MiniMax M3 is publicly downloadable, but “open-weight under the MiniMax Community License” is the most precise description. MiniMax’s release post calls M3 open-weight, while a model page also uses open-source language. The controlling license is a custom community license, not an unrestricted permissive license: it grants broad non-commercial rights and permits commercial use only when specific attribution, notice or authorization, and use restrictions are followed.
Last verified: July 20, 2026.
Independence notice: MiniMax-AI.chat is an independent guide. It is not owned by, operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with MiniMax.
Evidence status: This guide is a plain-language reading of the license published in MiniMax’s official M3 repositories and related MiniMax pages. It is not legal advice, does not replace the license text, and does not claim that MiniMax has approved any reader’s use. Have qualified counsel review the exact product, deployment, revenue calculation, jurisdiction, and distribution plan.
The short answer
| Question | Answer based on the published license |
|---|---|
| Can the weights be downloaded? | Yes. MiniMax publishes M3 through its official Hugging Face and GitHub repositories. |
| Can M3 be used for non-commercial work? | Yes, subject to preserving the copyright and permission notice and observing the prohibited-use appendix. |
| Can M3 be modified or fine-tuned? | The grant includes modification, and the commercial-use definition expressly covers post-trained, fine-tuned, instruction-tuned, or otherwise modified derivatives. |
| Can M3 be used commercially? | Yes, but the “Built with MiniMax M3” display and the applicable notice or prior-authorization step are mandatory under the license. |
| Is a MiniMax email required below the revenue threshold? | Yes. The license says a one-time notice must be sent when the applicable products and services do not generate more than US$20 million in yearly revenue. |
| What happens above the threshold? | Separate prior written authorization from MiniMax is required. |
| Are there use restrictions? | Yes. The appendix prohibits five categories, including any military purpose. |
| Is it Apache 2.0, MIT, or another standard permissive license? | No. The repository labels it the MiniMax Community License. |
Read the complete MiniMax Community License in the official M3 repository before relying on this summary.
Why “open-weight” is the safer label
MiniMax uses two descriptions on its own pages. The M3 launch post says M3 is an open-weight model. The M3 model page uses an “Open Source and Local Deployment” heading and says the model would be released through Hugging Face and GitHub. The repositories then identify the actual license as minimax-community.
The distinction matters because public weights do not answer every licensing question. M3’s files can be inspected, downloaded, hosted, and adapted, but the license adds commercial obligations and field-of-use restrictions. Calling it “free for any purpose,” “MIT licensed,” “Apache licensed,” or “commercially unrestricted” would be inaccurate.
For product documentation, procurement, and compliance records, use wording such as:
MiniMax M3 is an open-weight model distributed under the MiniMax Community License. Commercial use is permitted subject to attribution, notice or prior authorization, and the license’s prohibited-use conditions.
This wording describes both access to the weights and the legal conditions. It also avoids trying to resolve a broad terminology debate through a marketing label.
What MiniMax released
The official MiniMax M3 model card describes a native multimodal model with approximately 428 billion total parameters and approximately 23 billion activated parameters. It supports text, image, and video understanding and advertises a 1M-token context. MiniMax provides weight files plus deployment guidance for frameworks including vLLM, SGLang, Transformers, and KTransformers.
Those technical facts do not expand the legal grant. A model card, README, launch post, or downloadable checkpoint cannot replace the LICENSE file. Record the exact repository, revision, download date, and license copy used by a deployment so that a later repository change does not erase the compliance trail.
Non-commercial rights
The license grants, free of charge, rights to deal in the software for non-commercial purposes. Its examples include using, copying, modifying, merging, publishing, distributing, sublicensing, and providing copies. That is a broad grant, but it is subject to two important layers:
- The copyright notice and permission notice must be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software.
- The prohibited-use appendix applies to the software and derivatives even when no money changes hands.
“Non-commercial” should not be guessed from whether an invoice exists. The license defines commercial use as use primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. An internal deployment that improves a company’s paid operations, a free tier supporting a paid service, sponsored research, or a model evaluation for procurement may require legal analysis. If the purpose is mixed, document the reasoning and ask MiniMax or counsel before deployment.
Commercial use: three obligations to check
1. Display the required attribution
For commercial use of the software or a derivative, the license requires a prominent display of the exact phrase:
Built with MiniMax M3
The license permits the display on a related website, user interface, blog post, about page, or product documentation. “Uses AI,” a logo without text, or a hidden third-party notices file does not reproduce the required phrase. Choose a location that a normal product user or customer can find and keep evidence of the published display.
2. Send notice or obtain authorization
The second step depends on the yearly revenue generated by “such products and services,” using the license’s wording:
| Revenue condition stated in the license | Required action | Email and subject |
|---|---|---|
| Not more than US$20 million, or equivalent in other currencies, in yearly revenue | Send a one-time notice | [email protected]M3 licensing — notice |
| More than US$20 million, or equivalent in other currencies, in yearly revenue | Obtain separate, prior written authorization before commercial use | [email protected]M3 licensing - authorization request |
The punctuation above follows the published LICENSE file: the notice subject uses an em dash, while the authorization-request subject uses a hyphen. More importantly, an authorization request is not authorization. A company over the threshold should receive the separate written approval before beginning the covered commercial use.
