Donate/en

Below are the different donation options currently supported by the project. Remember, it will never be required to pay money to use, study, distribute or develop FreeCAD. Donations however help FreeCAD and its developers to dedicate time and ressources to make the project grow faster and further.

There are also always other ways to help instead of donating money or coding, such as working on the documentation, on translations, or help new users to find their way. See the Help FreeCAD page to know more.

More details about the different options

 * Liberapay_logo.svg FreeCAD has an official LiberaPay team account; There, you can donate any amount via credit card, Paypal or SEPA bank transfer, one time only or recurrently. Any money received here is split equally among the listed developers. This is the recommended option as it funds developers directly. The Liberapay platform is also open-source and doesn't take any percentage on your donation. The LiberaPay account is managed directly by its members.


 * PayPal Logo Icon 2014.svg FreeCAD has an official PayPal account where you can donate any amount by credit card or your own Paypal account, one time only or recurrently. The PayPal account is managed by the FPA. Paypal is a convenient platform but charges a fee on what FreeCAD receives.


 * SepaLogoEN.jpg FreeCAD has an Euro bank account where you can transfer money directly via your own banking application. The IBAN number is BE04 0019 2896 4531, owned by the FreeCAD project association. The bank agency is BNP Paribas Fortis, address: Rue de la Station 64, 1360 Perwez, Belgium, BIC/SWIFT code: GEBABEBBXXX


 * Opencollective_logo.svg FreeCAD has an official OpenCollective PayPal account where you can donate any amount, one time only or recurrently, via credit card, SEPA transfer or Paypal. The OpenCollective account is managed by the FPA. OpenCollective is a good option as it is independent and used by many open-source projects. OpenCollective is also a 501(c) non-profit organization and can issue donation receipts useful for US taxpayers.


 * GitHub.svg GitHub sponsors is a sponsoring platform offered by GitHub, where the FreeCAD source code is hosted. There you can donate any amount monthly to FreeCAD, via credit card or Paypal. The GitHub sponsors account is managed by the FPA.


 * Bountysource_logo.png FreeCAD has an official Bountysource account; donate money to the FreeCAD project as a whole, or offer a "bounty" to address a specific issue or bug. This is an interesting option because your donation can be used specifically in a particular area. However, using the Bountysource money is a more complex process for us, and there might be a delay between donating and seeing your donation used effectively. Warning: there have been recently a series of issues regarding bountysource and we recommend not using the platform for the time being. We recommend checking its wikipedia page for up to date information.


 * Stripe-logo.png FreeCAD has a Stripe donation account where you can make a one-time donation via a credit card.


 * You can help support the web hosting costs by donating directly to Jürgen Riegel's paypal account. Jürgen is the original developer of FreeCAD.

Funding a specific developer

 * Some developers will do a specific task for money or can be sponsored to spend time working on FreeCAD. There have been a couple of successful experiments in the past, such as the Path Workbench or Ian Rees's funding experiment. The following developers can be sponsored individually. Funding a developer individually can be a great way to focus your donation on a specific area of development of FreeCAD, that you have special interest in:


 * Yorik via patreonporange.png Patreon, Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay or GitHub.svg GitHub (Draft, Arch, BIM, IFC)
 * Kurt Kremitzki via patreonporange.png Patreon or Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay (infrastructure, servers, packaging, Debian/Ubuntu)
 * Lei Zheng aka Realthunder via PayPal, Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay or patreonporange.png Patreon (App Link, Assembly3)
 * Lorenz aka looooo via Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay (FCGears workbench, Conda packaging)
 * Amritpal Singh aka amrit3701 via Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay or patreonporange.png Patreon (Rebar addon)
 * Brad Collette aka sliptonic via Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay or patreonporange.png Patreon (Path Workbench)
 * Ajinkya Dahale via Liberapay_logo.svg Liberapay or GitHub.svg GitHub (B-Spline constraints project and general FreeCAD bugfixing/enhancing)

Jobs

 * There might be other developers interested in doing specific work for the project; if you would like to accelerate the development of an idea or feature, consider employing a developer. It's up to you to build up an idea, discuss it on the forum, and find developers interested in doing it. You can offer a job in the Job offers subforum.
 * Modelling jobs are also welcome. Not every experienced FreeCAD user is a developer. Experienced users can help you migrate your projects to FreeCAD, which contributes with popularizing the software in organizations. See FreeCAD used in production.

Sponsoring
We call sponsoring the act of donating money recurrently to the FreeCAD project. You can do that as an individual or as a company or institution, through different channels or platforms, depending on your preferences. You can sponsor FreeCAD via the sponsoring page.

Sponsoring FreeCAD allows its developers to count on a steady flow of income, so it allows the FPA to plan things ahead, and the FreeCAD developers to invest themselves more seriously into FreeCAD.

To encourage persons and companies to sponsor the FreeCAD project, we have created different sponsoring tiers. By donating regularly to the project, you will have the possibility to have your name, company name and/or logo to be featured on the FreeCAD website, depending on the tier you fit into:


 * ♥ Normal sponsor: from 1 USD / 1 EUR per month. You will not have your name displayed on the sponsors page, but you will have helped the project a lot anyway. Together, normal sponsors maintain the project on its feet as much as the bigger sponsors.
 * 🥉 Bronze sponsor: from 25 USD / 25 EUR per month. Allows you to have your name or company name displayed on the sponsors page.
 * 🥈 Silver sponsor: from 100 USD / 100 EUR per month. Allows you to have your name or company name displayed on the sponsors page, with a link to your website, and a one-line description text.
 * 🥇 Gold sponsor: from 200 USD / 200 EUR per month. Allows you to have your name or company name and logo displayed on the sponsors page, with a link to your website and a custom description text. Companies that have helped FreeCAD early on will also appear under Gold sponsors.

Instead of donating each month, you might find it more comfortable to make a one-tine donation that, when divided by twelve, would give you right to enter a sponsoring tier. Don't hesitate to do so!

The FPA
The FreeCAD project association (FPA) is a non-profit association created in 2022 by FreeCAD's administrators and core developers and seated in Belgium. It is responsible for transparently collecting, handling and distributing the money collected via donations. More details and reports are available on the FPA page. Excepting the LiberaPay team account, which is directly manager by its members, all other donation channels above are handled and managed by the FPA.

Tax deductions
The FPA, although it is a non-profit organization, is not a charity organization. People and companies donating to the FPA are therefore not entitled to a tax deduction by Belgian law. Each country, however, has its own rules and laws to decide upon what gives their citizen right to tax reduction or not. You are always advised to consult the laws of your own country.

U.S. citizens and companies can however benefit from tax deductions when donating to FreeCAD. For this, you need to choose the OpenCollective platform above. OpenCollective is a 501(c)3 organization, and provides tax deductions receipts.

The FPA can anyway always issue a donation receipt. [mailto:fpa@freecad.org Mail us] with your donation details and we will gladly send you a receipt.