Creative Commons

What Creative Commons does

Creative Commons is an international 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California, founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Saltzman, that develops and stewards standardized legal and technical infrastructure for open content sharing. Its core product is a suite of six copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND) plus the CC0 public domain dedication tool and Public Domain Mark, distributed under version 4.0 (released 2013-11-25) as internationally portable legal code. Adjacent technical products include a web-based License Chooser, the CC Search portal for discovering openly licensed content, CC Signals (a 2025-launch machine-readable framework specifying how AI systems may use content), CC Certificate training courses, and a Transifex-based community translation platform supporting 45+ languages.

The technology stack centers on machine-readable license formats (enabling automated compliance), embedded integrations into platforms including Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, The Met, Khan Academy, Internet Archive, Bandcamp, and Wikimedia Commons, and a community-led global network of chapters and translators. Registered trademarks cover the CC circle logo, the CREATIVE COMMONS wordmark, the standalone CC abbreviation, CC0, CC+, and license-element icons (BY, NC, ND, SA); the CC logo is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent design collection.

Creative Commons operates a donations-and-grants revenue model with no transactional or licensing fees. All CC legal tools are provided free of charge; funding comes from one-time donations, the recurring Open Infrastructure Circle program, and foundation grants (e.g., Siegel Family Endowment, 2025-12-04). Distribution is exclusively self-serve digital: a 45+ language website with no sales motion, supplemented by platform OEM-style embedding. Customers/users include individual creators, educational institutions (Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare), cultural institutions (The Met), major content platforms (Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube), and digital libraries (Internet Archive). Operating status is active and global.

Name

Creative Commons

Legal name

Creative Commons Corporation

Website

https://creativecommons.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Creative Commons is an international nonprofit that develops and stewards standardized copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC variants, CC0), public domain tools, and CC Signals for AI-era content governance, serving individual creators, educational and cultural institutions, and global platforms like Wikipedia and YouTube.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Content Licensing

NAICS

Music Publishers (51223), Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Patent Owners & Lessors (6794)

akta.pro primary industry

Master Licensing & Clearances (Recorded Music) (MPAIAAAI)

akta.pro secondary industries

Copyright Services & Content Protection (BPAHAMAC), Royalty Accounting & Payment Services (Statements, Audits, Payee Management) (MPAIABAL)

Keywords

• Open content licensing
• Copyright licenses
• Public domain tools
• Open knowledge infrastructure
• Creative commons certificates

Headquarters

HQ city

Mountain View

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Donations and Grants: Creative Commons is funded primarily through donations from individuals, organizations, and foundations. The organization accepts one-time donations and recurring contributions through its Open Infrastructure Circle program. No revenue is generated from licensing the CC tools themselves - they are provided free as a public good.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Creative Commons provides a standardized set of six copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND) along with the CC0 public domain dedication tool, enabling creators worldwide to grant the public permission to use their creative, educational, and scientific works under copyright law. The organization also delivers the CC Signals machine-readable framework for AI content governance, the CC License Chooser web tool, the CC Search portal, the Public Domain Mark, and CC Certificate training programs, all provided free as public goods.

Product overview

Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization providing open licensing infrastructure for sharing knowledge and creativity. The core offering consists of seven legal tools: six copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND) plus CC0 public domain dedication. The portfolio also includes CC Signals, a new machine-readable framework for AI content governance; the CC License Chooser web tool for license selection; CC Search for discovering openly licensed content; and the Public Domain Mark for marking public domain works. Training and certificate programs round out the offering. The CC licenses serve as the foundational legal infrastructure enabling standardized content sharing across the global commons.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• CC Search: Search tool that returns content based on license information
• CC Certificates
• CC0 Public Domain Dedication
• Public Domain Mark
• CC Signals

