a community for home labbers and retro geeks
Full transparency on how Nekotopia is funded, governed, and sustained for the long term.
"Basic connects freely. Plus supporters keep us running. Pro users build on what we share."
Nekotopia costs real money to run. Not a little bit of money - a lot of money. Multiple AWS regions, RIPE NCC membership fees, BYOIP address space, WireGuard hub infrastructure across five global points of presence. The maintainer has covered all of this out of pocket since day one.
The tier model exists because this isn't sustainable as a charity. People who use the platform and benefit from the infrastructure should contribute to its costs. Not because we want to get rich - because the alternative is the project dies when the maintainer gets tired of subsidizing it alone.
Free accounts get mesh-only VPN access — a WireGuard tunnel to the nearest hub, connecting you to other nodes on the network. Plus all community features: wiki, forum, gallery, sgai, and the retro LAN. No internet breakout, no public IP, no time limit, no nag screens.
Basic exists because the whole point of Nekotopia is connecting retro hardware and home labs. If you just want to get your IRIX box or O2 on the network, you shouldn't need to pay for that.
Plus is the supporter tier. Your subscription directly funds infrastructure costs. In return you get bandwidth scaling (every $5 = 256 kbps, up to 1280 kbps) and access to nSolo - a dedicated public IPv4 address via bidirectional NAT ($5/mo). Plus users also get priority hub selection and gallery eligibility.
Plus is for people who use the platform regularly and want it to keep existing. If Nekotopia is useful to you, this is how you keep the lights on.
Pro is the full-service tier for users and organisations who need production-grade networking. Pro includes everything in Plus, plus nSolo (included), nColo (BGP routed prefixes from $5/mo), Torus port mapping and hosted services, and the ability to create LAN Extension networks.
| Feature | Basic | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mesh VPN | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Internet outbound (shared IPv4) | - | Yes | Yes |
| Community (wiki, forum, sgai) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bandwidth scaling | - | Up to 1280 kbps | Up to 1536 kbps |
| nSolo (dedicated IPv4) | - | $5/mo | Included |
| nColo (BGP routed prefix) | - | - | From $5/mo |
| Port mapping + hosted services | - | - | Yes |
| LAN Extension networks | - | - | Yes |
nSolo gives you a dedicated public IPv4 address from our 193.143.16.0/23 BYOIP block (acquired December 2024), with bidirectional NAT so you can run services reachable from the internet. Available to Plus ($5/mo add-on) and Pro (included) users. London hub only.
nColo allocates you a routable IPv4 prefix from our address space (185.65.116.0/24 from RIPE NCC and 185.24.72.0/22 from the transfer market). You run BGP on your own router, peer with the hub CHR over your WireGuard tunnel, and advertise your prefix. No NAT, no middlebox - pure L3 routing. Available to Pro users only.
| Prefix Size | IPs | Price | Per IP |
|---|---|---|---|
| /32 | 1 | $5/mo | $5.00 |
| /31 | 2 | $9/mo | $4.50 |
| /30 | 4 | $12/mo | $3.00 |
| /29 | 8 | $20/mo | $2.50 |
Volume discount rewards larger allocations. These prices cover the cost of the address space and the infrastructure to route it - they are not profit-making.
All contributions fund real infrastructure. The maintainer covers the deficit out of pocket. These numbers are pulled live from AWS Cost Explorer - not estimates, not aspirational figures.
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Note: The maintainer (Richard) does not take a salary and contributes significant personal time and resources beyond the financial costs shown above. Development, operations, community management, and on-call support are all unpaid.
We tried. It doesn't work.
When everything is free, two things happen. First, people who could easily afford $5/mo decide they shouldn't have to contribute anything, even while using the platform daily. They'll argue that open-source means free, that community projects shouldn't charge, that someone else will pay for it. Nobody else pays for it.
Second - and this is the one that really stings - when you give people free accounts with all features unlocked, they don't use them. The account sits idle. The same person who spent weeks lobbying for free access logs in once and never comes back. Turns out when something costs nothing, people assume it's worth nothing.
The tier model isn't about gatekeeping. Basic is genuinely free and always will be. The paid tiers exist because running five WireGuard hubs across three continents, maintaining RIPE NCC membership, and keeping BYOIP prefixes advertised costs real money every single month. If you benefit from that infrastructure, contributing to its costs is reasonable. If you don't want to pay, Basic still works.
Nekotopia is a passion project, not a business. These principles guide how we operate:
All income and expenses are tracked and shared publicly. The cost data on this page is live from AWS. No hidden costs, no surprises.
We're not building to sell. Tier pricing covers costs, not margins. The maintainer has never taken a cent in salary.
Growth is intentional. We add features, regions, and users at a pace we can support responsibly. No VC, no growth-at-all-costs.
WireGuard, BGP, RIPE-registered address space, standard routing. No proprietary protocols, no vendor lock-in.
Five WireGuard hub CHRs across three continents, a FreeBSD web server, a Docker host running wiki/forum/monitoring, a NAT instance, load balancers, WAF, Transit Gateway peering, and RIPE NCC annual membership fees for two IPv4 /24 blocks. This is real multi-region infrastructure, not a single VPS with WireGuard on it.
You're looking at them. The cost breakdown on this page and on the sponsor page is pulled live from AWS Cost Explorer. If you want more granular detail, ask.
nSolo gives you a dedicated public IP via bidirectional NAT - simple, no router needed. nColo gives you a routable prefix that you advertise via BGP from your own router - no NAT, pure L3, you control the routing. nSolo is for people who want a public IP. nColo is for people who want to run their own network.
Richard (druk) is the sole maintainer and decision-maker. This isn't a democracy - it's a benevolent dictatorship. Community input is valued and shapes the roadmap, but the buck stops here.
No. This is a passion project. If circumstances change, the community would be informed and given options including data export and transition time.
Any surplus is reserved for infrastructure improvements, new regions, emergency repairs, or to cover lean months. Nobody profits from this. The cumulative deficit is tracked publicly on the sponsor page.
If you have questions about the funding model or want to discuss the project: