Open Core Companies Like Dify

Open Core Companies Like Dify | Generated by AI

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Question: What other companies follow a similar arrangement as Dify (open-source project + cloud portal + enterprise deployment)? For example, Elasticsearch and GreptimeDB?

Answer:

This model is called the “Open-Core” business model, and it is one of the most dominant strategies in modern developer-tool companies. The pattern is:

Free open-source core → Managed cloud SaaS → Enterprise on-prem/private deployment

The public OSS businesses we see today like MongoDB, Confluent, and HashiCorp all employ a hybrid open-core / cloud-hosted model with professional services as an add-on.

1. Elasticsearch (Elastic)

The core of Elasticsearch and Kibana are open source under an AGPL license, and the code is housed in public repositories — you can get started or even build an entire solution without running code you can’t see.

The three tiers:

Open Source / Self-hosted: Free to run yourself on your own servers.
Elastic Cloud (SaaS): Elastic Cloud enables engineering teams to take advantage of the features and benefits of Elasticsearch without requiring the expertise and maintenance involved. It follows a subscription, pay-as-you-go model that enables teams to deploy and manage an Elasticsearch cluster on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
Enterprise (on-prem): Advanced features are locked behind enterprise subscriptions — Standard, Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise tiers — building on top of the open-source core with advanced security (SAML/OIDC, field-level security), machine learning, cross-cluster replication, and alerting.

Notable drama: AWS began offering a managed Elasticsearch service, which collided with Elastic’s business model. Elastic changed its licensing to prevent cloud providers from packaging Elasticsearch as a service, and AWS responded by forking the project and creating OpenSearch.

2. GreptimeDB (Greptime)

GreptimeDB is an open-source observability database that handles metrics, logs, and traces in one engine. It can be used as a single OpenTelemetry backend replacing Prometheus, Loki, and Elasticsearch, built on object storage.

The three tiers follow exactly the same pattern as Dify:

GreptimeDB OSS — The open-sourced database for small to medium-scale observability and IoT use cases, ideal for personal projects or dev/test environments.
GreptimeDB Enterprise — A robust observability database with enhanced security, high availability, and enterprise-grade support.
GreptimeCloud — A fully managed, serverless DBaaS with elastic scaling and zero operational overhead, built for teams that need speed, flexibility, and ease of use out of the box.

3. HashiCorp (Terraform, Vault, Consul)

HashiCorp’s open-source model evolved over time to include free, enterprise, and managed service versions. Products like Terraform, Vault, Consul, and Nomad are accessible through a source-available license, and many also have enterprise offerings and managed service offerings, with both free and paid tiers.

Open Source: Terraform (IaC), Vault (secrets), Consul (networking) — free to self-host.
Enterprise: Adds RBAC, audit logging, centralized management, and governance features.
HCP (HashiCorp Cloud Platform): Fully managed SaaS versions of all tools.

HashiCorp went public in 2021 and was later acquired by IBM in February 2025 for $6.4 billion — a powerful validation of the open-core business model.

4. GitLab

GitLab CE (Community Edition) is under an MIT-style open source license, while GitLab EE (Enterprise Edition) is under a proprietary license.

GitLab took the open-core model and used it to build a complete, single-application DevOps platform — covering the entire software development lifecycle from project planning and CI/CD to security scanning and monitoring.

GitLab CE: Free, self-hosted, open source.
GitLab.com (SaaS): Free and paid tiers on their cloud portal.
GitLab EE: Enterprise self-hosted with advanced features (compliance, SAML, audit events).

5. MongoDB

MongoDB Community Server: Open source, self-hosted.
MongoDB Atlas: MongoDB introduced Atlas, its cloud-hosted version, which has since become a monster business — making up approximately 60% of total revenue.
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced: For on-premises or private cloud enterprise deployments with security, management, and support.

6. Confluent (Apache Kafka)

Apache Kafka is the open-source core. Confluent, founded by the original Kafka creators, layered on top:

Confluent Platform: Self-hosted enterprise edition.
Confluent Cloud: Fully managed Kafka-as-a-Service.
Confluent Cloud grew over 200% year-over-year, demonstrating the effectiveness of this expansion model for companies with complex technologies that benefit from operational simplification.

7. Neo4j

Neo4j CE (Community Edition) is licensed under GPL version 3, while Neo4j EE (Enterprise Edition) is under a proprietary license, providing additional features including clustering and hot backups.

Same pattern: open community edition → hosted AuraDB cloud → enterprise on-prem.

8. Other Notable Examples

Company / Project	Open Source Core	Cloud SaaS	Enterprise
Supabase	GitHub (Apache 2.0)	supabase.com	Self-hosted Enterprise
Minio	GitHub (AGPL)	Hosted object storage	AGPL / Commercial enterprise
Airbyte	GitHub (MIT/ELv2)	Airbyte Cloud	Self-Managed Enterprise
Metabase	GitHub (AGPL)	Metabase Cloud	Enterprise (SAML, SSO)
n8n	GitHub (Source-available)	n8n Cloud	Enterprise self-hosted
DataStax (Cassandra)	Apache Cassandra (open)	Astra DB Cloud	DataStax Enterprise

The Common Pattern Summarized

The second generation of OSS companies, known as open-core, provided two versions of their software: a “core” version that remained open source, and an enterprise version that utilized the core code but offered premium features such as security and integrations for a subscription. Over the past few years, OSS businesses have also incorporated an additional revenue stream through cloud-hosted services, allowing users to access the open-source binary via a cloud-hosted model instead of requiring them to set up and manage the product themselves.

The key differentiators for the enterprise tier are almost always the same set of features: SSO/SAML, RBAC, audit logging, high availability, dedicated support SLAs, and compliance tooling.

References:

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