Generate a free personal license for non-commercial learning, or a free academic license for teaching and research.
Choose the right license, understand the limits, and jump to the GAMS Portal when you are ready to create your license key.
GAMS and GAMSPy free licenses are designed for people who want to learn, teach, research, or prototype before moving to a commercial deployment.
Free personal licenses are available for individual, non-commercial learning and experimentation with GAMS or GAMSPy.
In addition to a personal license, eligible academic users get a free academic GAMSPy license with commercial solvers included.
Commercial users can request a free evaluation license to test GAMS, GAMSPy, and all available solvers for 2 months before purchasing.
Academic teachers with a paid academic license can request time-limited course licenses for the duration of a course. Participants receive course licenses with access to the same solvers included in the teacher's paid license, including commercial solvers when available.
| License | Best for | Commercial use | Model size and solver access | How to get it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Personal GAMS & GAMSPy | Individuals learning GAMS or GAMSPy, exploring optimization, or building personal non-commercial projects. | No. Personal licenses are for non-commercial use only. | Includes powerful open source solvers without model size limitations. | Sign up at portal.gams.com and choose the personal license option. |
| Free Academic GAMSPy | Students, teachers, researchers, and academic staff using GAMSPy for education or research. | No. Academic free licenses are for academic, non-commercial, non-production use. | Includes all solvers from the free personal license, plus additional commercial and specialty solvers without size limitations for academic use. | Sign up at portal.gams.com with an institutional email and verify it. |
| Discounted Academic GAMS | Students, teachers, researchers, and academic staff using GAMS for education or research. | No. Academic GAMS licenses are for academic, non-commercial, non-production use. | Academic GAMS licenses can be configured to include commercial and open-source solver access for academic use. | Contact GAMS for a quote, GAMS evaluation license, or academic license guidance. |
| Commercial | Companies, consultants, production teams, and funded business-critical GAMS or GAMSPy projects. | Yes, according to the purchased license terms. | No free-license model size limits when the appropriate GAMS, GAMSPy, and solver modules are licensed. | Contact GAMS for a quote, GAMS/GAMSPy evaluation license, or license guidance. |
License terms can vary by product, solver, and portal selection. The generated license and the GAMS license agreement remain the authoritative source for exact legal terms.
The portal flow is short. Academic users should use their institutional email address so the account can be validated automatically.
Create your account at portal.gams.com. Choose the personal or academic license path that matches your use case.
Confirm your email address. This step is especially important for academic users because institutional email verification is used for eligibility.
Copy your license key or access code from the portal, open GAMS Studio, and paste it under Help > GAMS Licensing. See our documentation for more details.
Download GAMS for Windows, macOS, or Linux, then return to the portal to generate and install your license.
Personal GAMS and GAMSPy licenses use included free solver options as defaults. This is handled automatically by the software, so users do not need to install a separate configuration file or change solver settings before solving typical models.
The personal-license defaults favor solver choices that are available with personal GAMS and GAMSPy licenses, such as HIGHS, IPOPT, MILES, NLPEC, SHOT, and RESHOP.
These defaults apply when a model does not explicitly request a solver for a model type.
The usual GAMS defaults for commercial and evaluation licenses favor high-performance commercial solvers such as CPLEX, CONOPT, PATH, DICOPT, and SBB where they are applicable.
Commercial and evaluation users can use these defaults when their license includes the corresponding solver access.
| Model type | Personal-license default | Usual commercial default | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| LP | HIGHS | CPLEX | Linear programs |
| MIP | HIGHS | CPLEX | Mixed-integer linear programs |
| RMIP | HIGHS | CPLEX | Relaxed mixed-integer linear programs |
| NLP | IPOPT | CONOPT | Continuous nonlinear programs |
| CNS | IPOPT | CONOPT | Constrained nonlinear systems |
| DNLP | IPOPT | CONOPT | Non-smooth nonlinear programs |
| RMINLP | IPOPT | CONOPT | Relaxed mixed-integer nonlinear programs |
| QCP | IPOPT | CONOPT | Quadratically constrained programs |
| RMIQCP | IPOPT | CONOPT | Relaxed mixed-integer quadratically constrained programs |
| MCP | MILES | PATH | Mixed complementarity problems |
| MPEC | NLPEC | NLPEC | Mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints |
| RMPEC | NLPEC | NLPEC | Relaxed mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints |
| MINLP | SHOT | DICOPT | Mixed-integer nonlinear programs |
| MIQCP | SHOT | SBB | Mixed-integer quadratically constrained programs |
| EMP | RESHOP | JAMS | Extended mathematical programming models |
The commercial-default column reflects the usual defaults for a full commercial setup. Actual solver availability always depends on the installed product and the active license.
No. Free personal and academic licenses are for non-commercial use. If you are using GAMS for business, consulting, client work, production systems, or revenue-generating projects, use a commercial license.
Academic verification confirms eligibility for the free academic GAMSPy license with commercial solvers included. For GAMS, academic users receive a free license under the personal-license style terms, intended for academic, non-commercial use.
GAMS will report a licensing error if a model exceeds the limits of the installed free license. For larger academic or commercial workloads, choose a license option that matches the model size and solver requirements.
In GAMS Studio, open Help > GAMS Licensing, paste the license key or access code from the portal, and install the license.