License Generator: MIT, Apache, GPL and More Compared

How to use it

Choose a licence in Licence. The Comparison of ten licences table shows what each one allows and requires.
Enter the Copyright year and the Copyright holder. Leave the year empty to use the current year.
Read Licence text, then copy it or download it as a file.
Save the text as LICENSE in the top folder of your project, and follow the licence for notices in your source files.

What the generator fills in

The licence texts are the ones their authors publish, as github/choosealicense.com holds them. Where a licence has a year field and a holder field, your values are written in every place that field occurs. MIT, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause and ISC have one notice; Apache-2.0 fills the notice in its appendix; GPL-3.0 and AGPL-3.0 fill the notice at the end of the text. LGPL-3.0, MPL-2.0 and the Unlicense have no such field, so their text stays as it is.

Permissions, conditions and limitations

The labels and summaries come from choosealicense.com and are a comparison only. The licence text is the binding document.

Permissions say what you may do: commercial use, modification, distribution, private use, and patent use where the licence gives patent rights.
Conditions say what you must do, such as keeping the licence and copyright notice, stating your changes, making the source code available, or releasing changes under the same licence.
Limitations say what the licence does not give you: most of these licences exclude liability and warranty, and some do not grant trademark use.

Permissive and copyleft licences

Permissive licences (MIT, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, ISC and Apache-2.0) ask mainly for the notices to be kept, and Apache-2.0 also asks for changes to be stated. The Unlicense asks for nothing. Copyleft licences require that the source code of changes stays available: GPL-3.0 and AGPL-3.0 for the whole work, LGPL-3.0 for libraries, and MPL-2.0 for the files you change. AGPL-3.0 also applies when a modified version is run as a network service.

Worked example: MIT with 2026 and Jane Doe

With the licence MIT, the year 2026 and the holder Jane Doe, the first line of the notice reads Copyright (c) 2026 Jane Doe. The rest of the MIT text stays the same. BSD-2-Clause writes the same notice with a comma: Copyright (c) 2026, Jane Doe.

Licence	Copyright line
MIT	Copyright (c) 2026 Jane Doe
BSD-2-Clause	Copyright (c) 2026, Jane Doe

Frequently asked questions

Does the generator change the licence text?

Only the places for the year and the holder change. The rest of the text is the licence as its authors publish it, so the file you save is a complete licence.

Which licence should I choose for my project?

That depends on what you want others to do with your work. Permissive licences such as MIT, BSD or Apache-2.0 allow almost any use if the notice is kept, while GPL-3.0 and AGPL-3.0 require that changes stay open. This page compares the terms but does not choose for you.

Why does the GPL text still have a line I must fill in?

The notice at the end of GPL-3.0 and AGPL-3.0 asks for the program name and a short description of what the program does. Only you know those, so the page leaves that line for you to write.

What does a span of years such as 2019-2026 mean?

A notice can give the first and the last year in which the work changed, which copyright practice allows. Enter the first year, a dash and the last year, for example 2019-2026.

Does the Unlicense need a year or a holder?

No. The Unlicense dedicates the work to the public domain and has no notice field, so the page gives its text as it is, and the comparison table shows its terms.

Is this page legal advice?

No. It shows the licence texts and a comparison of their terms, and it does not advise on your situation. For a binding decision, read the licence itself and ask a lawyer who knows the law that applies to you.

Sources

Figures and text last checked on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.

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