The Stability AI Community and Enterprise licence pair governs the models that Stability AI lets customers download and run themselves. The Community option is a single agreement, the Stability AI Community License Agreement, last updated on 5 July 2024.[1] It replaced a December 2023 membership scheme and was announced as free for research, non-commercial and commercial use, with a paid Enterprise licence needed only where yearly revenues exceed USD 1 million and the models are used in commercial products or services.[2]
Editions
| Option | Who it is for | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community licence | Researchers, developers, small businesses and creators below USD 1M annual revenue | Free | Licence page[3] |
| Enterprise licence | Enterprises, API providers and businesses above USD 1M annual revenue | Custom pricing | Licence page[3] |
| Membership Professional (historical) | Creators, developers and startups, December 2023 | USD 20 a month at launch | Membership announcement[4] |
The agreement grants three kinds of right. A research and non-commercial licence covers academic or scientific advancement and non-commercial purposes such as personal use, evaluation and testing. A commercial licence covers any purpose primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation, and the agreement lists creating, modifying or distributing the licensee’s product or service, including through a hosted service or API, and the licensee’s internal business operations.[1] Each grant is described as non-exclusive, worldwide, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable and royalty-free.[1]
Metrics
The metric is annual revenue (Annual revenue (Community License threshold)). If the licensee or its affiliates, individually or in aggregate, generate more than USD 1,000,000 in annual revenue or the local-currency equivalent, any licences granted terminate as of that date. The test applies regardless of whether the revenue comes directly or indirectly from the Stability AI materials or derivative works.[1] Community License terminates above USD 1M revenue
The second concept is the licensed model (Core Model (licensed model)). The agreement defines “Models” by reference to the Core Models webpage, “as may be updated from time to time”.[1] That page, last updated on 20 May 2026, lists the Core Models available to Community and Enterprise users for commercial use and states that all other Stability AI models and model technology, including different versions, are not Core Models.[5] Its table covers Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium, Large and Large Turbo, Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, SDXL Turbo, Stable Diffusion Turbo, three Stable Video Diffusion versions, language models such as Stable LM 2 12B and Stable Code 3B, 3D models including Stable Point Aware 3D and Stable Fast 3D, and Stable Audio Open 1.0 with Stable Audio 3.0 Small and Medium.[5]
Counting / floors
Affiliates. The agreement defines an affiliate as an entity that directly or indirectly controls, is controlled by or is under common control with the licensee, where control means more than 50 per cent of voting interests.[1] A group must therefore add the revenue of all entities above that line when it tests the threshold.
Registration. A licensee using or distributing the materials for a commercial purpose must register with Stability AI.[1] The 2024 announcement describes this as self-reporting by commercial users through a brief form, and says users below USD 1 million pay nothing.[2] Research-only use is free regardless of an organisation’s revenue, but where a Core Model or derivative work is used in research that will later be used commercially, the organisation must register and may need a paid Enterprise licence once its revenue is above the threshold.[3]
Crossing the threshold. When a licensee passes USD 1 million it must request a licence, which Stability AI may grant in its sole discretion.[1] The licence page tells organisations that reach the milestone to contact Stability AI to buy an Enterprise licence, and says declining a new enterprise customer does not fit its goal of making models widely available.[3] The agreement itself gives the licensee no right to an Enterprise licence on stated terms.
Integrated end user products. A person who receives the materials or derivative works from a licensee as part of an integrated end user product is not subject to the commercial licence section, so a customer of a licensed product does not need its own registration.[1]
Virtualization & partitioning
The agreement does not count installs, GPUs, cores or instances, so there is no virtualisation rule to apply. A licensee may host the models for others: “hosted service or application programming interface” is named as a commercial purpose, and the licensee may distribute to third parties if it provides a copy of the agreement, retains the notice file and displays “Powered by Stability AI”.[1] Distribution is therefore a relevant event for a software asset manager, because it triggers the attribution and copy-of-agreement duties.
Cloud / BYOL
Because the licence follows the model and the user, running a Core Model on rented cloud infrastructure does not change the analysis. Stability AI’s NVIDIA NIM release for Stable Diffusion 3.5 is offered for commercial and non-commercial use under the Community License, with Enterprise licensing for enterprises above USD 1 million in annual revenue.[6] Models obtained through cloud marketplaces may carry the marketplace’s own terms, so confirm which agreement applies (Cloud platform distribution).
Programs
Membership (2023 to 2024). On 14 December 2023 Stability AI introduced three tiers: Non-Commercial, free for personal and research use; Professional, offered at USD 20 a month for self-hosted commercial use; and Enterprise, with custom pricing.[4] The July 2024 licence update replaced this structure for the Core Models and made commercial use free below the threshold.[2] Organisations holding old membership paperwork should check whether their models are now governed by the Community License (Community licence history: Membership then Community License).
Enterprise licence. It includes commercial use and implementation support, with custom model training and consulting as available upgrades.[3] For Stable Audio 3.0, Stability AI states that it offers legal indemnification under the Enterprise licence.[7] Whether indemnification extends to other models is not stated in the public documents.
Contract terms
Attribution and notice. On distribution the licensee must give the recipient a copy of the agreement, keep the attribution notice in a Notice text file and prominently display “Powered by Stability AI” on a related website, interface, blog post, about page or documentation.[1]
Use restrictions. The materials, derivative works and their outputs may not be used to create or improve any foundational generative AI model other than the Models or derivative works.[1] The licence page clarifies that LoRAs, hypernetworks, fine-tunes and retrains are not foundational models, which it defines as a new architecture derived from a Core Model.[3] The Acceptable Use Policy applies to the licensed use.[8]
Ownership. As between the licensee and Stability AI, the licensee owns derivative works it creates and any outputs from the Models or derivative works, to the extent permitted by law.[1] The 2024 announcement adds that, where the licence applies and the use is lawful and within the licence and AUP, Stability AI will not ask for resulting images, fine-tunes or other derived products to be deleted.[2]
Revocation. The agreement is revocable. Stability AI may terminate it if the licensee is in breach, after which the licensee must delete and stop using the materials and derivative works.[1] A claim alleging that the materials or outputs infringe also ends the licences on the filing date, and the licensee indemnifies Stability AI for use that violates the agreement.[1] The licence page explains the revocability as a response to Stability AI’s own legal obligations and the safe use of its technology.[3]
Warranty, liability and law. The materials and outputs are provided “as is”, with no warranty of non-infringement, and the agreement is governed by United States and California law.[1]
Audits and compliance
No audit clause appears in the public Community License Agreement. A practical control set for a customer is: an inventory of every Core Model and derivative work in use, with the licence option relied on; a recorded annual revenue figure for the group, tested each year against USD 1 million; a registration record for each commercial use; and a distribution checklist for the notice file and “Powered by Stability AI” display. Because outputs are owned by the licensee but the licence can end on crossing the threshold, plan the move to an Enterprise licence before revenue approaches the line. The court case about the original Stable Diffusion model is described in Getty Images v. Stability AI.
Out of scope
- Enterprise licence prices and terms, which are negotiated and not published.
- Stability AI models not on the Core Models page, which are governed by their own licences.[5] The page also says Stability AI may remove or modify Core Models and will notify licensees when it does.[5]
- The Stable Audio Open and other model cards on third-party hosting sites.
- Hosted use, which the Terms of Service govern: see Stability AI Platform API and credits.