Is CueCrux free or does it cost money?

The Crux Daemon is free, and stays free. One binary, running locally on CPU, with no account: full memory and retrieval for your agents, CROWN receipts on every state mutation, the operator console at localhost:14800, and offline verification. The local dense retrieval lane, using an embedder you bring, is never metered.

Pro is £19 per user per month. It adds hosted sync, passports that work across multiple devices, and better dense reranking.

Governance is £49 per user per month. It adds the fleet controls: cost attribution across the whole fleet, policy gates, and revocation that propagates with proof.

Heavy lifts are metered as credits at roughly £0.01 per credit: hosted dense rerank, extraction, and attestations. Two things keep that honest. The local dense lane is never metered, so routine retrieval costs nothing beyond your own hardware. And every credit spend mints a signed receipt, so the bill itself is auditable down to the individual action rather than a monthly surprise.

There is no trial-then-degrade mechanic on the local daemon. If you never need fleet governance, you can run it forever and pay nothing.