Public Beta — Available Now
Trust math. Not corporations.
Private messaging, secured by mathematics.
Keylane is an end-to-end encrypted messenger built on a cryptographic identity that belongs to you. No phone number. No email address. No central database of who talks to whom.
Free, with no ads and no account. All download options · Setup guide
No trackers on this site. No analytics. No cookies.
What Keylane is
Keylane is a messenger for people who would rather not be a row in someone’s database. You install the app, it generates a key pair on your device, and that key pair is your account — there is nothing to sign up for and nothing to verify.
Messages are encrypted on your device before they leave it, using a hybrid handshake that combines classical elliptic-curve cryptography with post-quantum ML-KEM. The server that carries them is a relay: it holds sealed envelopes it cannot open, and it does not record who sent them.
We built it because we think a genuinely end-to-end secure messenger ought to exist by now — one that takes the device in your hand as seriously as it takes the server in the rack, treats privacy as architecture rather than policy, and still looks and behaves like an app you would choose to use rather than one you tolerate for the security. Most products get one or two of those. We are not willing to trade any of them away.
Keylane is built by Livotov Labs, a company registered in Bulgaria and operating under EU law. It is free to use, and it is not funded by advertising.
- Identity
- Key pair
- Key exchange
- PQXDH
- Server retention
- 14 days max
- Jurisdiction
- EU / Bulgaria
- Price
- Free
Principles
Six commitments that shape every decision in the product. Each one is written so you can check whether we are keeping it.
-
No identity required
Your account is a random cryptographic identity generated on your device — not a phone number, not an email address. We never ask, so we never know, and there is no identity for anyone to demand from us.
-
Zero-knowledge by architecture
Servers hold encrypted envelopes, not conversations. The spooling database does not record who sent a message, so the social graph cannot be reconstructed from a database dump. Undelivered envelopes are purged on delivery, or after 14 days at the latest.
-
Post-quantum from day one
Every conversation starts with a hybrid handshake: classical X25519 combined with post-quantum ML-KEM. An adversary recording traffic today would need to break both to read it later.
-
Your infrastructure, your choice
Keylane instances federate. Use the public network, or run your own relay and still reach everyone else. No operator — including us — can lock you in.
-
You pay for infrastructure, never for privacy
The app and the public network are free. Money comes from optional dedicated servers, on-premises deployments, and business features. Privacy is not a tier, and your data is not a product.
-
Verifiable, not asserted
The protocol is documented in a public whitepaper, the cryptographic core is open source, and we publish a threat model that states plainly what Keylane does not protect against.
Secure doesn’t have to mean sparse
A messenger you would actually want to use every day — with the encryption guarantees you can’t see, and the polish you can.
How a message actually travels
Encryption happens before anything leaves your device. The server only ever sees a sealed envelope.
-
1
Sender’s device
The message is encrypted locally with a key only the recipient can derive.
-
2
Sealed envelope
Ciphertext and a destination device ID — nothing else — cross the wire.
-
3
Blind relay
The server routes the envelope without holding the keys needed to open it.
-
4
Recipient’s device
Only the recipient’s device holds the key to decrypt it, locally.
Don’t take our word for it
Security through obscurity doesn’t work. Here is everything we publish so you can check the claims on this page.
- Cryptography whitepaper
- Every primitive and protocol decision written up in detail — identity, key exchange, payload encryption, routing, attachments, and push.
- Threat model
- What Keylane defends against, and — just as importantly — what it does not. No security product protects against everything.
- Kodium crypto core
- The cryptographic core is public under the Apache License 2.0. The full client source is being prepared for release; we won’t claim it’s open until it is.
- Transparency report
- Government and law-enforcement requests received, and what we were able to produce in response. Updated on a fixed schedule.
- Vulnerability disclosure
- How to report a security issue, what is in scope, and the safe-harbour commitment we make to researchers who follow it.
- Changelog
- What shipped, when, and what changed about security behaviour in each release.
In development
Own your infrastructure
Keylane’s public network is free and open to everyone. For teams, law firms, and organizations that need their own relay, we are building managed hosting, an on-premises container image, and a plug-and-play appliance for small deployments.
Frequently asked questions
Does Keylane need my phone number?
No. Your account is a key pair generated on your device. Keylane never asks for a phone number, an email address, or any other real-world identifier — which also means there is nothing of that kind for us to lose, sell, or be compelled to hand over. See Keylane ID for how identity works.
What can the server actually see?
An encrypted envelope and a destination device ID. It does not see message content, and the spooling database does not record who sent a message. Undelivered envelopes are purged when the recipient acknowledges delivery, or after 14 days at the latest — whichever comes first. The full detail is in server security.
How is Keylane different from Signal or Matrix?
Signal ties identity to a phone number and runs a centralized network. Matrix is federated but keeps substantial room state on the server. Keylane combines phone-number-free identity with federation, while keeping the relay zero-knowledge and post-quantum ready from day one. A detailed side-by-side is on the comparison page.
If Keylane is free, how does it make money?
Right now it does not. Keylane is paid for out of our own pocket — no investors, no advertising, no data sales — and messaging on the public network stays free for as long as we can afford it. Revenue will come from optional paid infrastructure: dedicated and managed servers, on-premises deployments, and business features. The one exception on the free network is voice and video calling, which costs us real money per minute to relay. We never charge for privacy or security. The full picture.
Is Keylane open source?
Partly, and we would rather be precise about it than round up. Kodium — the cryptographic core — is public under the Apache License 2.0 today. The full client application source is being prepared for release. Independently of the source, the protocol itself is fully documented in the whitepaper.
What happens if I lose my device?
Your Keylane ID lives on one device today, and if you lose it the ID cannot be recovered — there is no password reset, because there is no account for us to reset. That is a direct consequence of us not holding your keys. Multi-device linking and an offline recovery key are both on the roadmap; neither has shipped. How to prepare for this.
Can I run my own Keylane server?
Not yet — self-hosting is in active development. Because Keylane instances federate, a self-hosted relay will be able to exchange messages with the public network and with other private instances. Progress is tracked on the server setup page.