Can You Use Free Mockups for Client Work? Licences Explained

“Free” on a mockup is a price, not a permission. The same free PSD might be fine for a client pitch on one site and forbidden for anything paid on another. I run a mockup shop, and licence questions are the emails I get most, usually sent after the designer has already shown the file to a client.

This guide explains the licence types you will meet, the uses that cause trouble, and a simple way to check before you build a presentation. It is practical guidance, not legal advice; the licence on the author’s page is always what counts.

The short answer

• Free for personal use only: practice, student work and sometimes your own portfolio. Not for client presentations, ads or anything that earns money.
• Free for personal and commercial use: you can usually use it in client work and paid projects. You still cannot resell or share the PSD itself.
• Paid standard licence: normally covers your own and client projects within limits (number of clients, brands or copies).
• Extended or commercial licence: for bigger use, such as many clients, large ad campaigns, or putting the mockup image on products or templates you sell.

The four uses that cause most problems

1. Showing a client a design you are still pitching

Most licences that allow commercial use allow this. It is the main reason mockups exist. Personal-only freebies do not, even though the client never sees the file.

2. Putting the image in your portfolio

This feels personal, but your portfolio markets a business. Some free licences allow it, some explicitly do not. Check before you publish a whole Behance project built on one scene.

3. Letting the client use the image in their own marketing

Your client posting the mockup image on Instagram or a product page is commercial use by the client. Some licences cover this under your licence; others ask the client to buy their own. Agree this before you hand over images.

4. Selling something made with the mockup

Templates, print-on-demand listings, Canva kits or “mockup + design” bundles almost always need an extended licence, and sharing the editable PSD inside a product is almost never allowed.

What every licence agrees on

Whatever the tier, nearly every mockup licence, free or paid, forbids the same three things:

1. Reselling or redistributing the PSD file, even for free, even modified.
2. Uploading it to another freebie site, marketplace or shared drive.
3. Claiming the mockup scene as your own photography.

Exporting a flattened JPG or PNG of your design in the scene is the normal, allowed output.

What I see from the seller’s side

At Mockup Asia, more than nine in ten buyers choose the basic standard licence. That tells me most mockup users are independent designers presenting their own and their clients’ work, and the standard tier is built around that. When we rewrote our licence page, we moved from counting projects to counting brands: one licence covers one brand and all its products. In practice designers think in brands (“the café identity”, “the matcha line”), not in projects, so the licence should too.

The questions that reach me are rarely about large campaigns. They are about the grey areas above: “Can my client post this?” and “Can I put it in my portfolio?” If a licence page does not answer those two questions clearly, email the author before you build the presentation. A short reply in writing protects you better than any guess.

How to check a licence in two minutes

1. Open the author’s original page, not a repost. On freebiecrate every listing links to it.
2. Look for the words personal, commercial, client and redistribute.
3. Find the limit: number of clients, brands, copies or a budget cap.
4. Screenshot the licence with the date. Terms change over time.
5. If anything is unclear, ask the author by email.

Where freebiecrate fits

We list freebies; we do not own or re-host them. Each listing shows the licence as the author states it, and the download button always takes you to the author’s own page. When a listing says to check the author’s page, that page has the final word. Our own licence page explains how listings work.

New to editing mockups? Read how to use a PSD mockup without blurry results, or browse free stationery mockups to practise on.