What OpenFOAM Foundation does

The OpenFOAM Foundation Ltd is a UK-incorporated not-for-profit organisation that owns the copyright to and distributes OpenFOAM, the leading free and open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software toolbox. The software consists of approximately 1.5 million lines of C++ implementing modular solvers for fluid motion, heat transfer, thermodynamics, multiphase flows, particle tracking, and chemistry, licensed exclusively under GPL v3. All development and maintenance is performed by CFD Direct — a small core team comprising OpenFOAM's creator Henry Weller, co-founder Chris Greenshields, and core developer Will Bainbridge — which assigns copyright to the Foundation under a Contributor Agreement. The Foundation serves tens of thousands of users worldwide across chemical/process, civil, mechanical, aerospace, automotive, marine, power generation, and clean-energy engineering, as well as academia and government research, with explicit positioning as a lower-cost alternative to proprietary CFD licences that can exceed $1M annually for corporate deployments.

The Foundation generates revenue indirectly through tiered annual maintenance plans (Platinum at €100k, Gold at €25k, Silver at €5k) contributed by supporting organisations, while CFD Direct operates the commercial arm via training services (classroom courses in Cologne, Houston, and Chicago; live virtual training across global time zones). Current maintenance funding is approximately €250k, against a stated target of €500k and a long-term trajectory the Foundation describes as needing to continue rising over the next 3–4 years — roughly 0.1% of the revenue commanded by large commercial CFD vendors. Distribution is purely product-led and self-serve: users download directly from openfoam.org, the Ubuntu apt repository (dl.openfoam.org), Docker images, or compile from the GitHub source repositories, with Windows (via WSL) and macOS (via Canonical Multipass) supported as secondary channels.

Name

OpenFOAM Foundation

Legal name

The OpenFOAM Foundation Ltd

Website

https://openfoam.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2004

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

The OpenFOAM Foundation is a UK not-for-profit that owns and distributes OpenFOAM, the leading open-source (GPL v3) computational fluid dynamics toolbox used by tens of thousands of engineers, researchers, and academics worldwide as a free alternative to proprietary CFD software.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

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

Revenue model

1. Maintenance Plans: OpenFOAM is free software but funded through annual maintenance plans offered at three levels: Platinum (€100k/year) for strategic users, Gold (€25k/year) for organisations with dedicated CFD groups, and Silver (€5k/year) for organisations with individual CFD users. These support a full-time team of core developers at CFD Direct.
2. Training Services: CFD Direct provides CFD training with OpenFOAM through classroom courses in Cologne (Germany), Houston and Chicago (USA), and live virtual training for Europe, Americas, and Asia-Pacific time zones. Course offerings include Essential CFD, Applied CFD, Productive CFD, and Programming CFD.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

OpenFOAM is a free, open source C++ computational fluid dynamics toolbox (~1.5 million lines) distributed under GPL v3 that calculates fluid motion and forces, heat transfer, thermodynamics and chemistry in fluids and solids. The Foundation distributes the software at no cost and funds ongoing development through annual maintenance plan subscriptions (Platinum, Gold, Silver) and paid CFD training services delivered by CFD Direct.

Product overview

OpenFOAM is a single, unified open source CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software toolbox. It is distributed exclusively by the OpenFOAM Foundation under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) v3. The core product is one body of C++ code (approximately 1.5 million lines) maintained by CFD Direct, which is released as periodic major versions (currently v13) and a continuously updated development line (OpenFOAM-dev). Packages are provided for Ubuntu Linux, with source code and Docker containers available for other platforms including Windows (via WSL) and macOS (via Multipass). ParaView is integrated as the standard visualization tool. The software is used primarily through command-line solvers and utilities for research, product design and optimization, safety calculations, and problem troubleshooting.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• OpenFOAM CFD Software Free, open source C++ computational fluid dynamics toolbox (~1.5 million lines) distributed under GPL v3 that calculates fluid motion and forces, heat transfer, thermodynamics and chemistry in fluids and solids. It provides modular class-based solvers, MULES boundedness, multiphaseEuler, field-based Lagrangian, mesh zones and non-conformal coupling, and is used as an alternative to proprietary CFD software by industry, government research and academia worldwide.
• OpenFOAM Maintenance Plans Tiered annual maintenance subscriptions supporting OpenFOAM development by CFD Direct: Platinum (€100k/year) for strategic users, Gold (€25k/year) for organisations with a dedicated CFD group, and Silver (€5k/year) for organisations with individual CFD users. Includes priority maintenance requests, OpenFOAM Hub access, Issue Tracking System prioritisation, test cases, packaging installation and documentation.
• CFD Training with OpenFOAM Professional CFD training delivered by CFD Direct through classroom courses in Cologne, Houston and Chicago, plus live virtual sessions across Europe, Americas and Asia-Pacific time zones, covering Essential CFD, Applied CFD, Productive CFD and Programming CFD for engineers using OpenFOAM.

