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Lark is proudly open source. The realtime database engine and edge gateway behind Lark Cloud are the same code you can read, build, and run on your own machines. See our open source community at github.com/lark-sh/lark. Picking a database is a long-term bet, and the biggest risk is what happens if the vendor disappears, changes terms, or prices you out. With Lark there’s an exit: the whole engine is open, so you can self-host whenever you want.

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Run it yourself

Self-hosting gives you:
  • No lock-in. The engine is yours to run under the AGPL license.
  • Full inspection. Read the source, audit the security rules engine, and understand exactly how your data is stored and synced.
  • Your infrastructure. Run it on your own hardware, in your own cloud, inside your own network boundary.
The product behaves the same either way. Everything in the Platform, Lark SDK, REST API, and Firebase SDK docs is correct for both Lark Cloud and self-hosted Lark. If you’re interested in self-hosting Lark, start in the Github repo where you’ll find instructions: github.com/lark-sh/lark.

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Why choose Lark Cloud?

Self-hosting means you operate Lark. Lark Cloud means we do:
  • Managed operations. Provisioning, upgrades, monitoring, and on-call are handled for you.
  • Scaling. Capacity grows with your traffic without you sizing clusters or tuning the edge.
  • Support. Direct access to the team building Lark.
Most teams start on Lark Cloud and stay there because operating a low-latency realtime database well is real work.

Start on Lark Cloud

Create a project and build your first real-time app in minutes.

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License

Lark is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL v3). For commercial licensing questions, or if you need different licensing terms, please reach out at team@lark.sh.