.1 for MCP servers (early) |
| SDK language coverage | 12+ (JS, Python, Ruby, Go, Java, GraphQL, React, Next.js, .NET, etc.) | Python + TypeScript (Go in-repo, not yet published) |
| Container support | Cloud-native by design (SaaS app context) | Native Docker/K8s logical-ID fingerprinting for licensed binaries |
| Plan versioning + migrations | Automated plan changes + customer migration tooling (specialty) | Manual plan-policy edits; programmatic via API |
| SOC 2 Type II | Certified today | Pursuing 2026-Q4 (uncertified today) |
| ISO 27001 | Certified today | Not pursued today (roadmap) |
| Compliance scaffolding (EU AI Act) | Not advertised | Audit-log immutability + agent-evidence tables (phased enforcement Aug 2026+) |
| Multi-tenancy | Account-scoped data isolation | Postgres RLS on every one of 27 tables |
| API surface | Comprehensive GraphQL + REST | 94 v1 REST endpoints across 52 route files (OpenAPI 3.1 spec) |
| Notable customers | Miro, PagerDuty, Cloudinary, New Relic, AI21 Labs, Wordtune | ArgusTest (first customer) — solo founder building toward 50 customers |
| Maturity | Established platform with $20M+ raised (per stigg.io/about — Red Dot Capital, Unusual Ventures, named industry leaders) | Newer, actively developed, broader licensing + agent scope |
Pricing at scale
Per-month list price at different active-license counts. Competitor pricing as of 2026-05; verify on their pricing page.
| Active licenses | Stigg | Licentric |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox / Free | $0 (2 non-prod environments, 1 product) | $0 (100 active licenses, production-ready) |
| Starter SaaS (~100 paying customers) | $448/mo (Growth, annual) + ~$32/mo customer fees | $5/mo (Starter, 1,000 licenses) |
| Growing SaaS (~1,000 customers) | $448/mo + ~$320/mo customer fees ≈ $768/mo | $5/mo (Starter, 1,000 licenses) |
| Scaling SaaS (~10,000 customers) | $448/mo + ~$3,200/mo customer fees ≈ $3,648/mo | $29/mo (Growth, 10,000 licenses) |
Transparency note
Where Stigg has the edge
We believe in transparency. Here's an honest read of where Stigg is the better fit today.
- Stigg has 12+ SDKs across JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go, Java, .NET, GraphQL, React, Next.js, Webflow, WordPress — broader than Licentric's Python + TypeScript today.
- Stigg is SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 certified today; Licentric is pursuing SOC 2 for Q4 2026 and has not pursued ISO 27001.
- Stigg's entitlements engine has been the company's core for multiple years — more mature than Licentric's policy-entitlement mapping for complex SaaS feature graphs.
- Stigg ships embedded UI widgets (paywall, customer portal, checkout) — Licentric provides an end-user portal but no in-app widgets yet.
- Stigg's plan versioning + automated customer migration tooling is purpose-built for SaaS catalog evolution — Licentric does this manually via the API.
- Stigg integrates with Zuora, Salesforce, Snowflake, BigQuery, and HubSpot out of the box — relevant for enterprise sales motions Licentric has not yet built.
- Stigg has documented enterprise customers (Miro, PagerDuty, Cloudinary, New Relic, AI21 Labs) — Licentric is still on its first customer.
- Stigg has raised $20M+ (Red Dot Capital, Unusual Ventures, plus named industry leaders from New Relic / Calendly / HubSpot / GitLab / Snowflake — per stigg.io/about) — a runway-stability signal Licentric does not yet match.
Choose Stigg when…
- You're a pure-SaaS product (web/mobile only) with no desktop, CLI, embedded, or binary distribution.
- You need a mature entitlements + paywall UI shipped this quarter and your team is JavaScript- or React-centric.
- You need SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 compliance evidence TODAY for enterprise procurement.
- Your CFO/finance team uses Zuora or Salesforce CPQ and needs deep integration there.
- You can absorb $448/mo entry pricing + per-customer and per-event metering fees.
- You don't need license keys, machine activation, offline files, or agent identity primitives.
