> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.deepface.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Models and licensing

> Approved models, detector support, and commercial licensing boundaries.

# Models and licensing

deepface.dev only exposes models and detectors that have been reviewed for the
managed service. Agents and integrations should rely on `GET /capabilities` for
the current allowlist instead of hard-coding assumptions.

## Approved backbone models

* Facenet
* Facenet512
* OpenFace
* Dlib
* SFace

The current production default model is `Facenet`. The API allowlist is still
authoritative through `GET /capabilities`, but if you need a stable baseline
for smoke tests and synthetics, assume `Facenet` first and then confirm the
live capabilities response.

## Excluded models

### VGG-Face

VGG-Face remains excluded. Its released weights are restricted to
non-commercial research use and are not available on deepface.dev.

### ArcFace via InsightFace weights

ArcFace models derived from InsightFace weights may require a separate
commercial license. Do not assume those weights are cleared for commercial use
without explicit legal review.

## Detector guidance

The active detector allowlist is exposed through `GET /capabilities`. Start
with the default detector unless you have measured a better fit for your input
distribution.

The current production default detector is `opencv`. deepface.dev also pre-bakes
and pre-warms `retinaface` to reduce startup risk during cold recovery, but
that warmup choice is operational only and does not change the default detector
reported by `GET /capabilities`.

When `opencv` cannot extract a face, the managed service may retry
`retinaface` before returning `no_face_detected`. That fallback remains inside
the approved detector allowlist and does not expand the commercial model
surface.

## Attribute analysis

Attribute analysis is intentionally absent from the managed API. The upstream
attribute stack depends on VGG-Face-based components that are not approved for
commercial use in this service.

## Operational notes

Readiness and warmup are now first-class service concerns. `GET /readiness`
reports whether the managed runtime has finished warming the approved model and
detector stack. This route exists for health checks and incident diagnosis; it
does not expand the commercial model surface beyond what `GET /capabilities`
already exposes. Warmup failures are reported with symbolic readiness errors;
raw runtime exception details remain in server logs.

Image normalization enforces byte, request-size, and decoded pixel safety
limits before detector downscale. These operational limits protect the managed
runtime and do not change the approved model or detector allowlist.

If you store embeddings in your own vector database, the same model licensing
rules still apply. Use `GET /capabilities` before choosing the model for
[customer-owned face search](customer-owned-face-search), and keep the stored
embedding dimension aligned with that model.