The Software
Blender is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL, or “free software”).
This license grants people a number of freedoms:
- You are free to use Blender, for any purpose
- You are free to distribute Blender
- You can study how Blender works and change it
- You can distribute changed versions of Blender
The GPL strictly aims at protecting these freedoms, requiring everyone to share their modifications when they also share the software in public. That aspect is commonly referred to as Copyleft.
The Blender Foundation and its projects on blender.org are committed to preserving Blender as free software.
License details
The source code we develop at blender.org is default being licensed as GNU GPL Version 2 or later. Some modules we make are using more permissive licenses, though, for example, the Blender Cycles rendering engine is available as Apache 2.0.
Blender also uses many modules or libraries from other projects. For example, Python uses the Python License; Bullet uses the Zlib License; Libmv uses the MIT License; and OSL, a BSD License.
All the components that together make Blender are compatible under the newer GNU GPL Version 3 or later. That is also the license to use for any distribution of Blender binaries.
Your Artwork
What you create with Blender is your sole property. All your artwork – images or movie files – including the .blend files and other data files Blender can write, is free for you to use as you like.
That means that Blender can be used commercially by artists, by studios to make animation films or VFX, by game artists to work on commercial games, by scientists for research, and by students in educational institutions.
Blender’s GNU GPL license guarantees you this freedom. Nobody is ever permitted to take it away, in contrast to trial or “educational” versions of commercial software that will forbid your work in commercial situations.
Privacy and Internet access
Blender respects your privacy, no registration is needed, no connection to the internet is made if you decide to install and use Blender. Blender does not need internet to function properly.
Some add-ons bundled with Blender may access the internet for additional services. These add-ons are not enabled on installing Blender. These add-ons are not required to be enabled for proper functioning of the software, nor will any Blender function ask for enabling such add-ons.
Add-ons that require internet will ask a user explicit permission to use internet while or after enabling the add-on.
Note: this applies to the official version provided via blender.org. We always recommend you to use the official releases.
Sharing or selling Blender add-ons (Python scripts)
Blender’s Python API is an integral part of the software, used to define the user interface or develop tools for example. The GNU GPL license therefore requires that such scripts (if published) are being shared under a GPL compliant license. You are free to sell such scripts, but the sales then is restricted to the download service itself. Your customers will receive the script under the same license (GPL), with the same free conditions as everyone has for Blender.
FAQ for Artists
We collected the most common Frequently Asked Questions here.
Website license
Most of the blender website is available as Creative Commons Attribution, with some exceptions. Read about that here.
The website’s privacy policy you can read here.