Can I use Carbon code images freely, and what should I know about terms and privacy?

Carbon (carbon.now.sh) is a tool for turning source code into shareable images, and its own page points you to about, source, terms, and privacy links for the details that govern use. In practice, that means the images themselves are yours to share, but you should read the terms and privacy pages before relying on Carbon for anything sensitive, and you should treat every exported image as public the moment you post it. Carbon is not a code host or version-control service, so it offers no repository privacy, access control, or history.

What Carbon actually does

Carbon's stated purpose is narrow: "Create and share beautiful images of your source code." The page describes the workflow directly — start typing or drop a file into the text area to get started. From there you adjust presentation with Theme, Language, Background, and Settings menus, then use Copy, Tweet, Share, or Quick export / Export to get the result out.

That scope matters for the terms question. Because Carbon renders an image rather than storing a project, there is no account-level code storage to reason about. What you paste in is what gets rendered, and what you export is a static image file.

Can you use the images freely?

The page itself does not state a license for exported images in the material available, so the safe reading is:

• The image is a rendering of code you supplied. If you wrote the code, you already hold whatever rights you have in it.
• If the code is not yours, the image does not change that. Pasting third-party or employer-owned code into Carbon and exporting it does not grant you a license to redistribute it.
• Check the terms page for any conditions Carbon places on use of the tool or its output. The site exposes a terms link precisely so users can review this rather than assume.

So "freely" is conditional: freely for code you have the right to share, subject to whatever the terms page says, and not a workaround for code you do not have rights to.

Privacy: the part that actually bites

The privacy consideration is less about Carbon's data handling and more about what you put into the text area.

Carbon renders exactly what you paste. There is no automatic redaction, no secret scanning, and no warning before export. Common leaks in code screenshots include:

The privacy page is the place to check how Carbon handles what you submit. Independently of that, the practical rule is: assume anything you export can be read by anyone, because a shared image is trivially copied, re-posted, and OCR'd.

Before you export: a short checklist

1. Open the terms and privacy links on the Carbon page and read them — they are the authoritative source, not this summary.
2. Strip secrets, credentials, internal hostnames, and personal data from the snippet before pasting.
3. Confirm you have the right to share the code at all, especially if it is proprietary or under an employer's policy.
4. Render and export, then re-read the image itself at full size — truncation and line wrapping can hide or expose lines you did not intend.
5. If the snippet is still sensitive after editing, do not export it. Use a synthetic example instead.

What Carbon is not

Carbon does not host code, manage versions, or provide private sharing. It generates an image and gives you export and share actions. If you need access control, revision history, or a private link, Carbon is the wrong tool — and no setting inside it will give you those properties.

Bottom line

You can use Carbon images freely for code you have the right to share, but the tool's own page directs you to its terms and privacy pages for the governing conditions, and neither the tool nor its export flow protects sensitive content. Read those two pages, sanitize the snippet before pasting, and treat every exported image as public.