Keylight vs Keymint — the Swift-first alternative

Keymint and Keylight land in the same place on the surface — license keys, offline validation, a free tier that starts at 25 active licenses. Then you check the SDK lists. They overlap on Rust and JavaScript. Keymint goes further with Python, Go, and C#. Keylight goes further with Swift. For a Mac app, that one line decides it.

What Keymint gets right

Keymint is a clean cross-platform licensing backend. Node-locking, cryptographic signatures, and offline or air-gapped validation on every tier, with a stateless design that verifies locally without a server round-trip. The pricing is honest indie pricing — free to start, then $29 and $99 — and it’s aimed squarely at desktop developers, SaaS founders, and indie hackers.

If you’re shipping a Python tool, a Go service, or a C# app, Keymint speaks your language. Its Rust and JavaScript SDKs cover Tauri and Electron too.

Where Keylight is different

The gap is Swift. Keymint doesn’t ship an Apple SDK, so licensing a Mac or Swift app on it means calling a non-Swift SDK across a bridge, hitting the REST API yourself, or writing and maintaining your own Swift wrapper. That’s the licensing glue every paid Mac app otherwise ends up writing.

Keylight ships that part. The Swift SDK is a state machine — activate once, check on launch, switch on the result:

await licensing.checkOnLaunch()

switch licensing.state {
case .licensed:    enablePaidFeatures()
case .trial(let daysLeft): showTrialBanner(daysLeft: daysLeft)
case .expired:     showRenewalPrompt()
case .invalid:     showActivationSheet()
}

The same backend powers Rust and JavaScript SDKs too — a Tauri app or an Electron tool on the same system. Offline checks run on Ed25519-signed leases with feature flags baked in, so you gate Pro features offline. And Stripe is wired in — a charge mints the license, no webhook code. Other processors connect by webhook; Stripe is the done path.

When Keymint is the better pick

Be honest about it. If your stack is Python, Go, or C#, Keymint has SDKs for those today and Keylight doesn’t. A cross-platform C# product, a Python CLI, or a Go service — Keymint covers them with a real SDK and the same offline, air-gapped guarantees.

Keylight is Swift-first, not Swift-only. Rust and JavaScript ship too. But if you’re shipping in a language outside that list right now, Keymint fits the stack you actually have.

Where Keylight fits

Building in Swift for the Mac or iOS, and you want licensing that drops in? Keylight. Native Swift SDK, offline Ed25519 leases, feature flags in the lease, minting on payment, multi-product and multi-tenant built in.

Same free-tier starting line as Keymint. The difference is one of them has a Swift SDK.

Plans start at $19/month, with a free tier. Connect your payment provider, drop in the SDK, ship.