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How SurveyJS commercial licences work — which components are paid, how developer seats are counted, and keeping the licence key out of public code.

SurveyJS is a set of JavaScript components for building forms and surveys inside an application — including a drag-and-drop form builder your own users can operate. Some parts are open source; others are commercial and need a licence key.

Quick summary

The form-rendering library (Form Library) is open source. The three proprietary components — Survey Creator, Dashboard and PDF Generator — are commercially licensed and require a key. Licences are counted by developer seat, not by end user or server. Buy under your own company account so the licence survives any change of agency.

What's free and what isn't

Component	Licence
Form Library — renders forms and collects answers	Open source (MIT)
Survey Creator — the drag-and-drop form builder	Commercial
Dashboard — charts and tables of responses	Commercial
PDF Generator — exports a form to PDF	Commercial

The distinction matters for planning: an application that simply displays forms defined by developers may need no licence at all. One that lets your own staff or customers build forms through a drag-and-drop interface needs the commercial Creator.

Developer seats

SurveyJS sells its commercial components per developer: a licence for each member of your team who does the integration work and uses the SurveyJS API. Not per server, per deployment, or per end user. Practical consequences:

The number of seats you hold has to be at least the number of developers actually working with the libraries.
Colleagues who only work on other parts of the project, and use the libraries as a dependency to compile and build it, don't need a seat of their own.
Agency developers who touch the SurveyJS API do need to be covered.
Your end users don't consume seats, however many there are — as long as they're using your forms rather than writing code against the API.

A licence runs as a 12-month subscription from the purchase date, and includes updates and support for that period. It is perpetual for what you received: you can keep using the last version issued inside the term for as long as you like, so existing builds don't stop working. What ends is updates, support, and the right to use versions released afterwards. Terms change over time, so confirm current details with the vendor before relying on any of this.

The licence key

A key set in browser code is publicly visible

If the key is set in code that ships to the browser, it reaches every visitor and anyone can read it. That is normal and expected for this kind of key, but it means two things: don't treat it as a security control, and never commit it to a public repository — automated scanners hunt for exposed keys in public code, and a key found there can be reused by anyone who wants a free copy of what you paid for. Inject it at build time from an environment variable instead. See environment variables & secrets.

A practical setup:

Store the key in your password manager as the source of truth.

Add it as an environment variable in each hosting environment.

Reference the variable in code — never the literal key.

Add a .env.example listing the variable name with an empty value, so new developers know it's required.

Ownership

Buy the licence in your own name

Register the licence to your company on a shared, role-based email address. If an agency buys it on their account, the renewal, the support entitlement, and the key itself sit with them. See transferring ownership to you.

To give us access to the vendor portal for renewals or support, either add our address as a user on the account if the portal supports it, or share the key alone via Onetime Secret.

Common questions

What happens if the licence expires?

The version you already have keeps working — this is perpetual-for-the-version licensing, not a kill switch. What stops is updates, support, and the right to use versions released after expiry. An unmaintained front-end component eventually accumulates security and compatibility problems, so lapsing indefinitely isn't a good plan.

Can we use it on several projects?

Yes. SurveyJS says the same licence can be used in different applications, and it doesn't cap how many applications a licence holder builds with the libraries. Seats follow the developer, not the project. The restrictions are elsewhere: you may not redistribute the libraries themselves, or use them to build something that competes with SurveyJS.

Where is our survey data stored?

Wherever your application puts it — SurveyJS is a component library, not a hosted service, so responses go to your own database. That's an advantage for data residency and privacy: no third party holds your responses. It also means the obligations are yours. See data privacy basics.

Is there an open-source alternative?

For rendering forms, the open-source library alone is often sufficient. The commercial value sits almost entirely in the visual builder. If your team can define forms as configuration rather than through a drag-and-drop interface, you may not need a licence at all — worth deciding before building.

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.

Learn more

SurveyJS — Licensing

SurveyJS licensing