Quantifiable outcome

• Licence savings: proprietary CFD licences start at $25k for single user running in serial per year, increasing to $100k-200k+ for group/parallel licences and $1M+ for corporate licences

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration1 record

Feature6 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• CFD DirectcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCFD Direct develops and maintains OpenFOAM, transferring copyright of all code to The OpenFOAM Foundation under a Contributor Agreement. The team includes OpenFOAM's creator Henry Weller, co-founder Chris Greenshields, and core developer Will Bainbridge. CFD Direct provides the consistent core team to maintain robustness, usability and extensibility of OpenFOAM.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Siemens Simcenter (STAR-CCM+): Commercial CFD/CAE suite competing head-to-head with OpenFOAM in industrial engineering simulation, sold via floating/parallel licences that OpenFOAM positions against. Direct overlap in multiphase, heat transfer and rotating machinery workflows.
• ESI Group: French CAE vendor historically associated with OpenCFD, an OpenFOAM-derived commercial distribution later acquired by Siemens; ESI remains an active player in industrial CFD and competes for the same engineering R&D workloads as OpenFOAM.
• Convergent Science: Independent commercial CFD vendor behind CONVERGE, known for automated meshing and engine/multiphase applications, directly competing for the same customers and simulation workloads (especially internal combustion and reacting flows) that OpenFOAM serves.
• Cadence (Numeca): Cadence acquired Numeca, a specialist CFD vendor focused on turbomachinery and aerodynamics, directly competing with OpenFOAM's strongest industrial use cases (compressors, turbines, external aerodynamics) and frequently benchmarked against OpenFOAM in academic literature.
• Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA: SIMULIA's PowerFLOW/Abaqus CFD products address the same industrial multiphysics simulation market as OpenFOAM, sold on enterprise licences with similar pricing structure that OpenFOAM uses as its reference cost comparison.
• ANSYS: Dominant commercial CFD vendor (Ansys Fluent, CFX) selling the seat-based, proprietary licences that OpenFOAM targets as a free alternative. Same end users (chemical, aerospace, automotive, energy) and same core workflow of solver + pre/post-processing.

Others

• Kitware: Stewards ParaView, the open source visualisation tool natively integrated with OpenFOAM via the paraFoam utility and foamVTKSeries; shared ecosystem, similar open source / commercial services model (training, support, custom development) and partially overlapping user base in scientific computing.
• CFD Direct: Sister company that actually develops and maintains the OpenFOAM codebase (1.5M lines of C++) and assigns copyright to the OpenFOAM Foundation; not a competitor but the key technical and operational partner whose financial health directly determines the foundation's roadmap.
• NumFOCUS: Non-profit umbrella supporting open source scientific computing projects (NumPy, SciPy, pandas, Jupyter). Functionally analogous to the OpenFOAM Foundation as an open source governance, fiscal sponsorship and community vehicle, though in the data science rather than CFD domain.

Emerging players

• SU2 Foundation: Non-profit foundation stewarding the SU2 open source CFD suite originating from Stanford, the closest direct open source alternative to OpenFOAM for compressible/aerodynamic simulations, sharing the same target users in academia and aerospace.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/OpenFOAM
• Xx.com/CFDFoundation

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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 OpenFOAM Foundation