The license does not explain accounting questions such as currency conversion date, consolidated versus product revenue, a product group with shared infrastructure, or revenue attribution when M3 supports only one feature. Do not replace the actual phrase “such products and services generate” with an unsupported claim about total company revenue. Resolve ambiguous cases with counsel and MiniMax.
3. Avoid every prohibited use
The appendix says the software and its derivatives must not be used, or allowed to be used, for the following:
- Generating or disseminating content prohibited by applicable law or regulation.
- Assisting with, engaging in, or otherwise supporting any military purpose.
- Exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm minors.
- Generating or disseminating false or misleading information with intent to cause harm.
- Promoting discrimination, hate speech, or harmful behavior against people or groups based on the protected or marginalized characteristics enumerated in the license.
The military restriction is categorical in the published text; it is not limited to weapons or combat. A safety review therefore needs to evaluate the customer, end use, integrations, and downstream access, not merely the prompt presented in a demo.
What counts as commercial use?
The license defines commercial use as use of the software or a derivative primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. It then gives three non-exhaustive categories:
- Offering a fee-based product or service to a third party that uses, incorporates, or relies on M3 or a derivative.
- Commercial use of APIs provided by or for M3 or derivatives, including hosted, cloud, or similar environments supporting commercial products, services, or operations.
- Commercial deployment or provision of a post-trained, fine-tuned, instruction-tuned, or otherwise modified version.
The words “including, without limitation” mean the list is illustrative rather than complete. A paid chatbot, coding assistant, document-processing service, internal business automation, hosted endpoint, licensed on-premise appliance, or fine-tuned commercial model can fall within the definition even if users never download the weights.
Commercial-use scenarios
| Scenario | Practical reading |
|---|---|
| Personal local experimentation with no business purpose | Generally fits the non-commercial grant, but copyright/permission notices and prohibited uses still apply. |
| University research | May be non-commercial, but funding, partnerships, planned commercialization, and distribution can change the analysis. |
| Free public app supported by ads, sponsorship, sales leads, or a paid tier | Do not assume “free to the user” means non-commercial; commercial advantage may exist. |
| Internal company assistant | It may provide commercial advantage even without an external fee. Obtain legal review rather than labeling it automatically non-commercial. |
| Paid SaaS using self-hosted M3 | Commercial use; apply the display requirement and notice/authorization branch, plus the prohibited uses. |
| Fine-tuned M3 sold or hosted for customers | The definition expressly includes modified and fine-tuned derivatives used commercially. |
| Consulting deliverable built with M3 | Likely connected to monetary compensation; allocate compliance responsibilities in the contract. |
| Commercial API based on locally hosted weights | Explicitly contemplated by the commercial API wording. |
These are risk-screening interpretations, not legal determinations. A lawyer can evaluate facts that a general guide cannot see.
Does the license cover the hosted MiniMax API?
There are two legal layers to separate:
- Weights and derivatives: downloading, modifying, distributing, or hosting the released software is governed by the MiniMax Community License.
- MiniMax’s hosted service: using
api.minimax.ioalso involves MiniMax’s API Terms of Service, privacy policy, account rules, and billing terms.
MiniMax’s hosted API and the downloadable M3 weights should be analyzed separately. Downloading, modifying, distributing, or self-hosting M3 or a derivative is governed by the MiniMax Community License. Calls to MiniMax’s hosted API are also governed by the API Terms of Service, privacy policy, account rules, and billing terms. Although the Community License defines commercial use broadly enough to mention APIs provided by or for the Software or its derivatives, the published materials do not clearly explain whether every customer calling api.minimax.io must independently display “Built with MiniMax M3.” This guide therefore does not treat that display requirement as automatically applicable to every hosted-API customer or as automatically waived by API fees. For a commercial deployment where this distinction matters, review both documents and obtain written clarification from MiniMax.
Fine-tuning, derivatives, and redistribution
The license allows modification and refers repeatedly to derivative works. It also makes clear that commercially deployed post-trained, fine-tuned, instruction-tuned, or otherwise modified versions remain within its commercial-use definition.
- Keep the MiniMax copyright and permission notice in copies or substantial portions.
- Apply the commercial display and email requirement when the derivative is used commercially.
- Apply the prohibited-use appendix to the derivative and downstream use you allow.
- Record the base model revision, training data rights, fine-tuning method, third-party code licenses, and the license supplied with every distributed artifact.
- Do not describe the license as having no restrictions merely because modification and sublicensing are granted.
The text does not state a familiar standard-license formula such as Apache 2.0 or MIT, and this guide does not infer a complete copyleft or relicensing rule that the text does not spell out. If a derivative will be distributed under another license, obtain advice on how that license can coexist with the MiniMax notices, commercial conditions, and prohibited uses.
Does the license grant rights to model output?
The community license describes rights in the software and derivatives. It does not provide a detailed output-ownership grant, guarantee that generated material is unique, or clear third-party rights in an output. The warranty clause also provides the software “as is” without warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, and limits author and copyright-holder liability as stated in the license.
