can you do EAS build on your own machine for free?

Hi, I’m a little confused as I read that you can apparently do an EAS build for free if it’s on your own computer but when i read the documentation it seems like if you want to do eas build (even for internal testing) you have to have the cloud subscription. I’m just working on one app and it’s a free app so $30 a month is a lot (especially since it’s in beta right now).

I’ve read that you all are working on a free tier but I don’t know when that is going to be released and I just want to do internal testing for my app (and if I can auto push it to the stores with smaller size even better but completely understand if those cost extra even for free or small apps).

P.S. I’m on a managed project

you need to use eas-cli and have an expo account but with flag --local subscription is not required, also you can try cloud builds for month for free

Thank you @wkozyra. I’m assuming pushing for internal testing won’t work on internal builds, correct?

also is there an eta on the free tier as I would like to push new developments so everyone can download it on their phone to test things out much faster?

If not a free tier, at a least a much cheaper one

thank you

  • Internal builds will work
  • registering devices for ios should work, the subscription should not be required but I’m not 100% sure about it
  • ipa created this way can be installed on devices, but it’s a bit more complicated than just going to the link

is there an eta on the free tier

The official deadline was before the end of the year, but it should be much sooner than that

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A.k.a, “today” :partying_face:

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@wkozyra
I was researching Expo pricing and found the terms and conditions for commercial use in the Fair Use Policy and the conversation in this forum post.

At this point in time, is commercial use still possible if I set up my own development environment and build my application with eas build --local?

(In other words, is it correct to say that the text in the Commercial Usage section of the Fair Use Policy applies only to cloud build users? )

Thanks

Yes. Expo is open source, and you can use it for free on your own hardware. If you use the cloud services for building, OTA updates, etc., then the pricing/fair use policy becomes relevant.

@notbrent please correct me if I have said anything misleading above

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Yes it’s exactly as @wodin described, pricing does not apply to local build.

One small correction is that local builds are not exactly open source, they are under this license eas-build/LICENSE at main · expo/eas-build · GitHub . The only limitation compared to a purely open source solution is that you can’t use that code to setup your own build service and charge users for the builds.

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@wodin , @wkozyra Thank you for replies.

However, it is true that it is hard to maintain a development environment, so I will discuss with my team to use EAS Cloud at some point in the future :grinning:

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Hi there, I’d like to clarify if I buy expo application services will the Expo team create builds for me and publish them to app/play store?

I’m having a lot of trouble with the builds lately, need their service where they can actually help me.