Licenses
Which license applies to each version of Carbone
Last updated: October 26, 2026
Carbone is distributed in several ways. Each distribution has its own license, and this page tells you which one applies to you. The full texts are the only legally binding documents: this page is a summary.
Which license applies to me?
| You use | License | Full text |
|---|---|---|
| Carbone Cloud (API, Studio, account.carbone.io), free and paid plans | Cloud Terms of Service | Cloud Terms of Service |
| Carbone On-Premise, Community Edition (binary or Docker image, without license key) | Carbone On-Premise License, free | On-Premise License |
| Carbone On-Premise, Enterprise Edition (binary or Docker image, with license key) | Carbone On-Premise License + your signed Enterprise Agreement | On-Premise License |
| Carbone Private Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP marketplaces) | Carbone On-Premise License + the marketplace terms | On-Premise License |
CarboneJS embedded in Node.js (npm package carbone, source code on GitHub) |
Carbone Code License (CCL, source-available) | Code License |
SDKs, MCP server, storage plugins, deployment examples (GitHub repositories carboneio/carbone-sdk-*, carbone-mcp, carbone-ee-plugin-*, carbone-ee-docker) |
Apache License 2.0 | LICENSE file of each repository |
| Website and documentation (carbone.io) | Legal Notice | Legal Notice |
| Third-party components (LibreOffice, Chromium, OnlyOffice in the Docker image) | Their own open source licenses | Included in the Docker image |
Enterprise customers also sign an Enterprise Agreement, which sets the plan, the fees, the support and any terms specific to the customer. Its specific terms prevail over the public license they modify.
In plain words
You can:
- use Carbone Cloud, On-Premise Community Edition and CarboneJS for free, within the limits of each plan;
- embed Carbone in your own product (an ERP, a CRM, a vertical application...) and install it for your customers;
- run Carbone On-Premise on as many internal servers as your plan allows, including in your private container registries;
- read, modify and fork the CarboneJS source code for your own products, under the Code License;
- copy the code snippets and example templates of the documentation into your projects.
You cannot:
- offer Carbone, or a wrapper around it, as a hosted document generation service, outside of your own value-added product;
- decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer the Carbone binaries, the Docker images or Carbone Cloud, beyond what the law allows;
- use Carbone, its documentation or its outputs to build or train a competing document generator, whether manually or with AI tools;
- remove copyright notices, or bypass license keys, usage limits or watermarks;
- name a product, a fork or a package "Carbone", or use the Carbone logo, without our permission.
Your rights under EU law
Some rights cannot be removed by a license, and our licenses respect them. In particular, you may always:
- make a backup copy of the software you are entitled to use;
- observe, study and test how the software works while using it normally;
- obtain the information needed to make your own independent software interoperate with Carbone: write to contact@carbone.io and we provide it free of charge.
AI assistants
You may use AI assistants with Carbone, for instance through the Carbone MCP server or the Carbone Skill, and AI assistants may read and cite this website. The restrictions of our licenses apply in the same way whether a task is done by a person or by an AI tool: using AI to copy Carbone, to reverse engineer it, or to rebuild a competing product from it is not allowed.
Trademarks
"Carbone" and the Carbone logo are registered trademarks of CARBONEIO. You may refer to Carbone in a factual way, for example "compatible with Carbone" or "powered by Carbone". You may not use "Carbone", or a confusingly similar name, in the name of a product, service, fork, package or domain name, nor use the Carbone logo, without our prior written permission.
Previous versions
- Carbone Community License 1.0 (February 14, 2023), renamed Carbone Code License in version 2.0, applies to the
carbonenpm versions 3.5.5 to 3.8.2 and to the GitHub source code published before October 26, 2026. It is available in the history of the GitHub repository. - Apache License 2.0 applies to the
carbonenpm versions up to 3.2.3 (2021). - On-Premise Enterprise agreements signed before October 26, 2026 remain governed by their own terms until their renewal.
Security and compliance
Our security controls, sub-processors and compliance reports (SOC 2) are published in the Trust Center. To report a vulnerability, see our Security Policy.
Contact
For any question about licenses, or to request a license that fits your use case: contact@carbone.io.