Why do we share our financial data?

At OST Ltd. our mission is simply to make great tools. To do that to a professional level we need staff and that means we need a revenue stream, but we also want our user community to understand what revenue we generate and how we spend that in support of the mission.

The data below are provided over a 3-year average and are updated regularly. We use a 3-year window because that reflects recent activity while averaging out short-term fluctuations in our revenue/expenditure.

Open source, open science, open finances. Because open is what we do!

OST Ltd Revenue

You can see that:

  • the majority of our revenue comes from Institutional Licenses (over 150 of them) and Credits on Pavlovia.org. Note that, if you want to help us to keep writing tools for you, do please encourage your institution to get a license. It's a great way that they can support further open-source development.
  • we receive a small amount of revenue for training events, such as PsychoPy workshops
  • increasingly we are providing consultancy services as well. Lots of labs are short of time/staff, but have some left over grant funds, so hire us to write their next study for them or to solve a particular problem. You can even hire us to add specific features that you need in the software.

OST Ltd Expenditure

Our revenue is spent on:

  • staff: our biggest cost by far is paying a fair salary to our staff, to create professional-quality tools, to support users
  • operating costs: we have to pay for office space, credit card processors, lawyers, bank fees etc. That boring stuff is, sadly, required. We also have to pay a cyber-security firm to try and hack our servers, to make sure they're safe, for instance.
  • computing: naturally, we have a number of quite big servers to manage. We also use a range of software services, like email and project management applications to help things run smoothly
  • community and awareness: we spend a small amount of money attending and sponsoring conferences, to talk with the community about our tools and projects (if you're seeking sponsoship for an event or conference keep an eye our here for information on how to apply). We also provide some financial support to other open-source software projects
  • reserves: for our long-term sustainability. Although we aren't profiteering, we aim to maintain a certain security blanket to ensure that we can continue providing you with our services long into the future