Epic Games licenses its real-time 3D tools mainly through end user licence agreements that tie the price to the revenue of the licensee rather than to the hardware or the number of installs. Unreal Engine is free to use for students, educators, hobbyists and most non-games companies making less than USD 1 million of annual gross revenue; above that, a game or application that ships engine code pays a royalty, and other commercial users buy annual seats.[2] Twinmotion, RealityScan and MetaHuman reuse the same threshold, and content from Fab and the Epic Games Store is licensed under agreements of its own.
Contract structure
Epic’s agreements are separate documents. The ones that matter to a software asset manager are:
| Document | Covers | Date shown |
|---|---|---|
| Unreal Engine EULA | Engine, seats, royalty, audits | None; Epic’s change log lists updates 1 to 21 without dates[11] |
| Epic Content License Agreement | Marketplace content, Megascans, MetaHuman content, Tools | None |
| Fab EULA | Assets bought on Fab | Last updated 2024-10-01 |
| Twinmotion EULA | Twinmotion, Presenter, Cloud | None |
| RealityScan EULA | RealityScan (formerly RealityCapture) | None |
| Epic Games Store EULA | Software obtained through the Store and Launcher | Last updated 2025-01-15 |
The current Unreal Engine EULA supersedes the earlier agreements for Publishing, for Creators and for MetaHuman Creator as to rights in the Licensed Technology, and a custom licence granted by Epic governs instead of the standard EULA for the products it covers.[1] A licensee does not have to accept an amended EULA for versions it already holds, but it must accept the current version to download or use some newer offerings.[1]
Editions
- Unreal Engine, royalty model. For a game or application that relies on engine code at runtime and is licensed to third-party end users, the licensee pays a 5% royalty on lifetime gross revenue above USD 1 million per product and needs no seat subscription for that use.[2][1]
- Unreal Subscription seats. For commercial uses that are not Royalty Products, a company that generated USD 1 million or more in the past 12 months buys annual seats, priced in Epic’s FAQ at USD 1,850 per user per year.[2]
- Twinmotion seats. Twinmotion seats are priced at USD 445 per seat per year and are required above the USD 1 million threshold or for Twinmotion Cloud.[6]
- RealityScan seats. A RealityScan seat costs USD 1,250 per user per year above the same threshold.[8]
- MetaHuman. From Unreal Engine 5.6 MetaHuman is included under the Unreal Engine licence.[9]
- Fab and Marketplace content. Licensed per item under the Fab Standard License with Personal, Personal - Reference Only and Professional tiers.[4]
- Epic Games Store software. A personal, non-commercial licence.[10]
Epic’s licensing pages show local currency prices; in the retrieval region the pages showed euro amounts, and Epic states the final local price appears when a purchase starts.[2]
Metrics
Epic uses three kinds of measure. The first is the licensee’s revenue: Company gross revenue threshold, USD 1,000,000 over the last 12 months for the licensee together with its corporate group, with revenue including advances and funds raised.[1] The second is the product’s revenue: Royalty Revenue, measured per Royalty Product over its lifetime. The third is the seat: Unreal Engine seat (User), personal to one User who may use several computers. Epic’s FAQ stresses that there are two USD 1 million thresholds, one tied to company revenue for seats and one tied to the lifetime revenue of a product for royalties.[2]
Counting / floors
A User may access the engine from multiple computers while occupying one seat, and two Users on one computer occupy two seats; a seat must be reassigned before another User uses it.[1] Seats may be assigned to external contractors.[2] Seat exceptions apply to a licensee below the revenue threshold, to educational institutions using the engine only for education, and to non-commercial use, where all use by or for commercial entities counts as commercial.[1] The detail is in Unreal Engine EULA royalties and seats.
Epic Pro Support is an optional add-on for companies with 10 or more Unreal Subscription seats and for custom-term licensees.[2]
Virtualization & partitioning
Epic has no processor or core metric. The seat is tied to a person, not a machine. RealityScan’s EULA prohibits making the software available to third parties on a software-as-a-service, hosted or service bureau basis and prohibits letting a third party use it.[7] Twinmotion lets one Epic account install on multiple computers, with each user needing their own seat when seats are purchased.[6]
Cloud / BYOL
Twinmotion Cloud is available only with a seat subscription,[5] and the Unreal Engine EULA says that when a licensee uses cloud features it temporarily grants Epic access to the input data, which Epic states it does not retain after processing.[1] There is no bring-your-own-licence mechanism, because the licence attaches to the Epic account of each User.
Programs
Programmes that change what a licensee pays include the reduced 3.5% rate for a Launch Everywhere with Epic Release, the exclusion of Epic Games Store and Fab sales from Royalty Revenue, the exclusion of Epic MegaGrants funding, the first USD 1,000,000 of lifetime revenue per product, a quarterly floor of USD 10,000, and royalty-free categories such as rendered video and in-house distribution.[1] Seat trials of 30 days are offered on the licensing pages.[2]
Audits and compliance
The Unreal Engine EULA requires records sufficient to verify seat and royalty compliance, allows audits by an independent auditor no more than once every twelve months, and shifts the audit cost to the licensee if the shortfall exceeds 5%; Twinmotion and RealityScan carry the same audit terms for seats.[1][5][7] Epic may, at an employer’s request, share a user’s work email address with the employer to check seat compliance.[1] Epic’s licence disputes with Silicon Knights over an Unreal Engine 3 licence are summarised in Silicon Knights v. Epic Games.
Out of scope
This article does not cover Epic Games’ consumer terms of service, Fortnite and Unreal Editor for Fortnite creator terms, Epic Online Services, the Epic Games Store distribution agreement for developers, or Epic’s antitrust litigation with platform holders.