Is ZBrush Free? What You Get in 2026

"Is ZBrush free" is one of those questions where the answer changed recently, and most of the pages ranking for it are still describing a version of ZBrush that no longer exists. Here is the current state, checked against Maxon's own pages and the App Store listing in August 2026.

Is ZBrush free?

Partly. ZBrush on desktop is not free — it is subscription-only at $49/month or $399/year as of August 2026, with a 14-day trial. ZBrush for iPad is genuinely free to download and use, with 28 brushes and no time limit, but the free iPad plan cannot export a 3D model at all — only flat images.

That last sentence is the part almost nobody mentions, and it decides whether the free version is useful to you. If you want to sculpt for the pleasure of sculpting and post a screenshot, the free iPad plan is a real tool. If you want a mesh you can print, take into Blender, or hand to a game engine, it is a dead end.

What ZBrush costs in 2026

Maxon has been consolidating ZBrush into a straightforward subscription business. Perpetual licenses were discontinued in December 2023 and have not come back. Here is the whole lineup as of August 2026:

Desktop ZBrush 2026 requires Windows 10 or later, or macOS 14.0 or later. The iPad version needs iPadOS 17+ on an iPad with an A12 Bionic chip or newer. Prices above are Maxon's US list prices as of August 2026; check the current figures before you buy, because this lineup has moved twice in three years.

What do you get in the free ZBrush for iPad plan?

The free ZBrush for iPad plan includes 28 brushes — the core Sculptural, Paint, Selection, Mask, Chisel3D, and Insert Mesh sets — plus all of SculptrisPro, DynaMesh capped at resolution 1024, some ZRemesher, and posing with the Transpose Line and Gizmo3D. Subscribing adds 210 more brushes and 125+ features.

What that means in practice: the free plan is a working sculpting app, not a nagware demo. SculptrisPro is fully available, which is the single most beginner-friendly thing in ZBrush — it adds and removes polygons under your brush as you work, so you never hit a resolution wall mid-stroke. DynaMesh is there for reblocking forms, just capped at 1024 resolution, which is enough for a character bust and short of what a heavily detailed piece wants.

The gaps in the free plan, all confirmed on Maxon's own comparison page:

• No 3D model export. Export is limited to PNG, JPG, PSD, and TIFF — flat images.
• No saving or loading custom brushes.
• No UI customization of the Quick Access Menu or Custom Toolbar. Custom Palette Trays do work.
• No TransposeMaster, so posing multi-subtool figures is off the table.
• Import is restricted. You can bring supported 3D models and ZBrush files in from the home screen, but not import ZTL or ZPR files during an active session.
• No GoZ, the one-click handoff to desktop ZBrush.

The limit that matters: no 3D export

Everything else on that list is an inconvenience. The export restriction is a wall, and it is worth being precise about what it blocks.

You cannot 3D print anything you sculpt on the free iPad plan, because slicers need an STL or OBJ and you can only produce a PNG. You cannot take the sculpt into Blender for retopology, into Substance for texturing, or into Unity or Unreal. You cannot upload it to a print service or sell it on a marketplace. You cannot even back the mesh up outside the app in a format another program reads.

This is a deliberate and defensible business decision — Maxon is giving away the craft and charging for the pipeline — but it means the free tier answers "can I learn to sculpt for free" with a yes and "can I make something for free" with a no. Which of those questions you were actually asking determines whether the free plan solves your problem.

Is there a free ZBrush trial for desktop?

Yes. Maxon offers a 14-day free trial of ZBrush on desktop, downloaded through the Maxon App, and every trial includes the full Maxon One suite — Cinema 4D, Redshift, and Red Giant alongside ZBrush. It is the complete application with no feature restrictions, and it ends after 14 days.

Two weeks is enough to find out whether ZBrush's interface clicks for you, which is the real question with ZBrush. Its UI is famously its own thing — decades of accumulated convention that experienced users defend and newcomers bounce off. Nothing about the price tells you which of those you'll be. Two weeks of actual use does.

If you use the trial, spend it on one finished piece rather than on tutorials about features you may never touch. Blocking a head, remeshing it, detailing it, and exporting it teaches you more about whether you want the subscription than a week of watching someone else's workflow.

Whatever happened to ZBrushCoreMini?

ZBrushCoreMini, the free non-commercial cut-down ZBrush released in 2020, is gone. Maxon discontinued both ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini: they stopped being available for purchase or download on May 30, 2025, and reached end of life on September 30, 2025. Existing installs still run, but there are no updates and no support.

Maxon has said a freemium version of ZBrush Desktop is on its way, as part of aligning the desktop and iPad versions. As of August 2026 it has not shipped, and Maxon has not published a date. If it arrives it would meaningfully change the answer to this whole question, so it's worth watching — but not worth waiting for if you want to sculpt this month.

