Can you legally sell worksheets you generate?

You found a worksheet generator. You made twenty pages of fraction practice in an afternoon. You are about to bundle them and list them for $4.

Stop for ten minutes and read the licence, because most worksheet sites forbid exactly that — and one of them names Teachers Pay Teachers specifically.

This is not a hypothetical risk. A takedown removes the listing, the reviews it earned, and the search ranking that took months to build. On a marketplace where ranking follows sales history, losing an established listing is worse than never having made it.

Here is what three of the best-known worksheet sites actually say. Every quote links to the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

K5 Learning: classroom yes, resale no

Permission is granted to view and to print in hard copy our worksheets for your personal non-commercial use and not for resale or further distribution.

And specifically for educators:

Teachers and tutors may print and use copies of worksheets for use in the classroom, home or tutoring center but not for resale or further distribution.

Anything else — including reproduction for other purposes, modification, distribution, or republication — needs K5's prior written permission.

Verdict: you cannot sell these.

Source: k5learning.com/terms-use

Math-Aids.com: names Teachers Pay Teachers explicitly

Math-Aids is generous about classroom use — “All content on Math-Aids.Com may be reproduced for classroom or personal use” — and then closes the door completely:

All of the work and materials on our site is not allowed to redistribute in any way, including commercially. (This includes any uses on Teachers Pay Teachers).

That parenthesis is worth noticing. It is not a grey area somebody forgot to address. Someone at Math-Aids thought about sellers specifically and wrote them out by name.

Verdict: you cannot sell these, and they have said so in as many words.

Source: math-aids.com/about_us.html

Super Teacher Worksheets: non-commercial, no revenue-generating use

Super Teacher Worksheets grants permission to download and print materials

for non-commercial uses that are not competitive with or derogatory to us, provided that you keep all copyright or other proprietary notices intact

Two further clauses rule out selling. The materials

may not be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means in whole or in part without our prior written permission

and users may not use the service

for any revenue-generating endeavor or commercial enterprise

Note also the requirement to keep proprietary notices intact — their branding stays on the page.

Verdict: non-commercial only, selling explicitly prohibited.

Source: superteacherworksheets.com/terms-of-use.html

What to look for in any licence

Four questions, in the order they catch people out:

• Does it say “non-commercial”? That single word ends the conversation.
• Does the permission survive cancellation? Some licences are granted only while you are an active subscriber. Stop paying and the permission you relied on goes with it — and anything you already sold becomes a problem you cannot fix retroactively.
• Does it name marketplaces? Some terms permit distribution broadly but exclude resale platforms specifically.
• Must you keep their branding? A copyright notice you are contractually required to leave intact is someone else's name on the product you are selling.

If a licence is silent on resale, silence is not permission. Ask in writing and keep the reply.

And check the company you think you are checking. While researching this piece we nearly cited the terms of a similarly-named mobile app company instead of the worksheet site. The names are close enough that it is an easy mistake, and the licences were quite different.

Where Mathter stands

We built Mathter, so weigh this section accordingly — but our terms are public and take about a minute to read in full.

Our licence says the worksheets you generate are yours to use, including printing, sharing with students, and selling the finished printable packs. What you may not do is resell or redistribute access to the application itself. Generate all the packs you like and sell them; just do not resell the generator.

On question 2 above:

This licence is permanent for packs you have already generated. Downgrading your plan or cancelling your subscription does not revoke your right to keep using or selling them.

On question 4: packs made on the free and Standard plans carry a small “Mathter.ca” footer credit, and we ask that you leave it in place. The Premium plan replaces that credit with your own shop, school, or program name — so what you sell carries your brand, not ours.

One more thing that matters if you are selling rather than teaching: every problem and answer key is produced by deterministic code, not a language model. The answer keys are correct. A wrong answer key in a pack somebody paid for is the review that ends a shop.

Source: Read Mathter's full terms