Pricing
Both ways of running Glassmkr are free. Pick where your trust model lives.
Questions
Why is hosted Glassmkr free?
Glassmkr is primarily an open-source project. The hosted service is a convenient way to use the same software without operating the stack yourself. Hosted accounts currently support up to 10 nodes.
Will hosted stay free?
That is the intent. If hosted load ever forces a change, self-hosting stays free under AGPL-3.0-only and export exists.
What is the difference?
Same codebase. Self-hosted runs on your hardware with every gate removed; hosted is the same thing operated for you. Agents re-point between them with one init command.
Every cloud, VM, and serverless workload runs on bare metal underneath. Glassmkr is the opinionated early-warning system that keeps that base running, so the layers above can focus on the app.