How to get Autodesk Inventor free as a student

Who qualifies

According to Autodesk’s eligibility rules, students qualify if they meet the minimum age requirement and are enrolled at a qualified educational institution: one accredited by an authorised government agency with the primary purpose of teaching enrolled students. That covers accredited middle schools, high schools and universities. Educators employed by such institutions qualify too.

Autodesk also lists these cases as eligible:

• Homeschooled students who can document membership of a nationally recognised homeschooling body, or one accepted by a local school authority.
• Thesis and master’s work, including topics set by an industry partner, as long as the work is part of your degree.
• Apprentices in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, who under certain conditions may use the software on a company machine.
• Registered competitors in Autodesk-sponsored competitions.

Not eligible: participants in courses at training centres and retraining programmes. Autodesk does not count these as qualified institutions, and says such participants may not use the free 30-day trials for training either.

What you get

• A free, one-year, single-user licence for educational purposes, renewable every year while you are eligible.
• The same features and functionality as the paid subscription.
• The current release plus, where available, up to three earlier versions. Use Inventor Professional 2027 to match this course.
• Access to the other software in the Autodesk Education Community with the same account.

Prepare a document first

If Autodesk cannot confirm your enrolment automatically, you will be asked to upload proof. The document must show three things:

• your full name, exactly as your school has it registered;
• the full name of your institution;
• a date within the current school term.

Autodesk gives these as examples: an official letter from your institution (Autodesk provides a template), a registration receipt, a tuition receipt, a student ID card (a photo is not required) or a transcript. A screenshot of your student portal often lacks the date or the institution’s full name, which is the most common reason for a rejection.

Step by step

1. 01

   Open the Autodesk Education products page

   Go to Autodesk’s education products page and sign in, or create a free Autodesk account. You do not need a separate “student account”: the same account becomes educational once your eligibility is confirmed.

2. 02

   Select Inventor

   Choose Inventor from the product list. This starts the education verification process if you have not been verified yet.

3. 03

   Choose the individual plan

   Pick the plan for your own use. (Educators choose the Classroom plan when they want to give access to a whole class.)

4. 04

   Confirm your eligibility

   Fill in your educational profile: your role (student), your school or university, and your field and dates of study. Autodesk checks this automatically where it can; if it cannot, it asks you to upload a document (see below).

5. 05

   Wait for confirmation

   With an uploaded document, confirmation typically takes up to two days. If your school is not yet on Autodesk’s list of qualified institutions, validating it typically takes up to seven days. You cannot download the software until you are confirmed, so start before your course does.

6. 06

   Download and install

   Once you are confirmed, return to the education products page (or your Autodesk Account) to download Inventor Professional. Inventor is Windows software: check Autodesk’s system requirements for your release before installing.

If your teacher has assigned Inventor to you through a Classroom plan, you do not need to confirm your eligibility yourself: follow the access instructions your teacher sends.

Renewing every year

Your access lasts one year from the day your eligibility is confirmed. You can renew from 30 days before the expiry date: Autodesk emails a reminder, and a banner on the education products page shows a Renew button when you sign in. Confirm that you are still eligible and all your educational product subscriptions are extended for another year.

If the date has already passed, select a product on the education page to go through verification again. Afterwards only that product is active, so add the others again.

What you may use it for

Education plan software may be used only for educational purposes: learning, teaching, training and research. It must not be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit work. Following this course, doing coursework and building a portfolio as a student are fine; paid freelance drawings, client projects or using it in a part-time job are not.

If you don’t qualify

Autodesk offers a 30-day free trial of Inventor for evaluating the software; read the trial terms before you rely on it for training. After that, using Inventor requires a paid subscription. Every written lesson on this site stays readable either way, so you can study the steps before you have the software installed.

If verification fails

• Check that the name on your document matches your Autodesk account and your school registration letter for letter.
• Make sure the document shows a date in the current term and the institution’s full official name.
• If your school is not in the list, add it and allow up to seven days for Autodesk to validate it.
• Still stuck? Autodesk’s education support page has step-by-step guides and a contact route for account problems.

Next: your first part

Once Inventor is installed, start with Lesson 1: you will choose the metric DIN template and model your first parametric part in about ten minutes.