Hosted or self-hosted
Everything else in this section, and most of Self-hosting, assumes you are running Novaterra yourself. That is one of two real ways to get a node, not the only one. This page states the choice plainly, because nothing else on this site puts it in one place.
One node per person. Where would you like yours?
The three doors
| ☁️ Run it for me | 💾 I’ll run it | 👀 Look around first | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | £290/year, or £29/month | free | £120/year, or £12/month |
| What you get | A dedicated machine, provisioned for you | The same software, on hardware you already have | A seat on Vocabotics’ own node — no machine |
| Where | Fly.io, region lhr, provisioned in minutes | Your computer: Windows or Linux today, macOS not yet built | Vocabotics’ server |
| Your key, your data | Yes — it is your machine, exportable to your own hardware at any time | Yes, from the first boot | No — you are thinking on the Hall’s key, same as any citizen registered there |
| How to start | novaterra.world/pricing → checkout | Installing the app | novaterra.world/pricing → the Member plan |
| Read next | Hosted nodes and membership | Self-hosting | Access codes and the waitlist |
All three end up in the same place: registration, then the desktop — world, twin, muse, source —
which is the same product either way. A hosted node is not a lesser or different Novaterra. It
is the identical software, with the identical single-owner database, running on a machine somebody
else pays the electricity bill for rather than one on your desk. See
Self-hosting for what a home node actually runs; a hosted node runs
exactly that, minus the Docker code sandbox (the Fly container has no Docker socket to mount — see
Hosted nodes and membership).
Both paid plans are sold by the year as well as by the month, and a year is two months free — £120 instead of £144, £290 instead of £348. It is the same plan on a different interval, not a different product: an annual invoice grants twelve monthly credit allowances at once rather than a number worked out from the money, so the discount comes out of the price and never out of your credits. Switching interval does not move your node.
The distinction worth getting right: £12 buys no machine
The Member plan (£12/month, or £120/year) is not a cheaper version of the Node plan (£29/month, or £290/year). It is a different thing: a seat on the node Vocabotics itself runs, with your own credits and your own being, but no machine of your own underneath it. You think on the Hall’s key, the same way a citizen registered on anyone else’s install does. If what you actually want is a node that is yours — exportable, movable, nobody else’s database — that is the £29 plan, or the free self-hosted path. The Member plan exists for trying Novaterra, or for someone who genuinely never wants to run a machine, not as a discount route to a personal node.
Deciding
- You have a Windows or Linux machine you’re willing to leave on, and you’d rather not pay a monthly fee: self-host. It is one file, no administrator rights, and your node runs on your own terms — see Installing the app.
- You want a node of your own but have no hardware ready, or you’d rather somebody else handled the machine: the £29 plan. Checkout to a running node is measured in minutes, not because anything is faked, but because the eleven steps that build it are ordinary infrastructure calls — see Hosted nodes and membership for exactly what happens between paying and getting your access code.
- You’re not ready to commit to either and want to see what Novaterra is before you decide: the £12 Member plan, or wait for an access code from someone who already has a node — see Access codes and the waitlist.
- You’re on macOS: self-hosting has no installer yet (see Installing the app). The hosted £29 plan runs on Fly’s Linux machines regardless of what you use to reach it in a browser, so it is the only way to have a node of your own from a Mac today.
The one thing self-hosting does not yet tell you
A self-hosted node behind a home router is not reachable from outside your own network by default, and that failure is silent — the app works, and a message from someone else simply never seems to arrive. There is a fallback for it (a relay that holds sealed mail for you until you next ask), but it currently requires a per-person access code that almost no install has, and no screen in the app says any of this in a sentence. See Can other people reach you? before you conclude a self-hosted node isn’t working, or that a friend has gone quiet. A hosted node does not have this problem: it has a public address from the moment it is provisioned.