Roboflow Licensing

What is a commercial model license, and do I need one?

Computer vision models, like all software, are distributed under licenses which dictate how that model may be used. Some models have restrictive licensing which makes them difficult or impossible to use in a commercial context.

Take the AGPL-3.0 license as an example. Many popular models like YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 are distributed under this license. AGPL-3.0 requires the user to open-source any code changes they make (including the code of any other projects that connect directly to the model). While this structure often works for hobby and research projects, it may not be a great fit for commercial use.

For businesses, the default way to use a model distributed under AGPL-3.0 (or similar restrictive) licenses is to purchase a commercial license. A commercial license is a separate license which gives end users the right to use the model without an obligation to open-source related code changes.

Commercial licenses are needed in cases where:

  1. A model with restrictive licensing is the best technical solution, and;
  2. You are commercially unwilling or legally unable to open-source related code.

Commercial licenses are not needed in cases where:

  1. A model with permissible licensing (like MIT or Apache 2.0) is the best technical solution, or;
  2. You are willing and able to open-source your code.

Roboflow Commercial Licensing

Uncertainty around licensing can delay or stop a project.

To add confidence and simplify the licensing process, Roboflow provides commercial licenses for popular models that may require a commercial license as a part of our paid subscriptions. Additionally, we often utilize open source models that do not require separate licensing for commercial use.

Our licensing depends on your plan type and how you choose to deploy your model.

Deployment Method
Does Roboflow provide a commercial license?
Roboflow Managed Cloud
Yes, for all free and paid plans.
Self-Hosted Inference
Yes, for all paid plans.
Deployment outside of the Roboflow ecosystem
Growth plans come with a commercial license for 10 devices. Enterprise plans are custom. Talk to sales for more information.

Supported Models

Roboflow provides commercial licenses for many models that otherwise have restrictive licensing. Note the below is not a comprehensive list of models you can use with Roboflow as the community and Roboflow team are adding more models regularly; do not hesitate to reach out with questions for your commercial project.

Commercial License Available

The following models are distributed under restrictive licenses, though Roboflow provides a commercial license based on plan and deployment method.

Model Name
Model Name
Default License
Commercial License Available
Other Considerations
Roboflow 3.0
Object Detection, Instance Segmentation, Keypoint Detection
AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv8-derived.
Roboflow 2.0
Object Detection, Instance Segmentation
GPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv5-derived.
YOLOv12
Object Detection
AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLO11
Object Detection, Instance Segmentation
AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv10
Object Detection
AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv8
Object Detection, Instance Segmentation
GPL-3.0 or AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv8 moved from a GPL-3.0 to an AGPL-3.0 license in April, 2023.
YOLOv7
Object Detection
GPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv5
Object Detection, Instance Segmentation
GPL-3.0 or AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOv5 moved from a GPL-3.0 to an AGPL-3.0 license in April, 2023.
YOLO-World
Object Detection
AGPL-3.0
Yes
YOLOE
Object Detection
AGPL-3.0
Yes

Default Permissive Licenses

The following models are distributed under permissive licenses and therefore do not require a commercial license to use.

Model Name
Model Type
Commercial License
Other Considerations
RF-DETR
Object Detection
Apache-2.0
OwlV2
Object Detection
Apache-2.0
YOLO-NAS
Object Detection
Apache-2.0
This model’s code is created & released under an Apache 2.0 license, but the Deci-provided pre-trained weights are under a special license. If you train with Roboflow Train, commercial usage is allowed because we do not use the Deci weights. If you train your own model outside the Roboflow platform, ensuring adherence to the Deci YOLO-NAS license is your responsibility.
Roboflow 2.0 (Semantic Segmentation)
Semantic Segmentation
MIT
DeepLabV3+-derived.
Roboflow 1.0 (Instance Segmentation)
Instance Segmentation
MIT
YOLOACT-derived.
ViT
Classification
Apache-2.0
ResNet
Classification
Apache-2.0
DocTR
OCR
Apache-2.0
TrOCR
OCR
MIT
CLIP
Foundation / Embedding
MIT
L2CS-Net (Gaze Detection)
Gaze
MIT, Apache-2.0
CogVLM
VLM
Apache-2.0
GroundingDINO
Foundation, Object Detection
Apache-2.0
Florence-2
Foundation, Multimodal
MIT
PaliGemma
Foundation, Multimodal
Apache-2.0, Gemma
Review Google’s Gemma License before use.
Segment Anything
Foundation, Segmentation
Apache-2.0
Segment Anything 2
Foundation, Segmentation
Apache-2.0

Unsupported Models

Roboflow is unable to provide commercial licenses for the following models: YOLOv9, YOLOv7.