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Free icon sets: what the licence actually lets you do
MIT, CC BY, SIL and the ones with a catch. How to read an icon licence in two minutes, and what happens when you get it wrong.
· updated Sep 2, 2026 · 4 min read · 6 products
The short answer
Short answer: free almost always means one of three licences. MIT and Apache let you ship, modify and sell with no attribution in the interface. CC BY lets you ship but needs a credit somewhere. SIL OFL applies to icon fonts and only restricts selling the font file itself. The trap is not the licence, it is the sets that say free on the download button and put the real terms two clicks away.
There are 30 icon sets on the Product Rally board right now. Most of them say free. About half of them mean the same thing by it.
This is the two minute version of reading an icon licence, written because getting it wrong is expensive and quiet: nobody tells you, until somebody does.
The three licences you will actually meet
MIT and Apache 2.0. Do what you like. Ship it, modify it, sell the product it is in, no credit needed in your interface. The licence text has to stay with the source files, which for an icon set means your repo, not your app. This is the safest thing to build on.
CC BY 4.0. Same freedom, one condition: a visible credit. Visible means somebody can find it, so a line in your about page or a credits screen is fine. A comment in the source is not.
SIL Open Font License. Turns up when the set ships as a font, which several of the big ones do. You can use it, embed it and modify it. You cannot sell the font file on its own, and a modified version cannot keep the original name.
The four traps
The licence is not usually the problem. These are.
- Free tier, paid set. A library shows you 60,000 icons and 6,000 of them are free. The search does not tell you which is which until export. Check what the free count actually is before you standardise on it.
- Free for personal use. This is not free for a product, and it is the most common wording that catches people out. If a product makes money, personal use does not cover it.
- Attribution you cannot give. Some sets want a link on every page an icon appears on. That is workable on a marketing site and unworkable in an app.
- The set that changes licence. It happens. Vendor the version you shipped, do not hotlink a CDN and assume the terms are frozen.
What to do about it
Pick one set and stick to it. Mixing three sets is worse than picking the second best one, because the weights never match and every new screen becomes a decision. If you want the shortlist rather than the licence reading, that is free icon sets.
Vendor the SVGs into your repo. Do not depend on a CDN for something that renders your interface, and do not depend on the terms staying the same.
Write the licence down. One line in your readme saying which set, which version, which licence. It takes ten seconds now and answers the question in two years when nobody who chose it still works there. The same reading applies to type, and the fonts shelf is where that starts.
Sets on the board where the licence is plain
These are picked for one thing: you can tell what you are allowed to do in under a minute on their own site. Vote counts are from the board, they say what members thought, not what the licence says.
Six weights, MIT, and the licence is one line on the home page
The set most product teams end up on when they need more than one weight. Six weights across the same grid means the interface stays consistent when something needs to be louder.
Pros
- MIT, no attribution needed
- Six weights on one grid
- Packages for React, Vue, Flutter and plain SVG
Cons
- Large set, worth tree shaking
- The thin weights disappear under 16 pixels
MIT, made by the Tailwind team, two weights and nothing to decide
Small on purpose. If your product needs 40 icons and you do not want a decision every time, this is the shortest path from nothing to consistent.
Pros
- MIT
- Outline and solid, drawn to match
- Drops straight into a Tailwind project
Cons
- Small set, you will hit a gap
- Only two weights
MIT, no sign up, and it says so before the download
One of the few large libraries with no account wall anywhere in the flow. The whole set is open source and the terms are stated where you can see them.
Pros
- MIT
- No sign up at any point
- Over 1,500 icons in one consistent style
Cons
- One weight only
- Fewer brand and logo glyphs than the commercial sets
Apache 2.0, and a variable font so weight and fill are axes
The variable font is the reason to take this one seriously: weight, fill and optical size are all adjustable at runtime instead of being separate exports.
Pros
- Apache 2.0
- Variable font, no separate weight files
- 2,500 icons, consistently drawn
Cons
- Reads as Google, which is a brand decision
- Variable font support needs a modern target
MIT, 24 pixel grid, and the reference other sets copy
Older and smaller than the rest, still the cleanest example of one stroke width done properly. Worth knowing because half the sets on the board inherit its grid.
Pros
- MIT
- Tiny, easy to vendor whole
- Consistent 2px stroke on a 24px grid
Cons
- No longer actively growing
- Single weight, single style
Apache 2.0, neutral by design, line and fill in one set
Neutral is the word the makers use and it is accurate. Nothing here has a personality that will fight your product, which is what you want from a system icon set.
Pros
- Apache 2.0
- Line and fill versions of everything
- Wide coverage of system and brand glyphs
Cons
- Neutral also means forgettable
- Naming is inconsistent in places
Questions
Can I use MIT licensed icons in a commercial product?
Yes. MIT allows commercial use, modification and redistribution with no attribution in your interface. The one requirement is that the licence text travels with the source files, so keep it in the folder you vendored the SVGs into. Selling the icon set itself as a product is the only thing that gets awkward.
What does CC BY require exactly?
A credit that a person can find. The set name, the author and a link, placed somewhere reachable like an about page or a credits screen. It does not have to sit next to every icon. It does have to be visible in the product, not only in your source code.
Are icon fonts under SIL OFL safe to use?
Yes for use and embedding, including in a commercial app. The two limits are that you cannot sell the font file by itself, and a modified version cannot carry the original reserved name. Neither one affects a normal product.
What happens if I get an icon licence wrong?
Usually an email asking you to add a credit or buy a licence, which is cheap to fix. It gets expensive when the set is in a shipped mobile app or printed material, because the fix is a release rather than an edit. That is the reason to check once at the start.
