Can you sell 3D prints of CC BY-NC designs?
Selling prints: no, not without separate permission
CC BY-NC does not allow selling prints. Commercial use needs separate written permission from the designer.
A plain-English summary of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0, not legal advice. Read the official licence text.
Free for personal and non-commercial use with credit. Selling prints is commercial use. Seen on: Thingiverse, Printables, MakerWorld.
What CC BY-NC lets you do, requires and forbids
Lets you
- Printing for yourself
- Non-commercial remixing and sharing, with credit
Requires
- Credit the designer: model name, designer, a link to the model, and the licence name with a link to it.
Forbids
- Selling prints or using the design for monetary compensation
- Implying endorsement by the designer
Remixes and changes
Allowed for non-commercial purposes only. A remix of an NC design is still NC.
CC BY-NC designs MeshNomics is tracking
1 of the top 50 scored designs on the MeshNomics index use CC BY-NC. Licence as recorded from the source; re-check the source page before you sell.
- Spiral Vase by BigBadBisonscore 65
What the licence doesn't cover
- Characters, logos and brands. A designer can only license rights they own.
- Marketplace rules. Etsy requires items made with 3D printers, lasers or CNC machines to be based on your own original design, even with a commercial licence. eBay, your own store and local markets have their own rules.
- Product safety. A licence says nothing about whether a part is food-safe, child-safe or load-bearing.
Questions
- Can I sell prints if I only charge for filament?
- Charging money for prints is the kind of use the NC term targets. Ask the designer for written permission, or pick a model with a commercial licence.
- How do I get permission?
- Message the designer and get the answer in writing. Some designers offer commercial terms through a paid membership.
Find designs you're allowed to sell
MeshNomics stores a normalised licence and a commercial-use flag for every indexed design, so you can filter to sellable designs and sort by demand. See plans, read the full guide to selling Thingiverse, Printables and MakerWorld prints, or browse niches.