NSF-backed portal for lidar point clouds and DEMs (US, global SRTM-class, country-wide 1 m sets). This is the access layer, not one license. Citations page: hosted data are "free of all copyright restrictions" and available for commercial use, and some datasets carry a named open license such as CC BY 4.0. You must cite the dataset. Read the landing page for the tile you actually pull. Do not treat the portal sentence as CC0 for every job.
At a glance
Licence
varies
Commercial use
per-file review
Credit
Required
Status
active: License spot-checked at the source; the entry carries dated evidence.
Verified
2026-08-24 (32d ago)
Formats
GeoTIFF, LAS, LAZ
Credit line
Cite the dataset landing page plus OpenTopography (see opentopography.org/citations)
Account/API keys are normal. Point Elevation API exists; still inherits the source DEM's terms
Country-wide 1 m DEMs added in 2026 news are not automatically the same grant as USGS PD tiles. Open the dataset page
GIS first: reproject, downsample, then heightmap. Raw LAS is not a Godot terrain
Checklist: license policy in HTML, commercial allowed at portal level, citation required, not a marketplace, NSF/university, not blocklisted, no rights claimed, per-dataset licenses called out
Evidence
Live Citations (2026-08-24): "fully and freely available for both non-commercial and commercial uses"
Same page (2026-08-24): "Certain datasets may have open data licenses (e.g., Creative Common CC BY 4.0)"
Same page (2026-08-24): "you must cite the use of OpenTopography data"