ESM3
Generative multimodal protein model reasoning jointly over sequence, structure and function.
Developer: EvolutionaryScale (repository now copyright Chan Zuckerberg Biohub)
Overview
- Developer
- EvolutionaryScale (repository now copyright Chan Zuckerberg Biohub)
- Category
- Protein language models
- Commercial rights
- Commercial OK
- Commercial cost
- Free commercially
- Compute
- Heavy GPU
- Open weights
- Yes
- Last verified
Capabilities
Generates and edits proteins across three tracks at once. Input: any partial specification - sequence, backbone coordinates, secondary structure, SASA or function keywords, with the rest masked; output: the completed sequence and/or structure. Used for prompted generation and scaffolding rather than plain embedding extraction.
When to use it
Use when you want prompted generation conditioned on structure or function, not just embeddings - that is what separates it from ESM-2 and ESM C. Open checkpoint is the small one; the headline results used much larger models served over the API.
Input / Output
- Input
- any partial specification - sequence, backbone coordinates, secondary structure, SASA or function keywords, with the rest masked
- Output
- the completed sequence and/or structure
Compute
Heavy GPU. Other tools with this compute profile →
Commercial Licensing
Commercial rights — may a company use it?
Commercial use OKLicence as writtenMIT License (LICENSE.md, Copyright 2026 Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Inc.)
The repository LICENSE.md is MIT and the README's Licenses section states 'These models are available under the MIT license' - a change from the earlier non-commercial Cambrian open licence. Larger checkpoints remain behind a hosted API; the open ones are the MIT-licensed download.
The licence read at the source allows use by a company. Attribution or copyleft conditions may still apply — read the note.
Commercial cost — is commercial use free of charge?
Free for commercial useFree for the open checkpoints under MIT. The vendor's hosted API for the larger models is a separate paid service you are not required to use.
Price and rights are separate: this panel is about money, the panel above is about permission.
- Commercial OK ≠ Free of charge. A tool can be licensed for company use and still need a paid licence for a dependency (BindCraft → PyRosetta).
- Free download ≠ Commercially licensed. Weights you can download at no cost may still forbid commercial use (AlphaFold 3).
- Unverified ≠ Commercially permitted. If no published statement settles it, treat it as unknown — not as a yes.
- Every component counts. Each status considers the code licence, the model-weights terms, required dependencies and any terms of use.
Model Weights
Open weights. A separate weights licence is Not documented as its own field; where weights carry different terms from the code, that is stated in the licence explanation above.
Dependencies
Not documented as a separate field. Any dependency that affects commercial use (for example a paid PyRosetta licence) is named in the licence and cost explanations above.
Official References
- Official site / repo
- github.com/evolutionaryscale/esm
From the makers of FoldScout
From AI Design to Wet-Lab Validation
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