You're free. That's the whole page.
If you're not making money with the model, the OMLA Public License asks nothing of you — no payment, no registration, no account, nothing to file. The rest of this page just says exactly where the line is.
What's free
- Published academic and scientific research — at any size, any institution, any budget.
- Personal projects, learning, and hobby work — run it, fine-tune it, break it, rebuild it.
- Internal evaluation and development — for entities under the $200,000 revenue floor: training, testing, and building future models, as long as no revenue results.
This is License §3, the Non-Commercial Grant — a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, modify, and distribute the model. Read it →
The one rule
No revenue may result from the use. The moment the model's outputs make money — a paid product, a subscription, charging per generation, reselling inference — the use is commercial, and the floor question decides what happens next.
If you start making money
Nothing retroactive happens — your non-commercial use stays free. Going forward, two questions decide it: is your entity over $200,000 in annual revenue, or are you directly selling the model's outputs at any size? If neither, you still owe nothing. If either, you pick one of two doors: release your derivative's weights under the same license, or pay 30% of applicable revenue directly to the creators.
Walk the two-question decision path → · The commercial-use guide →
Questions and edge cases
The pattern behind every answer: the grant in §3 is broad, the trigger is revenue attributable to the model's outputs, and the $200,000 revenue floor is the backstop that keeps small actors free even when something technically earns money.
Can I show model outputs in my portfolio or a job application?
Yes — freely. A portfolio, a demo reel, a conference talk, a job application: none of these attribute revenue to the model's outputs. Landing a job because your portfolio was good is not "directly monetizing outputs," and it never becomes an OMLA question.
My free project takes donations. Is that still non-commercial?
Donations, sponsorships, and tips that support you or the project — rather than charging for the model's outputs — do not turn free use commercial. And even where the line feels blurry, the floor is the backstop: if your entity is under $200,000 in annual revenue and you're not selling the outputs themselves, you owe nothing either way.
I run ads on my blog / YouTube channel where outputs appear.
Ad revenue on content about or featuring a model is a gray zone in most licenses. Under OMLA it usually resolves the boring way: an individual creator's channel is almost always under the $200,000 floor, so the use stays free. If your media operation is over the floor and model outputs are the product itself (e.g. an AI-art channel monetizing generations at scale), read the commercial guide — the math takes minutes.
We're a company — can we evaluate models internally for free?
Under the floor: yes, explicitly — §3 covers internal training, evaluation, and development so long as no revenue results. Over the floor: evaluation that never ships into a revenue-producing product produces no attributable revenue, so there is typically nothing to pay — but the moment the model powers something customers pay for, you're in commercial territory. Ship day, not eval day, is the day that matters.
Does grant-funded academic research count as commercial?
No. Published academic and scientific research is free at any size, any institution, any budget — grant funding is not revenue attributable to model outputs. A university spin-off that starts selling a product built on the model is a different story: the company reads the commercial guide like anyone else.
My open-source project bundles an OMLA-licensed model. Do I owe anything?
Distributing the model with your free project is covered by the grant — copying and redistribution are free. Your users' obligations are their own: if one of them builds a commercial product with it, that user settles, not you. Keep the model's omla-manifest.json alongside the weights when you redistribute, so downstream users can find the terms.
Where exactly is the line?
Two triggers, either one flips a use to commercial: your entity is over $200,000 in trailing twelve-month revenue, or you are directly selling the model's outputs at any size (charging per generation, selling API access, reselling inference). Everything else is free. When in doubt, walk the two-question decision path — most people are done after the first question.
Edge cases in your jurisdiction are yours to confirm. Ask us if your case doesn't fit these patterns.