Best offer on record: Open-source Caddy server: free, no paywalled features. 2 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Open-source Caddy server: free, no paywalled features high confidence
Caddy server (binary and source) is licensed under Apache-2.0 and has no paid edition, no license keys and no feature tiers. Official wording: caddyserver.com says 'Caddy is free software and relies on sponsorships to survive' and 'It's all free. No enterprise-level paywalls.' The /sponsor page says 'Caddy has no paywalled features', and its FAQ says sponsorship leaves 'Your license to the software remains the same regardless of sponsorship status.' The repo LICENSE file (read 2026-10-22, https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/blob/master/LICENSE) is the plain Apache License Version 2.0 with no EULA, no commercial-use restriction and no sponsor-header requirement. Included in the free build per the README and home page: automatic HTTPS (ZeroSSL and Let's Encrypt for public names; a managed local CA for internal names and IPs), reverse proxy with load balancing and health checks, HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 on by default, Caddyfile plus JSON config API, and On-Demand TLS. Price: $0. No instance, domain, bandwidth or seat caps are stated; the sponsor page says sponsorship does not restrict 'functionality or instances'.
Eligibility
None. Open to everyone, including students, startups, individuals, nonprofits and commercial companies, in any region. No .edu email, startup age or funding cap, credit card or region limit is stated on the official site or in the repo.
How to claim
Download the binary for your OS from GitHub Releases (https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/releases) or from the official download page (https://caddyserver.com/download, which lets you pick plugins). Alternatively build from source with Go 1.26 or newer. No payment, sponsor login or account step is stated for the download. Put the executable on PATH and run it with a Caddyfile. On Linux, binding ports 80 and 443 needs root or setcap cap_net_bind_service (per README).
Expiry
None. The Apache-2.0 grant has no term or renewal date.
Gotchas
Self-hosted only: no managed or hosted Caddy service appears on the official pages, so you pay for your own server, bandwidth and DNS, and you patch and monitor it yourself. The sponsor page itself says open source grants 'freedom but not assurances of help'. Third-party modules (for example a DNS provider needed for wildcard certificates) are compiled into the binary, so each plugin means a custom build that must be rebuilt for every Caddy upgrade. 'Caddy' is a registered trademark of ZeroSSL GmbH (download page footer), so forks must use another name. Automatic certificates come from Let's Encrypt and ZeroSSL, third-party CAs with their own terms and rate limits (not checked here). No usage metering or trial limits are stated.
Free community support forum (volunteer help) high confidence
caddyserver.com/support says: 'Participate as volunteers in our forum to exchange free help in our open source community.' The forum is at caddy.community. The site also links free self-help: the troubleshooting and FAQ pages in the docs, and a community wiki (caddy.community/c/wiki/13). This is the only free support channel on the official support page. Email support, and chat or phone/video support at higher tiers, go to paid sponsors ('through most sponsorship tiers').
Eligibility
Anyone. No eligibility, student, startup or region rules are published.
How to claim
Search the docs (caddyserver.com/docs/troubleshooting and /docs/faq), the community wiki and the forum first. If there is no answer, post a new topic at caddy.community with your Caddy version, Caddyfile and logs.
Expiry
None stated.
Gotchas
Volunteer-run: no response-time commitment and no SLA. A Jan 2023 Caddy forum post by Matt Holt calls community help 'basically charity'. His Oct 15, 2025 post says he no longer personally sees every issue, comment and PR, and a maintainer team now shares triage. Guaranteed response windows exist only in paid tiers (per third-party copies of the official tier list: Enterprise 2 business days, Enterprise+ 1 business day).
No free student, education, academic, nonprofit, startup, trial or credit offer exists for Caddy as of 2026-10-22. The two findings above are the always-free open-source core and the volunteer forum; neither is targeted at students or startups. Checked today: caddyserver.com (home), /sponsor (with FAQ), /support, /download, the repo LICENSE, and the requested /pricing, /education and /startups pages. /pricing, /education and /startups all return HTTP 404. Pricing content now lives at /sponsor, but third-party pricing pages still cite /pricing.Paid startup offers (not free): Startup at $99/mo includes an onboarding call, occasional email support and no professional-services discount. Startup Pro at $249/mo adds a 10% professional-services discount, triage priority and optional publicity, plus the onboarding call. Official copy calls them 'perfect for bootstrapped startups' and 'bootstrapped, early-stage startups'. No age, funding or revenue cap is published. Startup-tier sponsorships already existed by Feb 2025 (Matt Holt forum post, 2025-02-05).Full official sponsorship ladder (read 2026-10-22): Indie $25/mo; Indie Pro $50/mo; Startup $99/mo; Startup Pro $249/mo; Business $999/mo (20% professional-services discount with a 6-month commitment); Business+ $2,999/mo (35% with a 6-month commitment); Enterprise $5,900/mo (limited stock); Enterprise+ $11,900/mo (limited availability). Billing is monthly. Subscriptions are managed through GitHub Sponsors, which requires a GitHub login. The FAQ says higher tiers can also pay by invoice, ACH, wire or check (which tiers is not stated). The FAQ does not state whether a credit card is required. Sponsorships are fulfilled by Dyanim, LLC (run by Matt Holt) and do not change the software license.Retired licensing (sunset): the 2017 commercial EULA made official binaries free for personal, academic and non-profit use, required paid per-instance commercial licenses for business use, and added a Caddy-Sponsors response header. The Oct 2019 proposal (caddyserver/caddy issue 2786) proposed dropping commercial binary licensing, startup packages, build-server subscriptions and private plugin hosting, and keeping Apache-2.0 for all binaries. A Sept 2020 forum post confirmed licensing unchanged. Today no EULA appears on the download page or in the repo LICENSE. The exact date the EULA lapsed was not verified. No academic or nonprofit free license exists now.2025-2026 changes: (a) Oct 15, 2025: Matt Holt said he would no longer personally see every comment, issue and PR, and a maintainer team was granted tag and release rights. PR 7341 (merged Nov 14, 2025) requires 2 maintainer approvals and signed tags for each release. This affects support expectations, not pricing. (b) Jan 29, 2026: Railway became a Caddy sponsor. Railway's promotions on the Caddy site are Railway's own offers, not Caddy's. (c) Feb 2026: ZeroSSL, the executive sponsor that owns the Caddy trademark, was acquired by HID Global (ASSA ABLOY), per Matt Holt's Feb 5, 2026 forum post. (d) Price snapshots disagree: an older search-index copy of the GitHub Sponsors page showed Business at $2,999 and Business+ at $5,900. The official site and today's GitHub Sponsors page show Business $999, Business+ $2,999, Enterprise $5,900 and Enterprise+ $11,900. The change date is unverified; the official site governs. (e) Aug 11, 2025: a forum announcement says Caddy took part in the GitHub Secure Open Source Program 2025. That is a project-level program, not a student or startup offer; details were not fetched.Not offers, or wrong: the hosted demo at caddydemo subdomains is 'intentionally restricted' and is not a trial. Sponsor logos on the home page (Railway, Tailscale, Stripe and others) are third-party promotions. Some third-party pages are wrong: Doolpa says sponsorships start at $5/mo (official lowest tier is $25/mo), and RottenWiFi lists 'Open source: No' (the repo is Apache-2.0). Pages also disagree on 'Free plan' (Yes or No) because the free software is not sold as a plan. A Japanese-language mirror of the sponsor page (caddy.dokyumento.jp) was not used as an official source.Dependencies: Caddy's automatic certificates for public names come from Let's Encrypt and ZeroSSL (per README). Their free-tier terms and rate limits were not checked here.