Return to the Community Edition

Updated November 9, 2026

If you ran migrate-to-enterprise.sh (Migrate an Existing Community Combined Deployment) and will not keep the Enterprise Commercial License, use this page to switch the deployment back to the Community Edition. Choose one of two paths:

Use Keep your data unless you need the deployment exactly as it was before the migration. If you declined the Postgres migration, the script did not move your data, so there is no backup to restore and Keep your data is the only path.

On either path, the features the license unlocks stop working, including traffic-flow event logging and peer approval. See What the license unlocks for the full list.

Before you start

Open a root shell with sudo -i, then change to the directory that holds docker-compose.yml:

cd "$(docker inspect netbird-server \
  --format '{{index .Config.Labels "com.docker.compose.project.working_dir"}}')"

Run every command on this page from there. If you open a new terminal, run both again.

Check which database the migration left you on:

ls docker-compose.override.yml config.yaml.enterprise

If both files are listed, you migrated to Postgres. If ls prints No such file or directory only for config.yaml.enterprise, you are on SQLite. If ls prints No such file or directory for both files, the deployment was not migrated with migrate-to-enterprise.sh: stop here, this page does not apply.

Write down the running version:

docker logs netbird-server 2>&1 | grep 'management server version'

If the output contains management server version 0.82.0+enterprise.1, your <VERSION> is 0.82.0: drop the +enterprise.N suffix and add no v.

Back up the database and .env. On Postgres:

docker exec netbird-postgres pg_dump -U netbird -d netbird > netbird-backup.sql
chmod 600 netbird-backup.sql
cp -p .env .env.backup

On SQLite, the server stops briefly so the copy is consistent:

docker compose stop netbird-server
docker run --rm --volumes-from netbird-server \
  -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/netbird-data-backup.tgz -C /var/lib/netbird .
chmod 600 netbird-data-backup.tgz
cp -p .env .env.backup
docker compose start netbird-server

These are your copies if something goes wrong; the restore path below does not use them. They contain credentials and keys, so keep them private.

Keep your data

1. Create docker-compose.community.yml. The file switches the server to the community image, clears the license key, and keeps the traffic-flow services from starting. It works whether or not you enabled traffic flow. Replace <VERSION> with the version you wrote down:

   cat > docker-compose.community.yml <<'EOF'
   {services: {
   netbird-server: {image: "netbirdio/netbird-server:<VERSION>",
   environment: {NB_LICENSE_KEY: ""}},
   flow-enricher: {profiles: [enterprise-flow]},
   flow-receiver: {profiles: [enterprise-flow]},
   nats: {profiles: [enterprise-flow]}}}
   EOF
   

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2. Add the file to COMPOSE_FILE in .env. Every plain docker compose command, such as a later docker compose up -d, then loads all three files, so the server stays on the community image. Expect a short interruption while the server restarts:

   printf '\nCOMPOSE_FILE=%s\n' \
     docker-compose.yml:docker-compose.override.yml:docker-compose.community.yml >> .env
   docker compose stop flow-enricher flow-receiver nats
   docker compose up -d --force-recreate netbird-server
   

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3. Check the running image and config file:

   docker inspect netbird-server --format '{{.Config.Image}} {{join .Args " "}}'
   

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   The output starts with netbirdio/netbird-server: and the version you wrote down, and includes --config /etc/netbird/config.yaml.enterprise on Postgres or --config /etc/netbird/config.yaml on SQLite. Sign in to the dashboard and confirm your peers connect.

To undo Keep your data and run Enterprise again, for example if step 3 fails:

rm -f docker-compose.community.yml
sed -i '/^COMPOSE_FILE=/d' .env
docker compose up -d

Restore the pre-migration backup

It puts back the SQLite backup the script took before the migration and deletes the Postgres database: everything created after the migration is lost, and this cannot be undone. You can run it while still on Enterprise or after Keep your data.

1. Find the backup folder and the Postgres volume. Run the first two lines, put the names they print into BACKUP= and VOLUME=, then run the rest. Continue only if the output ends with READY:

   ls -d backups/sqlite-pre-enterprise-*
   docker volume ls --filter name=netbird_postgres
   BACKUP=backups/sqlite-pre-enterprise-<timestamp>
   VOLUME=<volume name>
   test -d "$BACKUP" && docker volume inspect "$VOLUME" >/dev/null && echo READY
   

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2. Run this block in one go: it needs $BACKUP and $VOLUME from step 1. If you opened a new terminal since step 1, rerun sudo -i, the cd command from Before you start and step 1 first. The sed command removes the line # Added by migrate-to-enterprise.sh and every line after it, including the COMPOSE_FILE line if you ran Keep your data; your own lines above it stay:

   docker compose stop
   docker cp "$BACKUP"/. \
     "$(docker compose ps -aq netbird-server)":/var/lib/netbird/
   docker compose down
   docker volume rm "$VOLUME"
   rm -f docker-compose.override.yml config.yaml.enterprise docker-compose.community.yml
   sed -i '/^# Added by migrate-to-enterprise.sh/,$d' .env
   docker compose up -d --remove-orphans
   docker inspect netbird-server --format '{{.Config.Image}} {{join .Args " "}}'
   

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   The output shows netbirdio/netbird-server and --config /etc/netbird/config.yaml. Sign in to the dashboard and confirm your peers from before the migration connect. Users and peers that registered after the migration must register again.