Cotterpin pricing: watch for free, pay when you want it to act
Cotterpin pricing is simple: the Watch plan is free forever, Pro is $100 a year, and Team is $30 per seat per month, billed annually. Cotterpin is free to install and use, with no card, no sign-up and no time limit: you get Watch and the free upgrade and vulnerability-fix routes, and you pay only when you want the gates to enforce.
Watch for free. Pay when you want it to act.
Free to install. No card, no sign-up, no time limit.
Watch, the free version, runs beside your agent and never blocks: after every agent turn, and in each commit and push report, it tells you what Cotterpin would have caught (a false “done”, a failing gate, a commit or push it would have refused) and why. The report stays on your machine. Pro and Team turn it into enforcement: the gates refuse, and the work goes back to your agent and gets fixed.
After every session: what it would have caught, and where
Audit findings for your existing code
Never blocks, never changes your code on its own
Free routes, run in full: language upgrades (Java, Jackson 3, Spring Boot 4.1, .NET, System.Text.Json, Angular, RxJS, Python, Pydantic v2, the Terraform AWS provider) and vulnerability fixes (cotterpin snyk, one pull request per risk batch); their checks enforce as on Pro
From Cotterpin 0.3.0, its first working release, coming soon. Until then the cotterpin package is a name reservation that installs nothing useful. Founding Developers are first in line. Cotterpin is released on PyPI, with its documentation and installer scripts on GitHub.
Java repository? Add the Java pack beside it: pipx inject cotterpin cotterpin-pack-java (installed with pip instead? pip install cotterpin-pack-java into the same environment).
cotterpin init in your repo — it runs as Watch straight away: it sends nothing and asks for no licence.
cotterpin doctor — checks your machine and prints the exact fix for anything missing. No admin rights needed.
Nothing to pay and no card details, ever, to use Watch and the free routes. Subscribe when you want the gates to enforce. See the Terms, what licensing sends and the quickstart.
Subscribe to Pro or Team
From your terminal (recommended): run cotterpin subscribe. It tells you what it will do and why — open Paddle's secure checkout in your browser, then bind the licence to this machine — and does nothing until you approve.
From this website: use a Buy link above to pay in Paddle's checkout, then claim the licence on your machine with cotterpin subscribe --claim <email>, using the email you gave Paddle at checkout.
Payments are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record — Paddle handles the sale, sales tax and VAT, invoices and refunds. Cotterpin never sees your card details. Cancel, update your payment method or download invoices any time from the Paddle customer portal. See our Refund Policy and Terms of Service.
Founding Developers: help build it, use Pro free
Applications are open for the Java, .NET, Python, Angular/TypeScript and Terraform packs. Below is what we have decided; anything still being settled is marked as planned.
The first 50 developers on each language pack use Cotterpin Pro free while they are active members. In return they use it on real work, share an anonymous report of how it behaved, and tell us about the bugs they hit.
What you get
Cotterpin Pro, free while you are an active member: every pack and every Pro feature, on up to 3 machines.
Your bugs go first. What you report is triaged ahead of the queue, and the fix is credited to you in the changelog if you want it to be.
A say in what we build: a vote on the roadmap, and new packs and features early, on the beta channel.
A direct line to the people building it, not a ticket queue.
What we ask
Use it on real work, with Antigravity,Claude, Codex or Grok. Planned: about 8 days, or 20 commits, a month.
Switch on Founding telemetry: a daily report of counts — which rules fired and what they decided, timings, versions, your OS and agent tool. You can read every report before it is sent, and pause it any time.
Tell us about the bugs you hit, by email or a report Cotterpin prepares for you to read first.
Apply for yourself: you are 18 or over and run Cotterpin on macOS (Apple silicon) or Linux, including Windows through WSL.