- Your product is in the Miro/PagerDuty/Cloudinary mold — established SaaS with complex pricing-package evolution.
- You have an existing Stigg integration and the migration cost outweighs the difference.
Choose Licentric when…
- You need license keys, machine activation, or offline license files — Stigg ships none of these.
- You ship AI agents and need per-agent identity, token budgets, or MCP auth — Stigg covers metering but not identity.
- You ship outside the browser (CLI tools, desktop apps, embedded software) where Stigg's web-SaaS assumptions don't fit.
- You want production capabilities on a free tier (100 active licenses, full API, no card) — Stigg's free is non-production sandbox only.
- You're cost-sensitive at the small-team end — Licentric Starter ($5/mo) is ~90× cheaper than Stigg's lowest paid tier (Growth, $448/mo annual entry).
- You ship in containers and want native Docker/K8s logical-ID fingerprinting for licensed binaries.
- You want offline files signed with Ed25519 (FIPS 186-5, deterministic, 64-byte signatures).
- You want compliance scaffolding for the EU AI Act (audit logs + agent evidence tables; phased enforcement starting August 2026).
Already on Stigg? Licentric does not currently auto-import from Stigg's GraphQL API, but a CSV-based migration is straightforward for the data Licentric models (licenses, policies, entitlements). Email able@licentric.com for a 30-min migration assistance call — first 50 customers get this directly from the founder.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about choosing between Stigg and Licentric.
- Is Licentric a Stigg competitor or complement?
- Both, depending on your stack. Stigg's core (entitlements + metering for SaaS) overlaps with Licentric's entitlements + metering layer, but Licentric adds license keys, machine activation, offline files, and AI agent identity that Stigg doesn't have. For pure SaaS with no binary distribution, Stigg may be a better fit today on entitlements maturity. For products with desktop/CLI/agent components, Licentric is the unified path.
- Stigg and Licentric both say 'AI monetization'. What's the actual difference?
- Stigg's 'Monetization Control Layer for AI Products' is positioned at SaaS apps with AI features that need entitlement-gating and event-metering — e.g., 'this user has access to the AI summarization feature and has used 1,200 of their 10,000 monthly tokens'. Licentric's 'monetization platform for the AI era — from license keys to agent tokens' adds autonomous AI agents as first-class entities — per-agent credentials, per-agent token budgets, MCP auth. They're different problems that share the same terminology.
- Does Licentric ship embedded paywall/portal/checkout widgets like Stigg?
- Not yet. Licentric ships an end-user self-service portal (license management, key recovery, device management) on every tier, but in-app widgets you embed in your product's UI (paywall, customer-portal, checkout flow) are not on the immediate roadmap. If embedded widgets are a hard requirement for your team, Stigg is the better answer today.
- How does Licentric pricing compare to Stigg at scale?
- Significantly cheaper across the board. Stigg's Growth tier starts at $448/mo annual + $0.32 per self-service subscription + $0.55/GB event metering. Licentric's Starter is $5/mo flat for 1,000 licenses; Growth is $29/mo for 10,000 licenses; Enterprise is $199/mo for unlimited. At ~10,000 customers, Stigg costs $3,000-4,000/mo; Licentric Growth covers it at $29/mo. The gap closes at Enterprise tier where Stigg's plan-versioning and embedded-UI value can justify the price.
- Can Stigg do what Licentric does for AI agents?
- Stigg handles entitlements + event metering for AI features inside a SaaS app — e.g., 'allow this user to use the AI feature, count their token usage for billing'. Stigg does NOT issue per-agent identities, enforce per-agent budgets, or provide MCP server authentication. Licentric's agent identity + token budget + MCP auth layer is a different category — it treats the agent as the subject of the license, not the human user.
- Will Licentric ship more SDK languages and embedded widgets?
- SDK languages: Rust, .NET, Java, and Swift are on the Phase 2 roadmap per VISION.md. Embedded UI widgets (paywall, portal, checkout) are not yet scheduled — they're a different design problem (per-product theming, framework integration) and Licentric's current investment is going into agent identity + MCP auth first. If embedded widgets matter to you, send concrete requirements to able@licentric.com — that's the trigger to pull them forward.
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