Flagsmith is $45/mo (Startup). Salt Lick is a self-hosted alternative at $0.99/mo. Here's when each makes sense.
| Salt Lick | Flagsmith | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted, your infra | Open source, self-hostable but requires Postgres and Docker |
| Data location | Your server, your disk | Your server (if self-hosted) |
| Free tier | 10 flags | Paid only |
| Pro pricing | $0.99/mo | $45/mo (Startup) |
| Dependencies | None (single binary + SQLite) | Docker, Postgres, etc. |
| Setup time | ~30 seconds | 15-30 minutes (self-host) |
| Dashboard | Built-in at /ui | Web UI |
| License | BSL 1.1 | Open source |
Salt Lick is a single Go binary with embedded SQLite. Install it with one command, and you are running in under a minute. Your data stays on your server.
curl -fsSL https://stockyard.dev/saltlick/install.sh | sh
The pricing math between Salt Lick and Flagsmith changes depending on team size. Flagsmith at $45/mo (Startup) is reasonable for a solo user. At ten seats, the difference compounds. Salt Lick is a flat $0.99/mo regardless of seats — the binary does not count how many people use it. For growing teams, this makes Salt Lick progressively cheaper while Flagsmith gets progressively more expensive.
Architecturally, Salt Lick and Flagsmith could not be more different. Flagsmith runs on distributed cloud infrastructure with load balancers, managed databases, CDNs, and redundancy across availability zones. Salt Lick is a single process writing to a single file on a single disk. That sounds fragile until you realize that SQLite handles more concurrent readers than most web applications will ever need, and WAL mode means reads never block writes.
Both Salt Lick and Flagsmith offer self-hosted options, but the operational requirements differ. Open source, self-hostable but requires Postgres and Docker Salt Lick is a single binary with embedded SQLite — no containers, no external databases, no orchestration. The practical difference: Salt Lick runs on a $5 VPS with no configuration. Self-hosting Flagsmith typically requires a more substantial infrastructure investment.
The migration path from Flagsmith depends on how much history you need to bring over. If you only need active records, a manual re-entry through Salt Lick's dashboard might be faster than writing a migration script. If you need full history, export from Flagsmith and use Salt Lick's POST API to import records. Either way, the process is measured in hours, not weeks.
Single binary. Free to start. $0.99/mo for Pro.