R4

What R4 is

R4 is a cloud platform for managing licenses and secrets across people and software agents. Its Beetle component handles encrypted passwords, licenses, and secrets, while Pincer supports license acquisition and lifecycle work for marketplace, contract, and renewal operations. A unified control plane covers agents, vaults, and licenses, with identity-aware access, human-approved scopes, and audit-ready events. Agent runtimes can retrieve shared vault items and decrypt secrets locally through an MCP server, SDK, or machine API. R4 says vault field values are end-to-end encrypted and decrypted locally; names, labels, and website metadata are not end-to-end encrypted. Runtime private keys stay on the host, while R4 stores matching public keys and rotation metadata. Documentation includes quickstarts, CLI, SDK, and API resources. The service uses freemium, usage-based pricing, with a free plan and paid access from $0.20/mo. Private beta access is available by request.

Who it suits

R4 suits teams managing application secrets, software licenses, and agent access through APIs or developer tools. It is relevant to organizations that need audit events, scoped approvals, and local decryption workflows.

Limits

The usage-based plan includes monthly free tiers of 10,000 secret access events, 500 secret write events, 1,000 average active secret values, 1 GB-month binary backup storage, and 1 GB data transfer out. Rates apply after those tiers, with paid pricing from $0.20 per month.

Getting started

1. Open the R4 website
2. Request access to the private beta
3. Review the agent quickstart, CLI, SDK, or API documentation
4. Create or manage vaults through the platform or machine API
5. Connect agent runtimes using the MCP server, SDK, or machine API

Verdict

R4 combines secret storage, license operations, agent workflows, and audit controls in one cloud platform. Its private-beta status, encryption boundaries, and usage-based pricing are important planning considerations.