Reporting a bug takes one command, and you read everything first
Cotterpin builds the report from a short list of allowed facts: versions, your OS, and the codes of the rules that fired. It shows you what the report carries and what it never carries. Then you choose to send it or cancel. Three ways in:
Coming in the next release: switch on automatic sending of these sanitised reports for one repository and one kind of report, in your own terminal (your operating system confirms it is you), and Cotterpin sends them for you, keeping a copy of each on your machine. Each session tells you it is on; cotterpin bug-autosend off stops it, and your organisation can forbid it. You can still send or deny any report by hand, and no code is ever sent.
Illustration: a Cotterpin command stops on an internal error. Cotterpin prepares a bug report holding the error's type and where in Cotterpin's own code it happened, but not the error's message, and sends nothing. The developer runs cotterpin report-bug --draft with the id, adds a sentence, reads the whole report, including the list of what it never carries, and chooses Send, which sends exactly that text to Cotterpin's bug service, linked to the developer's licence.
~/payments-service
Illustration · cotterpin report-bug, coming with the next release
Illustration: the developer runs cotterpin report-bug and types a description that names a file path. Cotterpin refuses the description, names the line, and asks for words instead. With a plain sentence, the report shows the versions and the rules that fired by their codes only, never the commands. The developer reads it and chooses Send.
~/payments-service
Illustration · cotterpin report-bug, coming with the next release
Illustration: cotterpin bug-report lists the developer's reports: who started each one, Cotterpin or the developer, where it is, and what it is about. The sent reports show where they are with Cotterpin's bug service: one confirmed, one fixed in the next release. One report Cotterpin noticed is still waiting for the developer to read and send or discard.
~/payments-service
Illustration · cotterpin bug-report, coming with the next release
Never sent: your code, diffs, file contents or paths, commands, prompts, agent replies, repository or branch names, commit messages, usernames, hostnames, environment variables or secrets. Telemetry is off unless you switch it on, and you can leave the programme whenever you like. Nobody is ever asked to post, review or promote Cotterpin.
Apply for a place
50 places per language pack — Java, .NET, Python, Angular/TypeScript and Terraform. Places go to eligible applicants in the order they apply, and a pack closes when it is full.
Applications open soon. This page will show the places left on each pack.
Buying for a team or a company
Team gives everyone who ships to your repositories the same rules, in every agent they use, with seats
your identity provider controls. See how Cotterpin works
for a team →
Your team's rules, in every agent
The rules that live in people's heads become a team pack: gates and agent guards in your own repository,
reviewed in your pull requests and pinned by your lock. A team pack is never uploaded to Cotterpin.
A seat belongs to one person and covers them in every repository your organisation owns. Single sign-on (Okta,
Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace or GitHub) assigns each seat, and someone your provider removes stops
renewing.
Each repository keeps its own pack, owned by the team whose repository it is. Rules every repository shares are
published once to your own package registry and pinned by each repository's lock.
Every developer can install free first, in Watch. Buy Team for 5 seats or more when you
are ready; Enterprise adds SAML SSO, SCIM and contract terms (Enterprise overview).
How buying works
How buying Cotterpin works
Question
Answer
Who sells it?
Paddle.com Market Ltd, our merchant of record, under Paddle's Buyer Terms. Paddle collects sales tax and VAT and issues the invoices.
How is it billed?
Annually. Pro is $100 a year per person; Team is $30 per seat per month, billed annually, with a 5-seat minimum; Enterprise is an annual site licence.
What does a Team seat cover?
One person, in every repository your organisation owns, assigned through your single sign-on. See seats for a team.
Can we try it first?
Yes, for free and for as long as you like: install Cotterpin and it runs as Watch, reporting what Pro or Team would have enforced, alongside the free upgrade and vulnerability-fix routes. Nothing expires: buy when you want the gates to enforce.
Invoices and payment changes?
From the Paddle customer portal, any time.
Refunds?
Set out in our Refund Policy; Paddle processes them.
Support?
Team: priority email support, first-response target of 1 business day (UK business hours), see Terms §4. Enterprise: named support and contract terms.