Flotilla
Knowledge Base

Is Flotilla Free?

Privacy, cost & account By Jon Staab 3 min read

Using Flotilla and joining communities is completely free; the only optional costs are hosting your own space or sending zaps, and this spells out the client-vs-hosting distinction.

Is Flotilla Free?

Part of our guide to running an online community you actually own.

Yes. Using Flotilla — on the web, as a PWA, on Android, or on iOS — is completely free, and so is joining and taking part in communities. There’s no subscription and no premium tier.

Nothing you do as a member costs anything

Flotilla is a Nostr client, the app you use to read and post messages. You sign in with a key you own rather than an account you create with a company, and that key works the same everywhere Nostr does. If key-based identity is new to you, see Understanding Your Nostr Identity.

None of the following ever costs anything in Flotilla:

  • Creating a Nostr identity or logging in
  • Joining a space or leaving one
  • Chatting in rooms, sending direct messages, or reacting to messages
  • Using threads, the calendar, classifieds, polls, or the library
  • Getting push notifications

Flotilla is also open source. If you’d rather not use the hosted web app, you can self-host the client.

The only real costs are on the space-owner side

You pay only when you want to run your own space rather than join someone else’s. Creating a space means paying for the relay it runs on, whether Flotilla hosts that relay or you do. See Spaces and Rooms Explained for how the two fit together.

If you do want to host a space, you have two paths:

  • Hosting with Flotilla — a managed option where you provision and pay for a relay from inside the app, with a free tier for small communities and paid plans as you add members or want media and voice/video. See Hosting Your Space with Flotilla for plan pricing and what each tier includes.
  • Self-hosting — the underlying relay software (zooid) is itself free and open source; you pay only for the server you run it on. See Self Hosting a Space for a full walkthrough.

Either way, this cost belongs to whoever owns and runs the space, not to the people who join and chat in it.

Zaps are optional, never required

The one place you might choose to spend money inside Flotilla is zaps — small Lightning tips you can send on a message, a thread post, or a community fundraising goal. Nothing in Flotilla requires you to send or receive one. On iOS, zaps and the wallet are turned off entirely due to Apple’s App Store policy.