Blender is a 3D creation suite published by the Blender Foundation, a Dutch public benefit organisation founded in 2002.[3] Unlike the commercial products covered elsewhere in this wiki, Blender has no price list, no edition ladder and no licence key. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which the Foundation summarises as four freedoms: to use Blender for any purpose, to distribute it, to study and change it, and to distribute changed versions.[1] For a software asset manager this changes the shape of the question. There is nothing to count, so the useful questions are what the GPL requires if the software is passed on or modified, what applies to add-ons and scripts, who owns the files produced with it, and which parts of the Blender brand are not covered by the open licence.
Editions
The Foundation publishes one product, Blender, in a stable release stream and in long-term support (LTS) releases. The LTS program is described as providing critical fixes through a two-year period, with no new features or API changes in the LTS branch; at the time of retrieval the Foundation listed Blender 5.2 LTS and Blender 4.5 LTS as currently maintained.[10] There is no separate paid edition: the downloadable official release is the product (Blender official release), the source code is available alongside it (Blender source code) and the LTS stream is a support lifecycle, not a different licence (Blender LTS release). The FAQ states that Blender can be downloaded free of charge from the website.[2]
Several services around the software have their own terms and sometimes a price, but none of them is a licence for Blender itself. Blender Studio is a membership platform run by Blender Institute B.V. with a monthly fee, the Blender Development Fund collects donations and corporate memberships, and extensions.blender.org is a distribution platform for add-ons and themes.[9][3][8] These are covered in the separate articles linked below.
Metrics
Blender is not metered. The licence page says people are free to use Blender for any purpose, and the privacy section says no registration is needed and no connection to the internet is made when it is installed and used.[1] The catalog therefore records the absence of a unit as Unmetered use: there is no seat, device, core or user count to reconcile, and an organisation can give Blender to co-workers or share it internally on a server.[2]
The event that does carry obligations is passing a copy on. The wiki records this as Distributed copy, an inventory concept rather than a vendor metric: the Foundation’s FAQ states that distributing Blender means the GPL rules apply, “which basically means you have to make sources for Blender available as well”, while sharing official releases only requires information that points to the sources at blender.org.[2] A third unit, Extension package, describes add-ons and themes distributed through the Extensions platform, which have their own licence requirements.[8]
Counting / floors
There are no floors, minimums or true-up mechanisms in any Blender document. Compliance work for Blender is closer to open-source obligation tracking than to entitlement reconciliation, and the practical inventory is of three things: installations that are modified builds, copies that leave the organisation, and add-ons that are distributed to others. The FAQ states that the GPL allows an organisation to use a modified version internally without offering the source code, as long as it is not distributed outside the company or organisation (Internal modified use needs no publication).[2] Once the modified version goes to others outside the organisation, the source must go with it (Sharing a changed version outside the organisation requires source).[2]
Which licence applies to what
The Foundation’s licence page distinguishes several layers. Source code developed at blender.org is licensed by default under GPL version 2 or later, and some modules use more permissive licences, for example the Cycles render engine under Apache 2.0.[1] Blender also incorporates third-party libraries under their own licences, such as the Python License, Zlib, MIT and BSD licences.[1] The Foundation states that all components are compatible under GPL version 3 or later, and that this is the licence to use for any distribution of Blender binaries.[1] The repository README states that Blender as a whole is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 3, and that individual files may have a different but compatible licence.[5] The two statements are consistent with each other: the source default is the permissive “version 2 or later” grant and the combined binary is distributed under the version 3 terms. The repository’s COPYING file adds that, apart from the GNU GPL, Blender is not available under other licences.[4]
An earlier plan for a commercial dual licence, the Blender License (BL), was cancelled. The repository text says that when the source was released in 2002 the Foundation reserved the right to offer licences outside the GPL, that the BL had never been activated, and that the offer was cancelled for an indefinite period in June 2005.[6] A licence manager should not expect to be offered a proprietary Blender licence (Blender License (BL) dual-licence offer).
Output, add-ons and the brand
Three boundaries matter in practice. First, what a user creates with Blender, including images, movie files and .blend files, is the creator’s sole property and can be used commercially.[1] Second, Python scripts that use Blender’s Python API and are published must be shared under a GPL-compliant licence; they may be sold, but customers receive them under the GPL.[1] Third, the Blender name and logo are trademarks: the logo and brand name are not part of the GPL, and the Foundation’s trademark policy limits their use in company names, product names, domain names and merchandise.[7] The detailed rules are in the deeper articles.
Programs
The Foundation’s programs are funding and lifecycle constructs rather than licence programs. The Development Fund is described as the Foundation’s main source of income, mostly spent through Blender Institute on activities around Blender such as documentation, hosting and events.[3] (Blender Development Fund) Blender Studio is an open-production funding and donation platform whose terms state a membership fee, non-refundable contributions and Creative Commons Attribution licensing for its digital content.[9] (Blender Studio) The LTS program supplies fixes to a stable version for two years.[10] (Blender LTS program) The licence page also commits the Foundation to a staged response to reported GPL violations: it will first start a conversation, and only when its board considers its mission severely in danger will it seek legal counsel and provide a reasonable cure period.[1] (GPL compliance process)
Audit and compliance posture
No Blender document describes a licence audit right, a usage-reporting duty or a software audit programme. The Foundation states that it is available to give feedback on licence compliance and best practices to organisations committed to adopting Blender as part of their IT infrastructure.[1] The FAQ carries a disclaimer that the pages are provided as is, are written by volunteers, and are not legal advice; the Foundation recommends consulting the Free Software Foundation’s material and a lawyer for legal advice.[2] Organisations that redistribute Blender, ship it inside a product, or sell add-ons should therefore rely on the licence texts themselves, which the source repository includes.[4]
Documentation licences
The Blender Manual is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence or any later version, excluding logos, trademarks, icons, source code and Python scripts used in the manual.[11] The Foundation’s website content is likewise offered under Creative Commons terms, with the licence page naming Creative Commons Attribution and the website credits page naming Attribution ShareAlike; the artwork article discusses the difference.[1]
Out of scope
This article does not cover third-party products built on Blender, commercial render farms or add-on marketplaces that are not operated by the Foundation, hardware, or the licences of the third-party libraries Blender embeds beyond what the Foundation names. It also does not cover legal interpretation of the GPL, for which the licence text and qualified counsel are the authorities. The catalog rows linked above carry the dated statements and verbatim evidence for each claim.