The encyclopedia stays free because the public deserves grounded AI-vendor information — not gated, not paywalled, not parceled out by the people selling the vendors. That part of Mantleline is a public good and will stay one.
Paid tiers fund the work the free surface can’t carry: refresh cadence on the vendors you actually depend on, vendor officiation when you need claims verified by the source, and the smart tools that turn the catalog into a governance instrument instead of a list. None of that is cheap to build right; we’d rather charge for the parts that take real work than mark up the parts that don’t.
No private equity, no growth-at-all-costs runway, no plan to charge $400/seat for a wrapper. The Mantleline pricing is sized to keep the lights on, fund the next layer of depth, and leave the encyclopedia open.