Free-Tier AI 3D Licenses Compared

Free tiers by job

The table reads across jobs rather than vendors, because the same plan can be fine for one and useless for another. Each cell is limited to what we read on 2026-11-08.

Meshy Free: CC BY 4.0, with attribution

Meshy’s Terms of Use (last updated September 19, 2026) say Free users receive a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License” with “appropriate credit to Meshy”. Meshy’s help center (page dated 2026-08-27) says: “If you are on a free plan, we grant you a CC BY 4.0 license instead.” It suggests the line “Model created with Meshy – CC BY 4.0 License”.

Meshy’s own pricing page labels the Free card “CC BY 4.0 license (commercial use with attribution)”, and the CC BY 4.0 legal code itself grants the right to “reproduce and Share” the material and adapted versions, with no non-commercial limit. So the free-tier condition is credit, not a ban. It has to be read alongside Terms s.3.2, where Free users acknowledge “Meshy owns all right, title, and interest” in Customer Output. A license from the owner is a different thing from ownership.

Meshy’s docs pricing table says Free “You own the output”, which contradicts the Terms for Free. Meshy’s Terms are the controlling text, so do not rely on the table. Also note a difference in tone: help text says “We kindly ask that you credit Meshy”, while the Terms make the license available “as long as the free plan customer provides appropriate credit”. Treat credit as a condition, not a courtesy.

Free is also limited in what can be downloaded. Meshy’s free-plan help article says Free gets 10 downloads a month, only untextured Meshy 6 Lite models, and that Meshy 6, 7, T2.5, 3D Agent models and textured models, “including a Meshy 6 Lite model after texturing”, are not downloadable on Free. Meshy’s pricing comparison table appears to list AI Texturing for Free; the article’s wording suggests you can run it but not download the result. So by that article, the Free asset you can actually ship is an untextured Meshy 6 Lite mesh.

Publishing to Meshy’s Community changes the license again: Terms s.3.3 say Customer Output published to Community is licensed under CC0 1.0, and the separate license you grant Meshy over Community content survives termination. Free users should also know non-Enterprise content may be used to train or improve services unless opted out via [email protected] (Terms s.2.9).

What CC BY 4.0 actually asks of you

CC BY’s Section 3(a) is more specific than “give credit”. If you share the material, including in modified form, you must retain what the licensor supplies among these: identification of the creator, a copyright notice, a notice referring to the license, a notice referring to the disclaimer of warranties, and a link to the material “to the extent reasonably practicable”. You must also “indicate if You modified the Licensed Material” and indicate that it is under this license, with the text or a link. Section 3(a)(2) allows you to satisfy this “in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context”.

A worked credit line for a game, built from Meshy’s suggested wording plus the CC elements. It is our suggestion, not language from Meshy or Creative Commons:

Crate and barrel models created with Meshy – CC BY 4.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Modified: retopologized and retextured.

Where it goes depends on the medium. Meshy’s help says to credit it “in your project description” and names a product page, video description or project readme. So for a game, put the line on the store page as well as in a credits screen or licenses file. CC’s “reasonable manner” wording leaves room for a link to a page listing the assets, but that speaks to CC’s condition, not to where Meshy asks for the credit.

Three less obvious points follow from the legal code.

• Modified counts. Cleaning up a mesh does not end the attribution duty. It adds a duty to say you changed it.
• Technical restrictions. Section 2(a)(5)(B) says you may not “apply any Effective Technological Measures” if that “restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient”. CC’s FAQ says DRM that restricts copying is a violation, while limiting who may access the content and “merely converting material into a different format” is not. Whether an encrypted game archive or a DRM wrapper around a CC BY mesh crosses that line is not answered by what we read. If your build encrypts assets, this is the reason to prefer a paid-plan asset.
• Reselling the file. The same clause bars imposing “additional or different terms”. A marketplace license that forbids buyers from redistributing the model sits awkwardly with that, even though Meshy says Free users “can also sell”. See selling on marketplaces.

