Simple pricing
Open source and academic research are free. Enterprise — dedicated cloud or airgapped on-prem — is scoped to your deployment.
Free forever
- galois-edge daemon (Apache-2.0 licensed)
- pyvisa-galois backend (BYO profiles)
- gRPC + WebSocket APIs
- Self-hosted Headscale mesh networking
Free
- Full platform access for research labs
- Free for verified .edu institutions
- Up to 10 seats per lab
- No time limit, no credit card
Custom
- Everything in Open Source, plus:
- Dedicated single-tenant cloud
- BYO storage bucket + regional pinning
- Curated instrument library + PDF-to-driver pipeline
- Test sequence VCS, engineering memory, Évariste AI
- Compliance dossiers (FMVSS / FDA Part 11 / ISO 26262 / IEC 62304)
- SSO / SAML / SCIM
- Dedicated AE + priority SLA
Custom
- Everything in Enterprise Cloud, plus:
- Airgapped deployment — your hardware, your network
- Signed offline update bundles
- Customer-controlled LLM routing (Bedrock, Azure Gov, vLLM/Ollama)
- mTLS + per-org Headscale namespaces
- Deployment engineering support
Compare features
Full feature matrix across every tier.
| Feature | Open Source | Academic | Enterprise Cloud | Enterprise On-Prem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instrument control | ||||
| Curated instrument library | — | |||
| PDF-to-driver pipeline (Serial / CAN / Modbus) | — | |||
| Test sequence VCS (diff, history, locking) | — | |||
| Visual bench topology editor | — | |||
| AI-monitored bench cameras | — | |||
| Custom instrument profiles | — | — | ||
| Instrument leasing across teams | — | — | ||
| Memory & AI | ||||
| Engineering memory | — | |||
| Évariste AI assistant | — | 500/day | Custom | Custom |
| Citation-grounded answers (with source pins) | — | |||
| Pattern distillation (chat → reusable insights) | — | |||
| Multi-LLM-provider routing (Anthropic / OpenAI / …) | — | |||
| AI-generated reports + LaTeX templates | — | |||
| Customer-controlled LLM routing (Bedrock, Azure Gov) | — | — | — | |
| Self-hosted LLMs (air-gapped, vLLM / Ollama) | — | — | — | |
| Capture & analysis | ||||
| Real-time SSE monitoring dashboards | — | |||
| Snapshots, diff, curve fits | — | |||
| Remote Jupyter notebooks | — | |||
| BOM analysis + component lookup (Nexar) | — | |||
| Compliance | ||||
| FMVSS / FDA / ISO dossiers | — | — | ||
| BYO regulatory framework (DO-178, ASIL, IEC 62304, …) | — | — | ||
| Custom retention policies | — | — | ||
| Org-wide audit rollups | — | — | ||
| Data & storage | ||||
| Versioned datasets + experiment orchestration | — | |||
| BYOS (R2 / S3 / MinIO / GCS / GDrive) | — | |||
| Regional data pinning | — | — | ||
| Webhook / S3 / Snowflake pipelines | — | — | ||
| Platform | ||||
| galois-edge daemon (Apache-2.0) | ||||
| Desktop software | — | |||
| Self-hosted Headscale / Tailscale mesh (BYO server) | ||||
| gRPC + WebSocket APIs | ||||
| Galois cloud relay (cross-NAT dispatch) | — | — | ||
| FPGA bitstream tracking + deployment | ||||
| Windows (MSI) / Linux (systemd, RPi ARM64) | ||||
| Dedicated single-tenant environment | — | — | ||
| Airgapped on-premise deployment | — | — | — | |
| Signed offline update bundles | — | — | — | |
| Per-org Headscale namespaces | — | — | — | |
| Team & governance | ||||
| Team workspaces (RBAC) | — | |||
| Audit log | — | |||
| SSO / SAML | — | — | ||
| SCIM provisioning | — | — | ||
| Memory dead-letter triage | — | — | ||
| Support | ||||
| Community (GitHub) | ||||
| — | ||||
| Priority + SLA | — | — | ||
| Dedicated account engineer | — | — | ||
| Deployment engineering | — | — | — | |
How Galois compares
The equivalent component stack — LabVIEW + TestStand + Tailscale + Grafana + Overleaf + JupyterHub — costs $22,000–40,000/year for a 5-person team. Galois replaces all of it.