Products and services

• CC Licenses A suite of six standardized copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND) enabling creators to grant the public standardized permissions to use their copyrighted works under conditions such as attribution, share-alike, non-commercial, and no-derivatives.
• CC Signals A voluntary machine-readable framework allowing creators to attach instructions to their content specifying how AI systems can use their work, establishing principles of consent, credit, and compensation for the AI era.
• CC License Chooser An interactive web tool that guides users through selecting the appropriate Creative Commons license for their work by asking questions about desired permissions for attribution, commercial use, and derivative works.
• CC Search A search portal that enables users to find openly licensed content across various platforms and repositories for creative and educational reuse.
• CC0 Public Domain Dedication A legal tool that allows creators to waive all copyright and related rights and dedicate work to the public domain, enabling unrestricted reuse.
• Public Domain Mark A tool for marking works that are already in the public domain, signaling that the work has no known copyright restrictions.
• CC Certificate Educational courses and certification programs that train individuals in creating and engaging with openly licensed materials.

Quantifiable outcome

• Tens of billions of CC-licensed works available online
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• UNESCOflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2026Collaborative engagement on Open Heritage Statement Exploratory Dialogue in 2026 at UNESCO House in Paris. Joint effort to explore how equitable access to heritage can help solve global challenges.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights7 records

Direct peers

• Free Software Foundation: The FSF stewards the GNU General Public License family and advocates for copyleft open licensing. It is the closest philosophical and operational analogue to Creative Commons — a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining a license suite that structures how creators share their work under defined permissions.
• Open Source Initiative: The Open Source Initiative (OSI) stewards the canonical open-source software licenses (e.g., MIT, Apache 2.0) and approves licenses via a community process. Like Creative Commons, it functions as a globally recognized licensing steward that defines and curates reuse rules for an open commons — directly comparable in role, even though it operates in software rather than cultural content.

Others

• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): EFF defends digital civil liberties, including fair use, open access, and creator rights in the AI era. It is comparable to Creative Commons as a nonprofit that intervenes in copyright and content policy debates (e.g., generative AI training) and engages in standards and litigation work for an open digital commons.
• Internet Society (ISOC): Internet Society is a global nonprofit advocating for an open, secure, and accessible internet. It is comparable to Creative Commons in mission framing (open internet, equitable access) and nonprofit funding model, though focused on internet policy and infrastructure rather than content licensing.
• W3C: W3C develops web standards (HTML, CSS, accessibility standards) and increasingly operates in the same adjacent territory as Creative Commons' CC Signals effort for AI-era machine-readable content governance. It is comparable as a standards body shaping how the open web works, though its remit is broader than content licensing.

Broad incumbents

• Mozilla Foundation: Mozilla Foundation advocates for an open, healthy internet and funds open-source and open-web initiatives. It overlaps with Creative Commons in mission (open internet, equitable access to knowledge) and in donor-funded nonprofit structure, though Mozilla focuses on web standards and Firefox rather than content licensing.
• Wikimedia Foundation: Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, the single largest deployment of CC BY-SA in the world. While not a licensing steward itself, it is a flagship institutional user of Creative Commons tools and a peer in the open-knowledge nonprofit ecosystem with comparable global reach.
• Internet Archive: Internet Archive is a digital library that mass-deploys CC licensing for preserved cultural and educational content. It shares Creative Commons' mission of open access to knowledge, uses CC tools across its collections, and operates as a major institutional user in the open-content ecosystem.

Emerging players

• Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Knowledge Foundation promotes open data and open content through advocacy, tools (e.g., CKAN), and licensing frameworks such as Open Data Commons. It is comparable to Creative Commons as a small nonprofit stewarding open-licensing standards and advocating for policy adoption.
• Public Library of Science (PLOS): PLOS is a nonprofit open-access scientific publisher using CC BY as the default license for its journals. It is comparable as a CC-licensed content producer and as a mission-driven nonprofit advocating for open licensing, though narrowly focused on scholarly publishing.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/creativecommons
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/creative-commons
• Xx.com/creativecommons
• Facebookfacebook.com/creativecommons

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles14 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors1 record

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Creative Commons