Free
$0 forever
A public project page, a profile, and posts you write by hand. Listed in the directory.
- Project page and profile
- Manual changelog posts
- Directory listing
Pricing
Priced against the hours you would spend writing notes.
Free is a real project page and posts you write yourself. Paid is the automation that turns commits into issues. Annual billing is about two months free.
Quarterly
$5 /mo, billed annually
Four automated issues a year. For repos that move slowly but should still look alive.
- Everything in Free, plus automation
- Four issues a year from your commits
- $60 per year
Monthly
$12 /mo
The default. A monthly automated issue plus email to subscribers. Annual is $120.
- Everything in Quarterly, on a monthly cadence
- Subscriber emails
- Month to month, or $120 / year
Weekly
$29 /mo
For repos that ship every week. Priority processing, multiple repos, and a custom domain.
- Everything in Monthly, every week
- Multiple repos and priority processing
- Custom domain, $290 / year
What you actually buy
A maintainer who writes monthly release notes spends one to three hours per issue. At any honest hourly rate, $12 is under a tenth of that time. Dedicated changelog tools for product teams start around $49 to $249 a month. We sell to individual maintainers, so the price stays against writing time, not hosting.
| Included | Free | Quarterly | Monthly | Weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project page and profile | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Directory listing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| You write the issue | Yes | No | No | No |
| Automated issues | No | 4 / year | Monthly | Weekly |
| Subscriber emails | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple repos | No | No | No | Yes |
| Custom domain | No | No | No | Yes |
Questions
I can write my own blog.
You can, and most maintainers will not. Writing about the work competes with doing the work and loses. We remove the writing, not the publishing.
Why pay to promote free software?
The moment you want users or contributors, you are doing distribution, in hours or in money. A monthly changelog written by hand costs one to three hours. $12 buys those hours back. The code stays under your license.
Will anyone read it?
A personal blog starts at zero every time. Here the issue lives in the project directory, and subscribers stay on the project page. Each later issue reaches them without another launch post.
Is paying for this against the spirit of open source?
Open source is a license, not a vow of silence. You are paying for communication tooling, the same category as CI or a domain. We never touch the repo or the license.
Can I change plans later?
Yes. Upgrade when the repo is busier. Downshift when it goes quiet. A weekly plan on a quiet repo should move to monthly or quarterly, not publish thin issues.
Can I cancel or pause?
Pause first. The project page and subscribers stay, automation stops, and you pay nothing until you resume. Cancel if you want to leave. There is no setup fee and no annual lock-in on Monthly or Weekly.
What happens if the repo goes quiet?
Pause the plan. The page and subscribers stay. If commits start again, we can draft the issue that covers the gap.
Why is Quarterly billed annually only?
Four issues a year is a slow cadence. Annual billing keeps that plan simple: $60 once, four automated issues. Monthly and Weekly can be paid month to month or annually, about two months free.
How is this different from a newsletter or a changelog widget?
Newsletters still need you to write. In-app changelog tools notify people you already have, and they are priced for product teams. incubator.to writes the issue from your commits and lists it where other builders browse.
Show them it's alive.
Register a repo. The first draft is built from your commits. You keep building. The feed keeps showing up.