Tool profile
Feature management platform for flags, controlled rollouts, experiments, and release safety.
Large engineering orgs standardizing safe continuous delivery
LaunchDarkly is the category standard when flags are production infrastructure: stream updates to server and client SDKs, enforce approvals and audit history, and layer experiments on the same contexts. Developer is a free tier for small footprints. Foundation is the paid path for growing teams, billed from two primary axes: service connections (microservices, replicas, and environments using server-side SDKs for a month) and client-side monthly active users (unique contexts evaluating client SDK flags in a month).
Per launchdarkly.com/pricing, Foundation lists $12/month per service connection and $10/month per 1,000 client-side MAU. The Developer tier includes 5 service connections, 1,000 client-side MAU, 3 environments, unlimited seats, flags, and SDKs, plus bundled observability starter allowances (e.g. session replays, errors, logs/traces—see current plan table). Experimentation adds experimentation MAU metering (published example: $3/month per 1,000 beyond included experiment MAU). Session replay, errors, logs, and traces carry their own overage ladders on the pricing page.
Enterprise and Guardian add release automation, advanced governance, SAML/SCIM, and guardrail-style monitoring—custom priced. Compare PostHog flags when analytics and flags share one pipeline; compare Flagsmith or Unleash for lighter self-hosted cost.
Quick fit
Editorial take
The invoice is not “per seat”: model service connections (server SDK footprint) and client-side MAU separately—mis-counting mobile + web contexts is the classic forecast error. Client-side SDK evaluations drive MAU; server-side footprint drives connections. Observability meters can surprise teams that enable replay or logs broadly. For alternatives, PostHog bundles flags with analytics; open-source Unleash/Flagsmith trade governance depth for cost.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
Compare with
Pressure-test this pick against nearby alternatives.
Apache Kafka
Free planEvent streaming and event-driven architectures
Open-source distributed event streaming platform for high-throughput pipelines, pub/sub, and stream-processing ecosystems.
Choose Kafka when replayable event streams and ecosystem breadth matter more than the lightest possible operational footprint.
Pricing snapshot
LaunchDarkly's public pricing still starts with a Developer plan and then Foundation, but the important structure is usage-based rather than seat-based. Foundation is publicly listed at $12 per service connection per month plus $10 per 1,000 client-side MAU, while experimentation and observability products add their own separate usage lines. Enterprise and Guardian remain custom.
Arcjet
Free planApplication runtime security
Runtime security toolkit for modern applications and AI systems that helps teams enforce quotas, block bots, prevent prompt abuse, and ship app-level protections in code.
Closer to application-runtime security and abuse-prevention tooling than to classic perimeter appliances.
