New Font Awesome Pro License

As a reminder, Font Awesome 5 will come in 2 varieties: Free and Pro. Both are completely re-designed and re-written from the ground up. Not a single line of code or icon was left untouched. Find out more.

The New FA Pro “Standard License”

At the beginning of this month, we made some changes to the Font Awesome license. Here’s what the new Standard License gets you:

• A perpetual license to Font Awesome Pro. You can keep using Font Awesome Pro as long as you like on as many web, print, and mobile projects you like. Same as before.
• A year of services for Font Awesome Pro. This includes Pro CDN (where you’ll be able to subset and serve your own custom icon set), our private NPM repository for Pro, and any other services we develop. The clock does not start on ticking on this one until Pro CDN is launched.
• A year of updates to Font Awesome Pro itself. This includes all Kickstarter rewards and stretch goals already finished (FA5 Release Candidate 2, SVG framework, 3 icon weights, React and Vue JS component packages, & basic SVG) as well as in-the-works rewards and stretch goals (46 icon packs, duotone icons, design plugins, icon subsetter, and iOS & Android support). These updates will ALSO include major version bumps (FA6 anyone?) and new features that may or may not have been included with the Kickstarter (like a new Font Awesome Pro style).
• 5 seats. This means that 5 folks in your organization can create content with Font Awesome Pro icons. This includes folks in your company using the icons while creating websites, presentations on the desktop, mobile apps, etc. There’s no limit on the number of folks who are seeing the content you created. Want to print a million fliers? No problem. A bajillion people visit your site each month? No sweat. And if you need more than 5 seats for creators of your larger design, dev, or writing team, you can buy extras in 5 seat increments.

Why change the license?

Simplicity. We originally thought we’d go the model of selling lots of tiny things (like category packs, access to Pro CDN, additional FA styles), but we really don’t want to do that. We’re designers and developers and don’t want to spend a ton of time on pricing models, upsells, and the rest. You buy Font Awesome Pro, you get everything we’re making for it.

We also think it makes sense to keep the license perpetual. You paid for it, so we want you to be able to use it in all of your projects. But for things that cost us money to develop and maintain, like updates to the software, new features (which might or might not have been a part of the Kickstarter rewards), and services like Pro CDN and the private NPM repo, we think it makes sense to charge for those on a continuing basis since our costs for them continue as well.

If in that year of updates and services you’ve not seen useful updates, new features, and critical services you need, then you can cancel the renewal. You’ll still get your updates and services for that year and the perpetual license to keep using it. No problem at all.

It also means we’re not bound just by what we originally thought of for the Kickstarter rewards. We can make completely new services, features, and icons and do what we think is best for the folks using FA without worrying about how we fit it into our pricing model.

We also changed how we licensed organizations. Again, we did this to make things simpler. Licenses used to be determined by total number of employees at a company. We originally did it this way because we thought it would make it easier for companies to use Font Awesome Pro. But we found this caused more problems than it solved. So we’re going back to a more standard, clearer per seat license (this is similar to how traditional typography is licensed). Basically, if you’re creating something using Font Awesome Pro, that counts as a seat.

I supported the Kickstarter/pre-ordered. What’s changing for me?

Not a single thing at all. Seriously. Nothing is changing. You’ve got the same license you had when you backed or pre-ordered. Kickstarter/Pre-order folks will be allowed to keep their license exactly as it was promised. Nothing changes at all unless you want it to.

All this means we can focus our efforts on making software that folks want to use. That’s what we love doing. 🤘

Questions? Email us at hello@fontawesome.com.