How do I get started with Gurobi for academic users?

Background information

Gurobi provides the most powerful mathematical programming solver to the academic community at no cost and with no restrictions on features. We are a company that has education at the core of what we do; because of this, we strive to find ways to give back to the academic community that has helped shape us.

We provide to academic users the same full-featured, no-size limit version that our commercial customers use. These free academic licenses are available to any faculty member, student, or member of the research or administrative staff of a degree-granting academic institution. The license may be used only for research and educational purposes. Access for commercial purposes is forbidden.

Registering on the Gurobi website

To register for an account with Gurobi, please visit the registration site, and select "Academic" when prompted. Please then enter your name, university, and country into the form and submit via "Access Now".

Within a few minutes, you should receive an email that allows you to set a password on your Gurobi website account. Once you are logged in, you can reach your User Portal via My Account > Account Info located in the top right corner of the Gurobi website.

Downloading and installing Gurobi Optimizer

To download the latest version of Gurobi Optimizer, click on the Downloads & Licenses menu and select Download Center. After agreeing to the End User License Agreement, you will have access to the Downloads page which contains multiple versions for multiple different platforms.

Once you've downloaded Gurobi Optimizer for your platform, installing is straightforward. For more detailed information on the installation process, please see the Quick Start Guide for your platform.

Licenses available for classroom and research use

There are various types of licenses available for our academic users including:

• Individual Named-User Academic licenses. These are by far the most common type of academic licenses. This is an unlimited-use Gurobi Optimizer license for a single person, on a single machine. You can request multiple licenses if you have multiple computers, such as one at home and one at your university. This license will be valid for up to one year; when it expires, you can request a new academic license, as long as you are still eligible.
  • For information on obtaining this license, please see How do I obtain a free academic license?
• WLS licenses. Run Gurobi Optimizer where you want, across container environments or regular machines. You will need to make sure your containers or machines can communicate with the Gurobi servers, please read the documentation for more details. Your WLS license will be valid for 90 days and is renewable for as long as you maintain eligibility.
• Academic cloud. Get on-demand access to Gurobi on cloud machines. Although the license is free, you’ll be responsible for the cost of cloud resource usage. More information is available here on the Gurobi website.
• Educational institution site licenses. Share Gurobi with multiple users in your academic departments, schools, and classrooms by running Gurobi on your university’s local-area network, at no cost to you or your institution. More information is available:
  • in the article How do I obtain a free academic license for a cluster or a shared computer lab? and
  • on the Gurobi website.

Resources for academic users include:

• Gurobi Community Forum
• Gurobi Academic Licenses
• Request a free academic license
• Gurobi Quick Start Guides

Further information

• How do I install Gurobi Optimizer?
• How do I install Gurobi for Python?
• How do I install Gurobi for Matlab?