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Who grants the right to sell

The designer, but from a menu MakerWorld sets. The platform's own terms say it grants you no licence to the model at all — it defines which licences a designer may choose from, and the designer's choice is the offer you accept. So you need the model page for the choice, and the platform's page for what the choices are.

Where to find it

This section is about the platform's web pages, not its terms, so the terms can't confirm it. We haven't checked it against the live site recently, so treat it as a starting point and check the site yourself.

• The model page states the licence the designer selected. MakerWorld's terms call these Free Licences and say the platform itself grants you nothing.
• Check which one it is. The set includes Creative Commons licences but is not limited to them, so recognising the family is not enough.
• Where a designer offers commercial use on their own terms instead, that is a separate arrangement with them.

What the labels mean

A Free Licence

MakerWorld's own word for the licence a designer attaches. It is the designer's offer to you, not the platform's — MakerWorld's terms say plainly that it grants no licence to the User Content itself.

A Creative Commons variant

The most common kind in that set. Which variant decides the commercial question — the NC ones exclude selling prints.

Worth knowing

• This is good news for sellers. MakerWorld's terms say the Free Licences are irrevocable once the model is published. A designer can stop offering a model, but the permission you already have under the licence is not something they can withdraw later. That is the opposite of a monthly commercial tier.
• It does not follow that the model stays available. MakerWorld says it is not a storage service and does not guarantee content will not be deleted — so keep your own copy of what you relied on.

What to keep

Terms change, and in a dispute what counts is what you agreed to on the day. Save a copy when you buy, not when someone asks for it.

• The licence as shown on the model page on the day you downloaded it.
• The designer's name and the model URL.
• Anything the designer publishes separately about commercial terms.

The authority

This page describes how licensing works here in our own words. It is not a statement of what you are permitted to do, and it does not reproduce anyone's terms. Read the MakerWorld terms

Confirmed against the platform's own terms on 12 Sept 2026. Their document was last updated 18 Jun 2024 — if that date has moved, so may this page have.