⚡ Software Licenses

Software licenses are legal agreements that explain how software can be used, modified, and redistributed by others.

Some licenses allow almost complete freedom with few conditions (such as the MIT or BSD licenses), while others require that changes remain open to everyone (GNU General Public License), include rules for sharing under the same license (MPL), or focus on giving credit and choosing how the work is reused (Creative Commons).

According to our statistics, software licenses are used on 0.4% of all websites.
98.2% of these sites use only one license, 1.7% use two, and 0.1% use three or more simultaneously.

⭐ Most Popular in 2025

The following chart shows the leading licenses on the web in 2025, based on market share.

The most popular is Creative Commons, which dominates the market with an overwhelming 87% share.
It is followed by GNU with 10.7% and MIT with 2.1%.

✨ Top Licenses

Below is a more detailed list of all licenses we detect, ranked by their market share.

RankNameMarket share
1 Creative Commons

Allow free distribution and specify public permissions for creative works under copyright law.
2 GNUBoston, Massachusetts, United States

General Public Licenses are a set of free, copyleft software licenses that require developers to make modified source code available to users.
3 MIT

A permissive software license that allows commercial use and does not require that the source code be made available to end users.
4 ApacheWilmington, Delaware, United States

A permissive software license that allows commercial use and does not require source code to be disclosed.
5 BSD

A family of permissive free software licenses that impose minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software.
6 MPLMountain View, California, United States

A free and open-source weak copyleft license that is more restrictive than the permissive software BSD-style licenses.

Data updated

When interpreting and using the results, please read our methodology and disclaimer.