Material Symbols license: can you use them commercially?

Google publishes Material Symbols — the SVGs and the icon fonts — under the Apache License 2.0, a widely used permissive open-source license. This guide explains what that means in practice. It isn't legal advice, so if your situation is unusual, check with a lawyer.

The short answer

Yes. You can use Material Symbols in commercial products, websites, apps, presentations and client work, for free, and you can modify them. The license's conditions apply when you redistribute the icons themselves.

What the license allows

The Apache License 2.0 lets you:

• Use the icons for any purpose, including commercial ones.
• Modify them: recolor, resize, combine, redraw.
• Distribute them, modified or not, including as part of a paid product.
• Sublicense them as part of a larger work.

It also includes an explicit patent license from the contributors, which is one reason companies like it.

What it asks of you

When you redistribute the icons — for example in an icon pack, a template, a component library or a design kit that ships the icon files — you should:

1. Include a copy of the license (the full Apache 2.0 text) with the files.
2. Keep existing copyright and attribution notices that come with the files, and a NOTICE file if the distribution has one.
3. Mark modified files with a note that you changed them.

Do I need to credit Google in my app?

Using icons in your product's interface — buttons, menus, navigation — doesn't require an on-screen credit. Many teams list Material Symbols with their other open-source components in an "open-source licenses" or "third-party notices" screen or file, which is a good habit and covers the license text requirement for any files you ship.

Trademarks

The license covers the icons, not Google's trademarks. Don't use Google's name or logos in a way that suggests Google made or endorses your product. Using an icon of a generic concept (a house, a magnifying glass) is fine. Material Symbols also include some brand-like icons; the license doesn't give you rights to anyone's trademarks.

Common questions

Can I sell a product that uses Material Symbols? Yes. That's permitted, including apps, websites and printed products.

Can I sell the icons themselves, for example as a paid icon pack? The license allows redistribution, including commercially, as long as you follow the conditions above. Keep in mind the icons are freely available, so a pack needs to add real value — curation, new designs, formats — to be worth buying.

Can I edit an icon and call it my own design? You can modify icons freely, and your modifications are yours. The original drawing is still Google's work under the Apache License, so keep the license with redistributed files and note your changes.

Does using the Google Fonts version change anything? The license of the icons is the same. Loading fonts from Google's servers does mean visitors' browsers connect to Google, which some sites address in their privacy policy or avoid by self-hosting the font.

Where to find the license text

The full Apache License 2.0 is on our license page and is included with the @material-symbols npm packages and Google's material-design-icons repository.