---
title: CopilotKit Premium
icon: "lucide/Star"
description: Premium features for CopilotKit — commercial license, fully headless UI, observability hooks, hosted Copilot Cloud, and more.
---

## What is CopilotKit Premium?

CopilotKit Premium plans deliver:

- A **commercial license** for premium extensions to the open-source CopilotKit framework (self-hosted or via Copilot Cloud)
- Access to the **Copilot Cloud** hosted service

Premium is designed for teams building production-grade, agent-powered applications with CopilotKit. Extension features — such as Fully Headless UI and debugging tools — can be used in both self-hosted and cloud-hosted deployments.

<Callout type="info">
The **Developer tier** of CopilotKit Premium is always free — sign up, grab your public license key, and you're done.
</Callout>

## Premium plans

- **Developer** — free forever, includes early-stage access and limited cloud usage
- **Pro** — for growing teams building in production
- **Enterprise** — for organizations with advanced scalability, security, and support needs

## Early access

Certain features — like the fully headless chat hook — are initially available only to Premium subscribers before becoming part of the open-source core as the framework matures. All Premium subscribers get early access to new features, tooling, and integrations as they ship.

## Current premium features

- [Fully Headless Chat UI](./headless-ui) — Early Access
- [Observability Hooks](./observability)
- [Copilot Cloud](https://cloud.copilotkit.ai)
- [Inspector](../inspector) — free to use with any valid public license key

## Getting access

### Option 1: Copilot Cloud

All Premium features are included with Copilot Cloud — sign up, deploy your runtime, and you're set.

### Option 2: Self-host with a license key

Access to Premium features requires a public license key. It's free.

<Steps>
<Step>
### Sign up

Create a **free** account on [Copilot Cloud](https://cloud.copilotkit.ai). No credit card required, and you don't have to use Copilot Cloud itself.
</Step>

<Step>
### Grab your public license key

From the left nav in the Copilot Cloud dashboard.
</Step>

<Step>
### Use it in your provider

Pass your public license key to `CopilotKit`:

```tsx title="app/layout.tsx"
<CopilotKit publicLicenseKey="your-public-license-key">
  {children}
</CopilotKit>
```
</Step>
</Steps>

## FAQs

### Can I still self-host with a public license key?

Yes. Self-hosting with a license key is fully supported — the key is only required if you want Premium features. For Copilot Cloud specifically you use a separate `publicApiKey`.

### What's the difference between a public license key and a public API key?

- **Public API key** — connects your app to **Copilot Cloud** (the hosted service).
- **Public license key** — unlocks **Premium features** (inspector, headless UI, observability hooks) and doesn't require Copilot Cloud.

You can have either one, both, or neither — they serve different purposes.
