Understanding your plan

Northwise has four plan tiers. This page explains what each one includes, how billing works, and how to move between tiers.

See full pricing details on the pricing page →

Plan tiers at a glance

Free

€0 / forever. No credit card required. No trial expiry.

The Free plan is for solo architects and teams that want to explore Northwise before committing. It includes:

• 1 Architect seat (you)
• Unlimited Reader seats (always free)
• All core modules: Landscape, Standards, Deliverables, Requirements, Findings
• Basic reviews (no Decision Matrix routing)
• Plumbline readiness scans (view-only — no AI-author)
• EU data residency
• 3 GB storage

What you cannot do on Free:

• Add more Architect seats
• Use Contributor seats
• Access the Decision Matrix and review routing
• Use Plumbline Author (AI suggestions)
• Connect Git sources (Tech Discovery)
• Configure email digests and filtered subscriptions

Team

Available on Team and above

€95 per architect / month (€85 with annual billing).
€25 per contributor / month.
Readers are always free.

Team is for growing architecture practices that need governance:

• Unlimited Architect seats
• Unlimited Contributor seats
• Decision Matrix + review routing
• Full review cycles with comments and status tracking
• Plumbline Author (LLM suggestions using your Anthropic API key)
• Git Tech Discovery — up to 3 Git sources
• Email digests + filtered subscriptions

Business

Available on Business and above

€125 per architect / month (€113 with annual billing).
€25 per contributor / month.

Business adds compliance and enterprise-readiness features on top of Team:

• Everything in Team
• Git Tech Discovery — up to 20 sources
• SSO / SAML (coming Q3 2026)
• Audit-log export (CSV)
• Custom subdomain (e.g. architecture.yourcompany.com)
• Custom DPA and contracts
• 99.5% uptime SLA

14-day trial available — no credit card required.

Enterprise

Custom pricing, negotiated annually.

For large organisations with specific compliance or scale requirements. Includes everything in Business plus:

• Unlimited Git sources
• Dedicated Success Manager
• White-label option
• Per-region data residency (choose your specific EU datacentre)
• Dedicated database (optional)
• 99.9% uptime SLA + 1-hour support response

Contact us at /contact to discuss Enterprise.

How billing works

Architect and Contributor seats

Billing is per named seat, not per active user. If you have 5 Architect seats, you're billed for 5 regardless of how many logged in that month. Readers are always free and unlimited.

Billing is monthly by default. Annual billing gives 10% off (Team and Business).

Changing your seat count

Add seats at any time — they're prorated to your next billing date. Remove seats at the next billing cycle (no mid-cycle reductions). Your data is never deleted due to a seat reduction — users that exceed the seat count are set to Reader automatically.

Upgrading

Upgrading is instant. If you're on Free and upgrade to Team, Team features are available immediately. Your billing cycle starts on the day you upgrade.

To upgrade: go to Settings → Billing → Change plan.

Downgrading

Downgrading takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle. During the cycle, you keep full access to your current plan's features.

When downgrading from Team/Business to Free:

• Architect seats above 1 become Reader until you reduce to 1 Architect
• Contributor seats become Reader
• Plan-gated features (Decision Matrix, Plumbline Author, etc.) become read-only — you can view existing content but not create new content that requires those features

Your data is never deleted on downgrade.

The 14-day Business trial

If you sign up with a Business plan or click "Start 14-day trial" on the pricing page, you get full Business access for 14 days with no credit card.

After 14 days:

• If you haven't added payment details, your tenant drops to the Free plan
• Your data is preserved; Business-only features become read-only
• You can re-upgrade at any time by adding payment details

Trial mechanics for Team

Team doesn't have a time-limited trial. Instead, Free is a meaningful starting point — you can build a real architecture practice on Free with one architect, then upgrade when you need more seats or Team-specific features (Decision Matrix, Plumbline Author, etc.).

Plumbline AI costs

Plumbline Author uses your organisation's Anthropic API key, configured at Settings → Organisation → AI settings. You pay Anthropic directly at their published rates. Northwise adds no markup and takes no cut of your AI spend.