Model license
The legal terms for using model weights or outputs: commercial use, redistribution, attribution, user-count limits or regional restrictions.
Why it matters. Some 'open' licenses restrict large companies, certain regions or derivative naming. Read it before shipping.
How it works
A model license sets the legal terms for using a model's weights and sometimes its outputs. It can cover commercial use, redistribution, modification, attribution, naming of derivatives, acceptable-use rules and limits based on company size or region.
Licenses range from standard permissive software licenses such as Apache 2.0 or MIT to custom licenses written by the maker. API-only models are governed instead by the provider's terms of service and usage policies. Some terms also restrict using outputs to train competing models.
Read the license before shipping and again with each new release, since terms can change between versions. Get legal review when there are user-count thresholds or acceptable-use clauses that touch your product.
Worked example
Illustrative: a license allows free commercial use only below 1M monthly active users. A product at 400K users is fine today; if it triples to 1.2M, it would need a separate agreement with the maker.
Common mistakes
- Assuming a new version of a model keeps the previous version's license.
- Ignoring attribution or derivative-naming rules when publishing a fine-tune.
- Missing acceptable-use clauses that rule out specific product categories.
Across the catalog today
21 open-weights models in the catalog
- gpt-oss-20bOpenAIApache 2.0 (plus gpt-oss usage policy)
- gpt-oss-120bOpenAIApache 2.0 (plus gpt-oss usage policy)
- Gemma 4 31BGoogleApache 2.0
- Llama 4 ScoutMetaLlama 4 Community License
- Muse Glimmer 30BMetaApache 2.0
- Llama 4 MaverickMetaLlama 4 Community License
- Qwen-Image-2.1AlibabaQwen Research License (non-commercial)
- Qwen3.8-FlashAlibabaQwen Community License 1.0 (open weights); API proprietary
See it on a real card: Overview on Claude Opus 5.5.