Roboflow is an authorized licensor of Ultralytics models
Roboflow is proud to be a longtime supporter of open source projects like YOLO26, YOLO11, YOLOv8, and YOLOv5. Every Roboflow plan includes a commercial license for these models when you deploy with Roboflow.
Safety
Start using models without any risk of violating the AGPL-3.0 license. Custom trained versions of AGPL-3.0 models are still AGPL-3.0; a Roboflow license removes that obligation.
Speed
Commercial use is available on free and paid plans with transparent pricing. Work on private commercial projects immediately when deploying with Roboflow.
Durability
Ultralytics Enterprise licenses require you to cease distribution and archive internal products if you do not renew. Roboflow allows continued use with Roboflow cloud deployments.
Platform
Licensing YOLO models with Roboflow comes with the complete platform: Annotate, Train, Workflows, and Deploy.
How does it work?
All plans
All plans include a commercial license for Roboflow cloud deployments.
Enterprise (opens in a new tab)
A commercial license for self-hosting Roboflow Inference is available as an Enterprise Add-On.
Outside the Roboflow ecosystem
Deploying outside of the Roboflow ecosystem is available on Enterprise. Contact sales.
Compare your licensing options
Capability | Ultralytics AGPL-3.0 | Ultralytics Enterprise | Roboflow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rights | |||
| Commercial useUse of the software for business or for-profit applications and services. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Private deploymentDeploy the software in private environments without sharing externally. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Adaptive model training for commercializationAdjust, train, and modify models to meet specific requirements of for-profit projects. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Proprietary internal useExclusive use within the organization's internal operations; no obligation to open-source or share externally. | Not included | Included | Included |
| Model licensingCommercial use of specific models. | N/A | YOLOv5, YOLOv8, YOLO11, YOLO26 | YOLOv5, YOLOv8, YOLO10, YOLO11, YOLOv12, YOLO26, YOLO-World, YOLOE |
| Ownership of modifications | Must be open-sourced | Licensee | Licensee |
| Termination clause | Not applicable | Cease and archive use | Not applicable |
| Platform | |||
| Data labelingFully automated annotation, AI-assisted solutions, manual labeling tools. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| WorkflowsAutomate processes, execute tasks, and create custom applications. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Hosted inferenceDeploy using a fully managed infrastructure powering millions of inferences with 99.99% uptime. | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Security | Not included | Not included | SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, BAA, PCI, SSO |
Frequently asked questions
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). 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.
RF-DETR, YOLO26, YOLOv12, YOLO11, YOLOv10, YOLOv8, YOLOv5, YOLO-World, YOLOE, Roboflow 3.0, and Roboflow 2.0. See more on the Roboflow Licensing page.
Commercial licenses are not needed in cases where a model with permissible licensing (like MIT or Apache 2.0) is the best technical solution or you are willing and able to open-source your code. Roboflow supports dozens of fully open source and permissive models across all task types if you prefer to use those models.
When you follow the Roboflow Terms with your Roboflow Plan, you are in full compliance with the agreement. Roboflow has the rights to a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide basis, so that even after any termination of Roboflow’s agreement with Ultralytics, Sublicensee can continue to use the latest version of the model that was made available prior to termination of such agreement.
Ultralytics offers pretrained models with a proprietary dataset. If you train models starting from the open model weights available on Github, you are not using Ultralytics Enterprise Models. Most users find the available pretrained models trained on their custom data perform best for commercial use cases. Contact us to learn more about comparing model performance.