Table of Contents
"Open weights" doesn’t mean "open source". Most popular LLMs ship under custom licenses with real restrictions. This page is the practical legal reference.
Apache 2.0 (Mistral, DeepSeek-Coder) and MIT (Wan 2.1) are genuinely permissive. Llama Community License (Llama 3.x) is permissive for <700M MAU. Qwen License is permissive with attribution. CC-BY-NC (Aya) blocks commercial use entirely. Always read the actual license; this is not legal advice.
License matrix
| Model | License | Commercial use | Notable restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral 7B / Mixtral | Apache 2.0 | Yes | None |
| Llama 3.x | Llama Community License | Yes | <700M MAU; required attribution |
| Qwen 2.5 | Qwen License (Apache-like) | Yes | Required attribution |
| Gemma 2 | Gemma Terms | Yes | Acceptable use policy |
| DeepSeek-V2/V3 | DeepSeek License (MIT-like for code, custom for weights) | Yes | Some use cases excluded |
| DeepSeek-Coder | DeepSeek License | Yes | Same as DeepSeek-V2 |
| Phi-3 | MIT | Yes | None |
| Aya Expanse | CC-BY-NC 4.0 | No | Non-commercial only |
| Mistral Small / Codestral | Mistral Research License | Limited | Commercial requires Mistral commercial license |
| FLUX.1 dev | FLUX-1 dev License | Limited | No commercial use of dev variant; schnell is Apache 2.0 |
| FLUX.1 schnell | Apache 2.0 | Yes | None |
| Wan 2.1 | MIT | Yes | None |
| HunyuanVideo | Tencent license | Limited | No service-as-API commercial |
What blocks commercial use
- CC-BY-NC: explicit non-commercial only.
- Mistral Research License: research only; commercial deployment needs Mistral commercial license.
- FLUX.1 dev: cannot serve as a commercial API; can use for in-house product features.
- HunyuanVideo: cannot offer it as an API to third parties; can use internally.
Verdict
Apache 2.0, MIT, and Llama Community License cover ~80% of useful open-weight models with real commercial allowances. CC-BY-NC and research-only licenses are the trap to avoid.
Bottom line
Always read the actual license file before deploying a model commercially. Most popular open-weight models work; a few do not. Not legal advice — talk to your lawyer.
