CRATENever locked in
The question every proprietary format dodges: what happens to my files if the company disappears? Here is our answer, in three layers you can check.
A .crate is built from formats the world already runs on: a standard 7-Zip container, standard FLAC and WavPack audio, and a manifest that is plain, readable JSON. Your sessions are never hostage to us, and this page shows you why rather than asking you to believe it.
Layer one: open a Standard pack yourself, today
Pack a session with the Standard preset and the result is an ordinary archive that free software opens right now, with no Crate involved. Try it:
- Open the
.cratefile with free 7-Zip (or p7zip on Mac and Linux). It extracts like any archive. - Look inside. Your session files, notes and images are there exactly as you packed them. Your audio is there as
.flacand.wvfiles. Andmanifest.jsonopens in any text editor: a readable list of every file with its SHA-256 hash, so you can check what you have against what was packed. - Decode the audio with the free FLAC and WavPack tools. They are the same open, widely trusted codecs archives and studios have relied on for decades.
To be precise about scope: this everyday walk applies to packs made with the Standard preset. The smaller presets rearrange data more aggressively to go smaller, so opening those by hand is not an afternoon exercise. They are covered by the next two layers.
Layer two: the release gate that covers every tier
Every compression tier Crate offers, including the smallest, is held to one rule: no version of Crate ships unless an independent check proves its packs can be rebuilt byte-exactly using only free, open tools and no Crate software. The check runs before every release. If it fails, the release does not happen. It is not a policy we aspire to; it is a gate the release process cannot skip.
Layer three: the sunset pledge
We are formalizing a simple pledge: if Crate is ever discontinued, the recovery recipe and the reference script that rebuild packs with free tools become public automatically. The escape hatch does not depend on us being around to open it.
Why this matters for archives
The people this page is really for are the ones packing a decade of sessions away. An archive has to outlive drives, apps and companies. Because a .crate is standard parts all the way down, and because every release is gated on rebuildability with free tools, the archive you make today is not a bet on us. Read the archiving guide →
Free to download and to receive. $25 once to pack. No account, ever.