Review generated code, text, images, or video for accuracy, security, personal data, trademarks, copyrighted material, and other rights before publication. Hosted API users should also read the service terms that apply to inputs and outputs. Open access to weights is not a warranty that every generated output is safe to commercialize.
A practical M3 compliance checklist
- Identify the artifact. Record the official repository, model revision, quantization or derivative, and download date.
- Archive the license. Keep the LICENSE file with the model and in the software bill of materials.
- Classify the purpose. Document why the use is non-commercial or commercial; include indirect commercial advantage.
- Map the product. List user interfaces, APIs, background services, fine-tunes, customers, and downstream access that rely on M3.
- Publish the exact attribution. Display “Built with MiniMax M3” prominently in an allowed product-related location.
- Calculate the relevant revenue. Use a documented accounting method for the products and services in scope; escalate ambiguity.
- Send the correct email. Below or at the stated threshold, send the one-time notice. Above it, request and obtain prior written authorization.
- Screen prohibited uses. Review customer, industry, end use, geography, user controls, and abuse monitoring.
- Review other terms. Include platform terms for hosted API use and all licenses for runtimes, adapters, datasets, and fine-tuning code.
- Retain evidence. Save the email, authorization if required, attribution screenshot, legal review, license revision, and deployment inventory.
- Monitor changes. Recheck before a major release, new customer segment, new derivative, revenue-threshold change, or redistribution.
Information to include in a notice or authorization request
The license specifies the recipient and subject line but does not publish a mandatory message form. A useful factual message can identify the legal entity, product, deployment type, M3 version, commercial use, product URL, attribution location, revenue-threshold branch, territories, and contact person. Do not state that MiniMax has approved the use unless written approval was actually received.
Common licensing mistakes
- “Public weights mean no restrictions.” The LICENSE file adds explicit conditions and prohibited uses.
- “Commercial use is forbidden.” It is permitted when the applicable conditions are satisfied.
- “Only companies above US$20 million must email MiniMax.” The license also requires a one-time notice below or at the threshold.
- “An email request is enough above the threshold.” The text requires separate prior written authorization.
- “The threshold is definitely total corporate revenue.” The license refers to yearly revenue generated by “such products and services”; it does not publish detailed accounting rules.
- “A fine-tune escapes the license.” Modified and fine-tuned derivatives are expressly included in the commercial-use definition.
- “A paid API subscription replaces the weight license analysis.” Hosted service terms and the community license are separate documents whose interaction may require MiniMax clarification.
- “Powered by AI” satisfies attribution. The license specifies the phrase “Built with MiniMax M3.”
- “Military support is allowed if it is non-combat.” The appendix says any military purpose.
Frequently asked questions
Is MiniMax M3 free for commercial use?
The license does not state a weight-license fee, but commercial permission is conditional. The required display, one-time notice or prior written authorization, copyright/permission notices, and prohibited uses still apply. Running the model also has infrastructure costs, while MiniMax-hosted API access has separate service pricing.
Do small businesses need to contact MiniMax?
Yes, if the use is commercial. The below-threshold branch requires a one-time notice to [email protected] with the specified subject.
Does a company at exactly US$20 million require prior authorization?
The license says prior authorization is required if the products and services generate “more than” US$20 million in yearly revenue; otherwise it calls for the one-time notice. Currency conversion and revenue attribution can still require professional advice.
Can I remove MiniMax branding from a commercial app?
You may design your own brand, but the license requires the phrase “Built with MiniMax M3” to appear prominently in one of the related locations it lists.
Can M3 be used in a military administrative tool?
The appendix prohibits assisting with, engaging in, or otherwise supporting any military purpose. It does not publish an administrative-use exception.
Can I redistribute a quantized M3 checkpoint?
The license grant includes modification and distribution for non-commercial purposes, subject to its conditions, and commercial derivatives fall under the commercial-use rules. Preserve the copyright and permission notice, apply the prohibited-use terms, and obtain advice on the intended distribution and sublicensing structure.
Where are the official M3 files?
Use MiniMax’s official Hugging Face repository or GitHub repository. Verify the organization, revision, and LICENSE file rather than relying on an unaffiliated mirror.
After the license review, use the MiniMax M3 model guide for capabilities and the local M3 deployment guide for setup. These technical guides do not replace the commercial-use checks above.
Bottom line
MiniMax M3 is open-weight under a custom community license. Non-commercial use receives broad rights subject to notices and prohibited uses. Commercial use of the downloaded Software or its derivatives is possible, but it requires a prominent “Built with MiniMax M3” display and either a one-time notice or separate prior written authorization based on the license’s US$20 million yearly-revenue branch. These obligations clearly apply when using, modifying, distributing, self-hosting, or commercially deploying the released Software or its derivatives.
MiniMax’s hosted API is also governed by the platform’s service terms, and the published documents do not fully explain how every Community License condition interacts with ordinary hosted-API access. Hosted-API customers should review both documents and request written clarification from MiniMax when that distinction affects a commercial deployment.