In the past, the ecoinvent database has been offered for free for academic users of non-OECD countries. ecoinvent now has new regulations in place for the free licence. This licence is now available for academic users of Low- and Low-middle-Income countries only [1].
Figure 1 shows the list of countries that are still eligible for this licence as defined by the United Nations in 2020[2].
Figure 1: UN Country Classification list
What happens with the countries that are now excluded from the free licence?
Academic users of countries that are not figuring in the list above but that already had a licence for a free database can keep their licences and use them as before. The optional maintenance fee of the database will start to be charged from ecoinvent v3.9 onwards.
If an academic user of a non-OECD country, that is not in the list described in Figure 1, wants to work with the ecoinvent database, they will have to purchase it from now onwards.
[1] https://ecoinvent.org/offerings/licences/educational-licence/
[2] https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/WESP2020_Annex.pdf