SkiaSharp license explained

SkiaSharp is licensed under the MIT License. Its LICENSE.md carries copyrights from Xamarin and Microsoft, and NuGet lists the license of the current release, SkiaSharp 4.153.1 (September 30, 2026), as MIT. There is no fee, no revenue tier and no license key. The MIT text has one condition, keeping the copyright and permission notice, and SkiaSharp’s native libraries bring third-party components that each have a license of their own. This page goes through both, using the license files as they stood on October 23, 2026.

What the SkiaSharp license says

The grant in LICENSE.md is the standard MIT wording:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The one condition:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The rest is a warranty disclaimer: the software is provided “as is”, and the authors aren’t liable for its use. The copyright lines are “Copyright (c) 2015-2016 Xamarin, Inc.” and “Copyright (c) 2017-2018 Microsoft Corporation.”

Is SkiaSharp free for commercial use?

The license text grants the rights above “free of charge, to any person”, and it lists “sell copies” among them. Nothing in it depends on company size, revenue or whether your code is open source. Every SkiaSharp release since 2.88.9 declares the same MIT expression on NuGet, and no key is involved: our SkiaSharp 4.153.1 test projects built and ran with nothing but the packages. How the notice condition applies to the way you distribute your software is a question for your own legal review. The license text and the notices file below are what to give the reviewer.

Every package you ship is MIT on NuGet

A SkiaSharp app usually ships more than the SkiaSharp package: a native-assets package per platform, and HarfBuzzSharp if it shapes text. NuGet lists all of them as MIT (versions read):

• SkiaSharp 4.153.1
• SkiaSharp.NativeAssets.Linux 4.153.1
• SkiaSharp.NativeAssets.Linux.NoDependencies 4.153.1
• SkiaSharp.NativeAssets.Win32 4.153.1
• HarfBuzzSharp 14.2.1.301
• SkiaSharp.HarfBuzz 4.153.1
• SkiaSharp.Views.Maui.Controls 4.153.1

The native libraries have their own licenses

SkiaSharp is a .NET binding to Google’s Skia, a C++ library, and the native libSkiaSharp binary is built from Skia and the libraries it uses. The repository’s third-party notices file says that “SkiaSharp and HarfBuzzSharp incorporate third party material from the projects listed below” and reproduces each project’s notice. Among them, as the file states them:

The file lists more, including ANGLE, expat and piex. For FreeType it reproduces FreeType’s own text, which asks you to “choose one of the two licenses” and obey its terms. If your organization keeps an inventory of the open source it ships, this file is the list to start from, alongside SkiaSharp’s own license.

Has the SkiaSharp license changed?

Not in substance. What changed is how the NuGet packages point to it. From NuGet’s metadata for each SkiaSharp release:

• 1.49.1 to 1.60.0 (2016 to 2018) link to LICENSE.md on GitHub.
• 1.60.1 to 2.88.8 (May 2018 to April 2024) link to a Microsoft short link, which today redirects to the same LICENSE.md.
• 2.88.9 (November 2024) and every release since declare the license expression MIT.

SkiaSharp 4 didn’t change it either. Microsoft’s SkiaSharp 4.0 announcement (June 29, 2026) introduced 4.148.0 as the first stable v4 release, co-maintained by the .NET team and Uno Platform, and doesn’t mention a license change. NuGet lists 4.148.0 and every later release as MIT.

SkiaSharp license vs ImageSharp license

The license is the main difference between the two. Since 3.0, ImageSharp has used the Six Labors Split License: Apache 2.0 for some users and a paid commercial license for others, depending on revenue and how the software is used. Its 3.2.0 and 4.x releases also check a license key at build time (Six Labors). Our ImageSharp license guide goes through who pays and who needs a key. SkiaSharp has none of that.

The cost that isn’t in the license

SkiaSharp’s license is simple. Its deployment is less so, because the native libSkiaSharp binary has to match each platform. On Linux the native assets aren’t included automatically, and in containers the usual package also needs fontconfig. Our page on SkiaSharp on Linux and Docker covers the fixes.

If what you need is image processing (loading, resizing, cropping, converting, thumbnails) rather than a 2D drawing engine, OneImage is an option with neither cost. It is licensed MIT OR Apache-2.0, has no fee, tier or key, and is pure C# with no native binaries, so there is nothing per platform to install or track. It targets .NET 10:

dotnet add package RecursiveAI.OneImage

using OneImage;

// 800 px wide; the height follows the aspect ratio.
Image.Load("photo.jpg").Resize(width: 800).Save("photo-800.jpg");

This sample was run against OneImage 1.6.0. Our guide to resizing images in C# covers fit modes, thumbnails and uploads, and the comparison of .NET image libraries covers SkiaSharp, ImageSharp, Magick.NET, NetVips and OneImage side by side.