| Feature | Galois | NI LabVIEW + TestStand | Keysight PathWave | Synnax | Sift Stack |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free (Apache-2.0) · Enterprise custom | ~$5,000/seat/year | Per-instrument licensing | Open source (no cloud) | Enterprise only |
| Self-serve signup | Open-source install, no signup | Sales process | Sales process | Sales process | |
| AI assistant | Contextual help only | ||||
| Test sequencing | Visual builder — desktop + cloud | Desktop, Windows-only | Limited (OpenTAP) | ||
| Remote access | Built-in (zero-config mesh) | Requires VPN + IT | Limited cloud option | Self-hosted only | |
| Import existing code | pyvisa-galois (1 line change) | LabVIEW-native only | Vendor-locked | New API required | |
| Open source | Edge daemon (Apache-2.0) | OpenTAP (MPL-2.0) | Apache-2.0 | ||
| Airgapped deployment | On-prem, your hardware | Desktop (on-prem) | Limited | Self-hosted only | |
| Vendor lock-in | None (any SCPI instrument) | NI hardware preferred | Keysight only | None | None |
| Desktop software | |||||
| Cloud platform | Limited | ||||
| Edge daemon OS support | Windows, Linux, RPi | Windows only | Windows primary | Linux primary | Cloud only |
| Setup time | < 5 minutes | Hours to days | Hours | Hours (self-hosted) | Weeks (onboarding) |
The same platform. Zero cost.
Verified academic institutions get full platform access — up to 10 seats per lab group, unlimited instruments, no credit card, no time limit — through the Galois Academic Program.
Learn more →Frequently asked questions
Is the edge daemon really free?▾
Yes. The galois-edge daemon is Apache-2.0-licensed open source software. You can install it, connect instruments, and use the gRPC and WebSocket APIs without creating a Galois account. No trial period, no feature limits, no strings attached. The source code is on GitHub.
Can I evaluate the platform before committing?▾
Yes. Enterprise Cloud engagements start with a 30-day evaluation on a dedicated single-tenant environment — your instruments, your data, no credit card. We scope it with your team up front, and everything you configure during the evaluation carries into the production deployment.
What instruments do you support?▾
Any instrument that speaks SCPI over GPIB, USB, LAN, or Serial. We ship pre-built semantic profiles for instruments from Keithley, Keysight, Lake Shore, Berkeley Nucleonics, and more. The daemon auto-discovers connected instruments and matches them to profiles. The platform includes AI-powered PDF-to-profile generation. See the full list on our instruments page.
How is Enterprise priced?▾
Enterprise is scoped to your deployment — instrument count, bench topology, compliance regimes, and whether you run in a dedicated Galois-managed cloud or airgapped on your own hardware. Talk to sales and we'll put a number on it in one call. The open-source daemon and academic research use stay free.
What does "pyvisa-galois" mean? Why does it matter?▾
If you write Python test scripts today, you probably use PyVISA. pyvisa-galois is a drop-in backend for PyVISA. Change one import line, and your existing Python code — running in a cloud Jupyter kernel — talks to instruments through the daemon as if they were plugged into the same machine. No rewrite. No new API. Your entire existing codebase becomes cloud-native with a one-line change.
Do you support Windows?▾
Yes. The edge daemon runs natively on Windows as a Windows Service (MSI installer) and Linux (systemd, including Raspberry Pi ARM64). The cloud platform is browser-based and works on any OS.
I'm at a university. Is it really free?▾
Yes. Verified academic institutions get full platform access through the Galois Academic Program — up to 10 seats per lab group, unlimited instruments, priority profile generation, no credit card, no time limit. Learn more.