This is why so many "free ZBrush" pages are wrong: they were written when CoreMini existed, and nobody updated them. If a page recommends downloading ZBrushCoreMini today, it hasn't been checked since 2024.

Is ZBrush free for students?

No, but it is heavily discounted. Maxon's educational licensing bundles ZBrush and ZBrush for iPad into a Maxon One student license, valid for one year from the date of payment, available to enrolled students and faculty at accredited institutions. It is for personal learning only — commercial work under an educational license violates the EULA and can get the license terminated.

Maxon shows the actual student price in the cart rather than on the plans page, so check it directly. Two conditions to note before you apply: the license expires after a year and must be reapplied for, and the commercial restriction is real. If you plan to sell what you make while studying, an educational license is the wrong tool.

Free sculpting tools that do export a model

If your reason for asking "is ZBrush free" was that you wanted to make something without paying, the useful move is to compare the free tiers on whether they let you keep your work.

Blender is the strongest answer, and it isn't close. It's free under the GPL with no restrictions at all — commercial use included — and its Sculpt Mode covers dynamic topology, multiresolution, remeshing, and a deep brush library, plus every export format you might want. It also asks you to learn a large application with a lot of surface area beyond sculpting. Our ZBrush and Blender comparison goes through where each one wins.

Re:Form — our tool, so read this with that in mind — is a 3D sculpting app that runs in desktop browsers on WebGPU. It's currently v0.7.1 Alpha, which is a real caveat: it is younger and narrower than either tool above, and things change between releases. The free plan is the full toolset rather than a demo — every brush, sculpt layers, masking, symmetry, remeshing, and undo, up to roughly 12.5 million triangles, with OBJ import and export on the free plan, local .clay saves, and browser autosave. No watermark and no card; you do sign in with a free account before sculpting. Free covers personal, non-commercial use. Pro is $9.99/month or $99/year and adds the 50-million-triangle budget, STL/GLB/FBX in both directions, and a commercial license. It runs in current Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and in Safari 26 on macOS Tahoe — desktop only, no phones or tablets.

The comparison worth drawing: the free ZBrush for iPad plan and the free Re:Form plan cost the same and answer different questions. ZBrush gives you a slice of the industry-standard toolset on a tablet you can sculpt on from the couch, and keeps the mesh. Re:Form gives you the whole toolset in a browser tab on a desktop, and lets you export OBJ and print it. If you want the deepest sculpting toolset that exists and you have the budget, ZBrush is still the answer — we lay that out in detail in Re:Form vs ZBrush.

For the wider field, including SculptGL, Nomad Sculpt, and which of the old free names are actually dead, see our roundup of free ZBrush alternatives.

Which free route fits you

Sort by what you're trying to do, not by which brand you recognize:

• You own an iPad and want to learn sculpting. Install the free ZBrush for iPad plan. SculptrisPro alone makes it worth the download, and you're learning the interface you'd keep using if you ever subscribe.
• You want to 3D print what you sculpt. The free iPad plan can't help — it exports images. Use Blender, or sculpt in a browser and export for your slicer.
• You want a complete free pipeline with commercial rights. Blender, without qualification.
• You want to start sculpting in the next two minutes on a desktop. Open Re:Form — nothing to download or install, and the free plan is the full toolset.
• You're deciding whether to pay $399/year. Take the 14-day desktop trial and finish one piece in it. That answers the question better than any comparison table, ours included.

Whichever route you take, note the dates: this lineup has changed three times since 2023 — CoreMini discontinued, the iPad free plan introduced, a desktop freemium tier announced but unshipped. Anything you read about free ZBrush that doesn't carry a date is probably describing a product Maxon has already retired. More setup and plan questions are answered in our FAQ.

FAQ

Can I use ZBrush for iPad's free plan for commercial work?

The licensing question is mostly academic on the free plan, because you cannot export a 3D model from it — export is limited to PNG, JPG, PSD, and TIFF. You could sell a rendered image, but not the mesh. If you need to sell models, you need the iPad subscription at $9.99/month or $89.99/year, a desktop subscription, or a tool whose free tier permits commercial use, like Blender.

Does a ZBrush desktop subscription include ZBrush for iPad?

Yes. As of August 2026, both the $49/month and $399/year desktop subscriptions include ZBrush for iPad with its premium features unlocked, plus free access to Redshift CPU and Maxon's training material. The reverse is not true: an iPad subscription at $9.99/month covers the iPad app only, not the desktop application.

Is there any free version of ZBrush for Windows or Mac?

Not as of August 2026. ZBrushCoreMini was the free desktop edition and it reached end of life on September 30, 2025. Maxon has announced that a freemium version of ZBrush Desktop is coming, but has not shipped it or given a date. For now the only free routes on a desktop are the 14-day trial, Blender, or a browser-based sculptor.