# Requirements

Source: https://docs.interop.io/bridge/requirements/index.html

## Hardware & Software Requirements

**Operating System**

Any operating system that can run a supported LTS version of Node.js.

**Software Requirements**

LTS version of Node.js 24 or later is highly recommended.

Node.js versions 20.18 or later and 22.2 or later are also supported.

**Hardware Requirements**

The following hardware requirements are per **io.Bridge** node instance:

- 2 CPU Cores
- 2 GB RAM
- 10 GB Disk Space

## Licensing

**io.Bridge** requires a license key to operate. To acquire a license key, contact us at `sales@interop.io`.

### License Types

There are two types of licenses available for **io.Bridge** - a trial license and a paid license:

| License Type | Purpose | Behavior at Expiration |
|--------------|---------|------------------------|
| Paid | For development, staging, UAT, and production environment usage. | After the license expires, **io.Bridge** will start logging warning messages, but will continue operating normally. |
| Trial | For PoC usage. | After the license expires, **io.Bridge** will stop operating completely. |

### Applying the License Key

To apply your license key, you must set one of the following [environment variables](https://docs.interop.io/bridge/configuration/bridge/index.md#environment_variables) in your `.env` file:

| Environment Variable | Description |
|----------------------|-------------|
| `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY` | Use this environment variable to provide your license key directly. |
| `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY_FILE` | Use this environment variable to provide a path to a file containing your license key. |

The following example demonstrates providing the license key directly by setting the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY` environment variable in your `.env` file:

```cmd
IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY=<my-license-key>
```

The following example demonstrates providing a path to a file that contains the license key by setting the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY_FILE` environment variable in your `.env` file:

```cmd
IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY_FILE=./secrets/io-bridge-license.key
```

You can also use your OS command line tool to set the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY` and the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY_FILE` environment variables.

The following example demonstrates providing the license key by setting the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY` environment variable via the command prompt on Windows:

```cmd
set IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY=<my-license-key>
```

The following example demonstrates providing the license key by setting the `IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY` environment variable on macOS and Linux:

```cmd
export IO_BRIDGE_LICENSE_KEY=<my-license-key>
```

> ⚠️ *Note that, for security reasons, it's not recommended to pass the license key or any credentials as command line arguments when directly executing the `@interopio/bridge` package via `npx`. It's best to pass these values to **io.Bridge** by using the respective environment variables.*