REST API endpoints for licenses

Use the REST API to retrieve popular open source licenses and information about a particular project's license file.

About licenses

GitHub uses the open source Ruby Gem Licensee to attempt to identify the license for a project. Licensee matches the contents of a project's LICENSE file (if it exists) against a short list of known licenses. As a result, the API does not take into account the licenses of project dependencies or other means of documenting a project's license such as references to the license name in the documentation.

If a license is matched, the license key and name returned conforms to the SPDX specification.

Note: These endpoints will also return a repository's license information:

Warning

GitHub is a lot of things, but it’s not a law firm. As such, GitHub does not provide legal advice. Using the API or sending us an email about it does not constitute legal advice nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. If you have any questions about what you can and can't do with a particular license, you should consult with your own legal counsel before moving forward. In fact, you should always consult with your own lawyer before making any decisions that might have legal ramifications or that may impact your legal rights.

GitHub created these endpoints to help users get information about open source licenses and the projects that use them. We hope it helps, but please keep in mind that we’re not lawyers (at least most of us aren't) and that we make mistakes like everyone else. For that reason, GitHub provides the API on an "as-is" basis and makes no warranties regarding any information or licenses provided on or through it, and disclaims liability for damages resulting from using the API.

Note

Most endpoints use Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN> and Accept: application/vnd.github+json headers, plus X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2026-03-10. Curl examples below omit these standard headers for brevity.

Get all commonly used licenses

GET /licenses

Lists the most commonly used licenses on GitHub. For more information, see "Licensing a repository ."

Parameters

Headers

accept (string)
Setting to application/vnd.github+json is recommended.

Path and query parameters

featured (boolean)
per_page (integer)
The number of results per page (max 100). For more information, see "Using pagination in the REST API."
Default: 30
page (integer)
The page number of the results to fetch. For more information, see "Using pagination in the REST API."
Default: 1

HTTP response status codes

200 - OK
304 - Not modified

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X GET \
  https://api.github.com/licenses

Response schema (Status: 200):

Array of License Simple:

key: required, string
name: required, string
url: required, string or null, format: uri
spdx_id: required, string or null
node_id: required, string
html_url: string, format: uri

Get a license

GET /licenses/{license}

Gets information about a specific license. For more information, see "Licensing a repository ."

Parameters

Headers

accept (string)
Setting to application/vnd.github+json is recommended.

Path and query parameters

license (string) (required)

HTTP response status codes

200 - OK
304 - Not modified
403 - Forbidden
404 - Resource not found

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X GET \
  https://api.github.com/licenses/LICENSE

Response schema (Status: 200):

key: required, string
name: required, string
spdx_id: required, string or null
url: required, string or null, format: uri
node_id: required, string
html_url: required, string, format: uri
description: required, string
implementation: required, string
permissions: required, array of string
conditions: required, array of string
limitations: required, array of string
body: required, string
featured: required, boolean

Get the license for a repository

GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/license

This method returns the contents of the repository's license file, if one is detected.
This endpoint supports the following custom media types. For more information, see "Media types."

application/vnd.github.raw+json: Returns the raw contents of the license.
application/vnd.github.html+json: Returns the license contents in HTML. Markup languages are rendered to HTML using GitHub's open-source Markup library.

Parameters

Headers

accept (string)
Setting to application/vnd.github+json is recommended.

Path and query parameters

owner (string) (required)
The account owner of the repository. The name is not case sensitive.
repo (string) (required)
The name of the repository without the .git extension. The name is not case sensitive.
ref (string)
The Git reference for the results you want to list. The ref for a branch can be formatted either as refs/heads/ or simply . To reference a pull request use refs/pull//merge.

HTTP response status codes

200 - OK
404 - Resource not found

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X GET \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/license

Response schema (Status: 200):

name: required, string
path: required, string
sha: required, string
size: required, integer
url: required, string, format: uri
html_url: required, string or null, format: uri
git_url: required, string or null, format: uri
download_url: required, string or null, format: uri
type: required, string
content: required, string
encoding: required, string
_links: required, object:
- git: required, string or null, format: uri
- html: required, string or null, format: uri
- self: required, string, format: uri
license: required, any of:
- null
- License Simple
  - key: required, string
  - name: required, string
  - url: required, string or null, format: uri
  - spdx_id: required, string or null
  - node_id: required, string
  - html_url: string, format: uri