UCSC Genome Browser Licensing

The research community has free and unrestricted access to the data and analysis available on our genome browser. We make the browser source code and binaries free for personal, academic, and non-profit use. To set up your own version of the browser, refer to our mirror site.

Any commercial organization wishing to install or customize the browser on its own website must obtain a commercial site license. Licensing fees vary depending on the type and size of the organization. Licensing clients may receive a limited amount of technical support by email or telephone plus a full day workshop from the genome bioinformatics group as part of the UCSC technology transfer program.

The browser license includes the essential tools for installing the browser:

• a complete set of the cgi-bin files, HTML files, and database files needed to run a stock version of the genome browser
• a complete set of source files required to build the genome browser
• installation instructions, including system requirements
• complete online user documentation (HTML format)

The browser license does NOT include items that are proprietary or are freely available elsewhere:
complete online user documentation (HTML format)

• source or executables for the Blat Search tool: These must be purchased under a separate license agreement from Jim Kent.
• genomic sequence or annotation data: Download these for free from the UCSC Genome Browser
  website ( http://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/downloads.html ) and from many other publicly available sources on the internet
• the supporting software required to build, install, and run the genome browser
  (C compilation environment, Apache server, MySQL)

To obtain a browser license, visit http://genome.ucsc.edu/license/