Written by Huifer, solo developer and maintainer of TanStack Ship. I ship production SaaS products on the TanStack stack — Query, Router, Start, Table — and maintain TanStack Ship, a commercial boilerplate built on those libraries. This page separates the two licenses people confuse.
Verified sources: tanstack.com, github.com/TanStack (LICENSE files per repo). Last updated: 2026-10-05 · Changelog
TanStack License: MIT Explained (+ TanStack Ship Pricing)
Short answer: every TanStack open-source library is MIT licensed. TanStack Query, TanStack Router, TanStack Start, TanStack Table, TanStack Form, TanStack Store, and TanStack Virtual are free for personal and commercial use — no paid tier, no revenue share, no attribution requirement beyond keeping the MIT copyright notice in the license file.
If you searched "tanstack license" to find out whether you need to pay to use TanStack in a production app: you don't. Ship it.
What the MIT license allows
MIT is one of the most permissive open-source licenses. For each TanStack library you may:
- Use it in commercial, closed-source products
- Modify it and ship the modifications privately
- Sublicase it as part of a larger product
- Bundle it in client work, agencies deliverables, and SaaS you sell
The only obligation: keep the copyright and permission notice in the copy of the library you distribute. For a web app where the library is bundled and served — not redistributed as source — that obligation is effectively handled by the LICENSE file in node_modules.
Which TanStack libraries this covers
As of 2026, the MIT license applies across the TanStack ecosystem:
| Library | What it does | License |
|---|---|---|
| TanStack Query | Server-state, caching, data fetching | MIT |
| TanStack Router | Type-safe routing | MIT |
| TanStack Start | Full-stack React framework (SSR, server functions) | MIT |
| TanStack Table | Headless tables and data grids | MIT |
| TanStack Form | Type-safe forms | MIT |
| TanStack Store | Framework-agnostic reactive state | MIT |
| TanStack Virtual | Headless virtualization | MIT |
Licensing is per-repo on GitHub — if a new library ships, check the LICENSE file in its repository, but the project has kept a consistent MIT posture.
Why "TanStack license" is confusing: two different products
Most license confusion comes from a name collision:
- TanStack — Tanner Linsley's open-source library collection. Everything above. MIT, free, funded by sponsors and affiliates.
- TanStack Ship — a commercial SaaS boilerplate built on top of those libraries (this site's product). It is not open source and is not free.
So the answer to "do I need a license for TanStack?" is: not for the libraries. You buy a license only if you want the boilerplate — pre-wired multi-tenancy, billing, UTM attribution, MRR dashboard, and Cloudflare Workers deployment — instead of assembling those systems yourself.
What a TanStack Ship license includes
TanStack Ship is sold as one-time packages, not a subscription: Launch at $99, Pro at $199, Team at $299 (check the pricing page for current plans and what moved). Every package is a commercial license for the boilerplate code:
- Launch ($99) — the entry point for independent developers and side projects.
- Pro ($199) — adds the systems that save the most build time; the recommended tier for production SaaS.
- Team ($299) — built for small teams, studios, and client work.
The code you build with TanStack Ship is yours to ship in commercial products. The TanStack libraries underneath remain MIT either way — buying or not buying TanStack Ship changes nothing about your obligations to the open-source stack.
FAQ
Is TanStack Query free for commercial use? Yes. MIT license — use it in paid, closed-source products with no restrictions beyond keeping the license notice.
Do I need to buy TanStack Ship to use TanStack Router or Query? No. The libraries are fully usable on their own. TanStack Ship is a boilerplate that saves you wiring auth, billing, and dashboards yourself — an acceleration choice, not a requirement.
Can I use TanStack Ship in client projects? The Team tier is built for studios and client work; Launch and Pro cover your own products. See the pricing page for the tier comparison.
Is TanStack Start production-ready under MIT? Yes — MIT applies to production use the same as any other use. Our six-month router comparison covers production behavior in detail.
The one-line takeaway
TanStack (the libraries) = MIT, free forever, commercial use included. TanStack Ship (the boilerplate) = commercial, one-time price, and optional. If someone told you that you need a paid license to use TanStack Query or TanStack Router in your SaaS, they were thinking of a different product.