CC’s FAQ adds that its licenses “do not contractually impose restrictions on uses of a work where there is no underlying copyright”. Since raw AI output may have no US copyright, some might read that as making the credit optional. We would not: Meshy’s Terms are a contract and condition the license on credit whatever copyright says. Giving credit costs one line.

Tripo Free: commercial use permitted, rights retained by Tripo

Tripo’s consumer site (tripo3d.ai) returned 403 to our fetch on 2026-11-08 and we did not bypass it, but its Terms are readable on its developer sites. Items marked “reported” below come from search-result summaries (secondary):

• Tripo’s Terms (read on its developer sites; last updated July 11, 2025) allow “lawful commercial or non-commercial” use of Outputs with no plan condition (s.3.2), but say Tripo “retains all rights” in Free users’ inputs and outputs, including to license them (s.5.2.1).
• A help center page reportedly says paid users have full rights to use and commercially exploit models.
• The pricing page is reported to label Free output public under CC BY 4.0 with attribution, which does not match the Terms. A third-party post (Sorceress, stating it was verified 2026-06-09) also reports CC BY 4.0 for the Free gallery.

The same Terms text is served on the international developer site and names www.tripo3d.ai. The Terms keep rights with Tripo and permit lawful commercial use; whether a CC BY label also applies is unconfirmed. Credit counts for Free are also reported inconsistently (200, 300 or 600), which is a pricing question, not a license one.

Other free tiers

• Sloyd Guest. Pricing page: personal use only. AI training use: not allowed on Guest or Plus. Sloyd’s FAQ draws a line that is easy to miss: models you generate on Guest are personal-use only, but downloads from its free community library are CC BY 4.0 and usable commercially “as long as you credit the creator”. Two licenses, one account, so record which is which.
• Rodin / Hyper3D Free. Pricing page lists a free tier with 10 private assets and public gallery publishing, and its FAQ says only that “Paid plans include broader export and usage rights”. The Terms pull two ways: s.2 ties private or commercial export to “your subscription plan”, while s.5(b) says of Rodin output “we will not limit your use of such Output”, subject to other restrictions. Neither says what Free may do commercially, so ask Hyper3D before shipping Free output. The Sorceress post says free-tier outputs are watermarked and non-commercial. We could not confirm that from Hyper3D.
• 3D AI Studio. New users get free credits. Its pricing page says “Commercial use allowed on all generated models” without separating free from paid, but its Terms of Use (last modified August 19, 2026) do separate them. Output generated “without a qualifying paid plan or purchased commercial license” is licensed “solely for personal, non-commercial purposes”, and the commercial license attaches to output generated on an active paid plan or one bought separately. Go by the Terms, not the pricing line.
• Hunyuan3D and TRELLIS. These are not a free tier, they are open-weight releases with their own licenses. See Hunyuan3D and TRELLIS licenses.

Treat listicles with care in this category. The same Sorceress post calls Meshy Free “non-commercial”, which contradicts Meshy’s Terms, pricing page and help center as read on 2026-11-08.

What to do with this

If you will ship or sell, a free-tier asset needs a decision before it enters the project, not afterwards: either carry the attribution, or regenerate on a paid plan. Regenerating may not give you the same mesh.

Moving to a paid plan later does not obviously help. Meshy’s help article says “Ownership rights are generally tied to the plan you were on at the time of generation”, and it describes the downgrade direction: paid-era models keep paid rights, while new models follow CC BY. It does not describe an upgrade relicensing earlier Free models, so do not assume one. What happens when you cancel or change plan has more.

A workable rule for a small project, which is our recommendation:

1. Tag every asset’s plan at import.
2. Allow free-tier assets only in prototypes, or in shipped builds with a credit entry already drafted.
3. Before the first public build, list free-tier assets and either credit or replace them. The selling-a-game checklist has the remaining gates.

For a broader view of what free plans give you beyond licensing, see free AI 3D model generators. This is general information, not legal advice. Terms change; the dates above are when each page was read.

More in the licensing hub.