Welcome to the LicenseSeat docs!

LicenseSeat is a licensing server for games, plugins, and apps.

It allows you to easily issue license keys, validate them in your software, and manage activations, all without rolling your own infrastructure.

The end goal

The end goal is simple: to have a box in your app where users can enter their license key:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Enter your license key:                   │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │ XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX                  │  │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────┘  │
│                              [Activate]    │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Which only allows access to legitimate users who have bought the product and have an active license. You just need to provide the UI box, and we'll handle everything else!

Connect your app to LicenseSeat

To get everything wired and ready, you just need to add the LicenseSeat SDK to your app / game / plugin!

It's super easy and takes less than 10 lines of code:

import LicenseSeat from '@licenseseat/js';

// 1. Initialize the SDK
const sdk = new LicenseSeat({
  apiKey: 'pk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
  productSlug: 'my-product'
});

// 2. Activate a license
const license = await sdk.activate('TEST-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX');
console.log('License activated!', license);

We provide SDKs for the most popular platforms for apps, games, and plugins:

All SDKs support:

• License activation and deactivation
• Automatic background checks
• Heartbeats + app telemetry so you can get analytics about your product and users
• Online and offline validation
• And much more

See the SDK documentation for detailed integration guides.

Or use the API directly

If we don't have an SDK for your language, or if you just want to use the API directly, you can do so easily!

There's extensive API documentation, along with the OpenAPI spec etc available at the LicenseSeat API docs.

One last thing: connect your payments platform!

You're probably already selling your product through Stripe, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Shopify, etc.

You can automate license issuing so that every time a new customer purchases your product, LicenseSeat automatically issues and emails a new license for them!

Here's how it works:

1. User purchases your app → You receive the payment via Stripe/Gumroad/etc. as usual
2. LicenseSeat receives the purchase event from Stripe/Gumroad/etc. → We issue a license key automatically
3. User receives license key via email with your own product branding

Here's what your fully branded email (sent by LicenseSeat to your customer) looks like:

You're ready to get started!

If you haven't already, sign up on LicenseSeat, go through the onboarding, and you'll get your API key and everything needed to add LicenseSeat to your app!

Next steps

When you're ready, keep reading the SDK documentation to integrate your app with LicenseSeat.