Rootwall — schedule of fees

In plain English

This summary is not part of the schedule. Where the two differ, the schedule below governs.

One membership, whatever your role. A provider and its client pay the same. The price depends only on the size of the business: $1,000, $3,000 or $6,000 a year.
Every member pays its own membership, whoever invited whom. A client can ask its providers to join, a provider can invite its clients, and either can join on its own.
One joining fee, $350. It covers being admitted and it covers leaving. Exit is not charged again later.
A provider is assessed once per scope class, for $1,200, and renewal is half that. The assessment is the cost of checking the provider, so it stays with the provider.
Nothing is ever paid to Rootwall for breaking a rule. Where a sum is payable for a breach, it is paid to the member that was harmed. The rulebook forbids any such sum reaching the scheme, and forbids that clause being amended.
Prices can change, and you are never bound to one you did not accept. Any change is published here with its date. Nothing changes mid-term, and a member that will not accept a change may leave rather than be held to it.

Membership

Membership is the same whatever the member’s role. It is set by the member’s annual revenue, in three bands, declared by the member when it is admitted.

Annual revenue of the member	Membership, per year
SmallUnder $10 million	$1,000
Medium$10 million to $100 million	$3,000
LargeOver $100 million	$6,000

The band is the member’s own declaration, renewed each year. A false declaration is a broken rule like any other. A member holding both roles pays one membership.

Other fees

Fee	Provider	Client
AdmissionOne-off. Covers onboarding and offboarding	$350	$350
AssessmentPer scope class, on first admission to that class	$1,200	Nil
ReassessmentPer scope class, on renewal of an admission	$600	Nil
ConductDeclared head, currently set at nil	Nil	Nil
Retention extensionDeclared head, currently set at nil	Nil	Nil

In the rulebook’s terms, the provider is a member in the Emitting Role and its client is a member in the Receiving Role. The client is the company whose systems the provider connects to. A scope class is the published set of rules for one kind of provider access: what is allowed, what is not, and the limits.

Why one price for both sides

Earlier versions of this schedule charged the client six times more than the provider. That assumed the client always asks and the provider always joins reluctantly. It is not always that way round.

A client can require its providers to join. It is usually the larger party, and asking each provider to pay its own membership is a reasonable condition of access.
A provider can invite its clients. A provider that wants to show its clients a record of how it behaves inside their systems needs them to take part. At the same modest price, that is a reasonable ask.
Either can join on its own, to say it is ready to show its conduct. The record itself starts when a counterparty takes part.

Pricing by the size of the business rather than by role keeps the fee fair in every one of those cases. It is set by revenue rather than by headcount, because the size of a business is no longer measured well by the number of people in it.

Why only the provider is assessed

Because the scope class sets rules for the provider’s conduct, and there is currently nothing to assess the client against. Admission on that side is admission plus a declaration of which scope classes it accepts. It is membership, not an audit, and it is described that way deliberately.

If that ever changes, an assessment fee for that side will be published here before it is charged to anyone.

What is never charged

No sum of any kind is payable to Rootwall on breach of a rule, and that cannot be amended.

Where the rulebook fixes a sum for a breach, it is paid by the member that broke the rule to the member affected by it. The scheme takes nothing from it and has no financial interest in the outcome of any determination, in either direction.

Two further things are not charged. Release of evidence is a duty, not a product, and is never billed — least of all at the moment a member is in dispute. And no fee is metered per report or per connection, because charging for reporting would give a member a financial reason to stay quiet, which is the one incentive the rulebook is most concerned to remove.

Two heads declared at nil, and why they appear at all

The conduct fee and the retention extension fee are listed above at nil. Neither is charged today.

The scheme compares both sides’ reports as a matter of course, and no separate charge is made for it. Holding both sides’ signed records, comparing them, running the rule check and releasing them on request are things the scheme does because that is what the scheme is.

They are declared now because introducing an entirely new category of fee later would, under the rulebook’s amendment provisions, be an event that entitles every existing member to withdraw. Publishing a figure against a head that has already been declared is not. Declaring them at nil is what stops us inventing a new kind of charge later, and it is why we do not have to pretend nothing will ever be charged.

If a figure is ever set against the conduct head, it would relate to volume — a member whose connections the scheme compares heavily against one it barely touches. Any figure would be published on this page before it applied to anybody, and no change applies inside a period already paid for.

What the ongoing record is worth, stated plainly. The assessment buys one sentence: this provider passed a test in March. The record buys a different one: this provider did exactly this, last Tuesday, and both sides signed the same account of it. That second sentence is the reason the scheme exists, and it is the part that keeps being true after the assessment has gone stale.

Changes to this schedule

These prices are not promised to stay where they are, and this page does not pretend otherwise. What is promised is that no member is ever held to a price it did not agree to.

What changed in version 1.3, published 1 October 2026. Membership is no longer priced by role. Every member pays the same membership whatever its role, in three bands by annual revenue: $1,000, $3,000 or $6,000 a year. Version 1.2 charged $6,000 a year to the client and $1,000 to the provider. Admission, assessment and reassessment are unchanged.

Why. A provider can now be the one that invites its clients, not only the one that is asked to join. A price that only made sense one way round was the wrong price.

Earlier versions remain readable, at version 1.0, version 1.1 and version 1.2.

Nothing changes mid-term. A change published here applies at a member’s next renewal, never inside a period already paid for.
A member that will not accept a change may leave. The rulebook’s amendment provisions require notice and permit withdrawal by a member that does not accept what is being changed. That right is what protects a member that has already built against the scheme, and it does not depend on any promise about price.
Every version of this page stays readable. Superseded versions remain published, with their dates, on the version history.
Fees are not rules. They can change on this schedule without amending the rulebook. What cannot change is the rulebook’s prohibition on any sum reaching the scheme on breach.
Amounts are in US dollars and are exclusive of VAT. Rootwall.ai Ltd is registered for UK value added tax. VAT is added where it applies, as is any other tax applying in the member’s jurisdiction.