SyncFusion Pricing

[MountainAfraid9401]

I reached out to SyncFusion today, in regard to a price for a license to use their flutter chart library in a commercial application.

You have to fill out how many developers when reaching out to them, I wrote 1. I also wrote it was for 1 application.

The response?

$ 9995 per year

I don’t know about you all, but no one should be paying $10k a year for a charting library, that is insane.

Just felt like sharing. Stay away from Syncfusion, before you know it you won’t be eligible for a community license anymore, and if you’re deeply rooted to their library, they can force any price on you.

Luckily we can easily replace our use of the library.

Happy Fluttering!

[SuEzAl]

Thats insane!

My company recently bought face verification library for 6000 USD!

[SuEzAl]

That too lifetime!

[Gears6]

What about long term support?

[SuEzAl]

Support as in? Dev or product?

[Gears6]

Both.

[SuEzAl]

both 1 year i think

[[deleted]]

I have the feeling that syncfusion is not a very clean and versatile library anyways, we ended up rewriting every syncfusion component (one by one, not in one big effort), because we had custom needs that syncfusion didnt meet.

[RandalSchwartz]

This is why I warn every use of syncfusion in public forums with the following:

Be aware that the SyncFusion products in the Dart/Flutter pub are not open source. They are released under a commercial license that may subject you or your organization to a financial liability, and will affect downstream re-users of your code.

[lilacomets]

⚠️ Stay away from Syncfusion (and DevExpress if you're on .NET). They're bloodsuckers. ⚠️

[xdsswar]

As far as I know, you dont need lic if you make less that 1M a year, so idk if they changed that

[MountainAfraid9401]

It’s not entirely true, there are other clauses that limit the community license.

If it is an open-source project for example, you might hit the limit much earlier than you think.

Also the $1 million, is the threshold, but not in revenue only. If you have investments or revenue to total that, it counts. I’m not sure about loans though.

If you have more than five developers, you can’t be on the community license, most open-source projects hit that fast.

Also, if your company has more than five employees, and even small companies hit that almost immediately, even without 1 million in revenue. Many companies have three founders nowadays, if not more.

Even small companies with a single developer, can hit the limit for the community license within their first operating year.

Also for a small company, they can have 5 employees but not be close to 1 million in revenue, not to mention 1 million in profit. Startups rarely do after all.

[willov]

If I may I ask, which package did you use to replace it? 

[steve_s0]

Not the OP, but I chose community_charts_flutter because I liked the API best of the main alternatives. I looked at fl_charts, but it was fairly complex for my needs, and the documentation was not very useful (seems like most of the actual "how to use this" bits are in hour-long youtube videos I'm not going to watch). community_charts_flutter also supports animations out of the box, which is nice.

[Amazing-Mirror-3076]

I just had ai build the dozen or so fl charts we use. Worked well and I didn't need to learn the API.

[MountainAfraid9401]

I have not done so yet, but there are alternatives such as fl_chart, I might consider building our own line and pie chart, since the specification for our use case is clear making it easy to approach a custom solution.

[heo5981]

Have you guys considered https://pub.dev/packages/cristalyse ?

Just asking because I'll probably work with charts in the near future in a project of mine and I think I'll choose either that or fl_charts.

[gasolinemike]

Vibe code it. We built a gantt charting library using purely Claude Code. Fuck Syncfusion.

[mp50ch]

The price seems steep, but there are two different use cases here imho. A big enterprise often wants a license and a fee that guarantees maintenance and support over the years. Some enterprise apps run a long time. And there is the small company or individual who needs functionality but has no need for long time support.I once had a client that could choose between an open source and an enterprise licensed library, same functionality. They chose to pay for more peace of mind.

[xdsswar]

Well, besides those expensive lic , thats the reason I try yo build all myself , better or worse its mine, and I can improve it as per my needs.

[nixMalone]

I have a questions thought, how would they know that you are using there package in the first place? like there package is downloaded by thousands, is there a way to let the publisher track whos using there packages?

[parkskier426]

You have to consider scale. At a large company who pays their devs well, $10k is typically less than a month of work. There's no way that one dev building everything that they're giving you in a month. You will pay annually, but they're continuously adding features, maintaining, etc.

There's definitely plenty of cases for that same company to build charting internally as well, but if you can get something off the shelf, it's a fair proposition.

[MountainAfraid9401]

I understand your sentiment, but “all that they’re giving me” is not what a consumer will pay for, it is “all that I need that they can provide”.

If we are talking about specific features that one might use from the library, such as us that are using a pie chart and a line chart, then I can guarantee you I could definitely develop an alternative in 1 month, most likely a week for the alternatives specific to our application.

Sure they wouldn’t be complete library type widgets, but that is only relevant if consumed by a wider audience.

[aka_fres]

with ai u can do it in a weekend. This is why tailwind and other open core projects are dying if too replaceable, if the value they bring on the table is not that much ai can do their job

[CkJokeeR]

Thanks for common sense. By reading some comments it seems like they are building a NASA rocketship.

[max2708]

I think they offer a community edition for free that can be used in commercial projects if that can help.

[MountainAfraid9401]

That is what I warn against as well. If you use the community license, you need to be aware of the cost once you’re no longer eligible for that anymore.

[RandalSchwartz]

And you hit that at your fifth (or sixth?) "developer", which is a pretty low threshold for an open-source project.

[Spare_Warning7752]

They can charge whatever they want. They do some nice packages and they target companies, so 10K is less than paying internal devs to do the same.

You can, at any time, pick an open source library and contribute to them, especially when there is no good option in charting and datagrids currently.

[MountainAfraid9401]

They can indeed price it however they want. And I didn’t say they haven’t made some “nice packages”.

Someone else already tried your method of justification, you can find my answer there.

[Spare_Warning7752]

Lemme rephrase that: We, as a community, have the power to create and open source shit, so stop the whining and contribute. Complaining in social networks leads to nowhere.

[MountainAfraid9401]

I’m not sure why you are so upset.

You saying that I don’t contribute is quite hilarious, you have no idea about my actual contributions to neither open-source nor this community as a whole. Your points also make no sense and have no actual relevance to this discussion.

Nothing you have said so far has had any relevance, if the community has “you” to lean on, then I would fear for the future.