Starting with version 3.7, POV-Ray is released under the AGPL3 (or later) license and thus is Free Software according to the FSF definition.

"Free software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them.

Full source code is available, allowing users to build their own versions and for developers to incorporate portions or all of the POV-Ray source into their own software provided it is distributed under a compatible license (for example, the AGPL3 or - at their option - any later version). The POV-Ray developers also provide officially-supported binaries for selected platforms (currently only Microsoft Windows, but expected to include OS X shortly).

POV-Ray 3.7.0 (released 6 November 2013) is the current official version for all platforms. There are significant internal changes in this version due to the introduction of SMP support. A comprehensive change list is available for those interested in the full details, as well as the changelog. A summarized list of changes is available via our documentation and is important reading for anyone familiar with prior versions of POV-Ray.

POV-Ray for Windows requires Windows XP or later, and has been tested on versions up to and including Windows 8. We recommend having at least 100mb or so of free disk space (for temporary file storage during renders) and at least 1GB of available memory, though less is OK if you are not doing complicated scenes. Since the POV-Ray for Windows distribution package includes both the 32 and 64-bit binaries, the setup file determines which one to provide as the main program link (all versions are installed). Full documentation and sample scene files are also included.

Download Windows Installer

Sysadmins/Lab Techs: If you wish to use POVWIN in a multi-user environment and/or do a non-standard install, please see the non-standard installations section in our documentation.

Reviewers: if you will be using POV-Ray to benchmark CPU's, please read our benchmarking with POV-Ray page for information that you need to know.

Users of platforms that do not have official binaries will probably need to build their own version from the source (though it is expected that many Unix-like systems that have package managers or a ports system will provide a single-line means of installing a binary or fetching/building from source). Developers for all platforms who want to take a look at the source code, make a modification or port it to a new platform should also choose to download the sources. The source code, documentation and example scene files for all platforms can be obtained from our github repository. Where possible we will attempt to assist with build problems via our support forums.

We have preserved the download page for version 3.6 if you wish to access that version. Please refer to our old version tree. for older versions of POV-Ray or for versions of platforms for which official support has been discontinued. All official releases of POV-Ray since v1.0 (released in 1992) are available there.

These files are also available at our FTP site, ftp.povray.org, which is accessible using anonymous FTP with any standard FTP program (you may also explore the entire FTP site in your browser without needing an FTP program).