# FastReport Open Source: A .NET Reporting Engine That Ships Without the Visual Designer > FastReport Open Source is an MIT-licensed band-oriented report generator for .NET 6, .NET Core and .NET Framework. It gives you the runtime and the template format for free, but the editor that most people expect comes as a separate Windows download. **FastReports/FastReport** — Free Open Source Reporting tool for .NET6/.NET Core/.NET Framework that helps your application generate document-like reports - Repository: https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport - Website: https://www.fast-report.com - Stars: 3,094 · Forks: 678 - Language: C# - License: MIT - Published: 2026-09-24 · Updated: 2026-09-24 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/fastreports-fastreport ## The gap FastReport Open Source fills for .NET teams Report generation in .NET tends to split into two unsatisfying options. You can hand-build documents with a low-level library and manage pagination, grouping and page headers yourself, or you can buy a commercial reporting suite and accept its licensing. FastReport Open Source sits in between: it is the runtime half of a commercial reporting product, released under MIT and aimed at MVC, Web API and console applications. The README describes it as a free open source report generator for .NET 6, .NET Core and .NET Framework, compatible with .NET Standard 2.0 and higher. The audience is narrower than the phrase "reporting tool" suggests. This is for developers who want to define a report once and render it from application data, not for analysts who want to drag fields onto a canvas and publish a dashboard. The engine is band-oriented, and the README lists 13 band types: Report Title, Report Summary, Page Header, Page Footer, Column Header, Column Footer, Data Header, Data, Data Footer, Group Header, Group Footer, Child and Overlay. Sub-reports are supported as well. If your mental model of a report is a sequence of sections that repeat and break across pages, the model matches. If it is a pivot grid you want to explore interactively, it does not. ## Bands, data sources and a scripting engine inside the report A FastReport template is a document tree, not a view. The README states that report templates can be created from code, developed as an XML file, built with the FastReport Online Designer, or edited in the FastReport Designer Community Edition. That XML file is the artifact you version-control, and the runtime turns it plus a data source into a rendered document. Data can arrive from several places. The README lists XML, CSV, Json, MS SQL, MySql, Oracle, Postgres, MongoDB, Couchbase, RavenDB and SQLite, plus any business object of IEnumerable type. A report can also carry its own data sources: tables, queries and DB connections defined inside the template, so a report can connect to a database and run queries directly rather than waiting for the host application to hand it a dataset. That is a real architectural choice with consequences. It makes a template portable and self-contained, and it also means a template can contain connection details and SQL that your application code never sees. The part that surprises people coming from simpler generators is the scripting engine. FastReport embeds a script engine supporting C# and VB.NET, so report logic can do data handling at render time. The README frames this as using "all of the .NET power in your reports." Treat that as a capability and a boundary at once: business logic that lives in a report template is logic that your unit tests do not cover unless you write tests against the report itself. ## Installing FastReport Open Source and rendering a first report The README gives two routes. You can compile the repository yourself, or you can install from NuGet. The NuGet route is the one most applications will take, and the README names two packages. ```bash Install-Package FastReport.OpenSource Install-Package FastReport.OpenSource.Web ``` The first package is the core engine. The second is the web integration layer, which is what you want for MVC or Web API hosting. Note that the README does not document a rollback or uninstall procedure for either package, so dependency removal is standard NuGet behaviour rather than something the project describes. If you prefer to build from source, the README requires the .NET 5 SDK and gives platform-specific scripts. On Windows: ```bash git clone https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport.git cd FastReport pack.bat ``` On Linux the same sequence uses the shell script, and the README notes the permission step explicitly: ```bash git clone https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport.git cd FastReport chmod 777 pack.sh && ./pack.sh ``` According to the README, the resulting package lands in the `fr_packages` directory. For a first real use, the shortest path to a working document is the console PDF export demo the README links under `Demos/OpenSource/Console apps/PdfExport`. That demo is the concrete starting point: it shows the PdfSimple export plugin in use, and the README points at the plugin's own folder under `Extras/OpenSource/FastReport.OpenSource.Export.PdfSimple` for the source. Open the demo, run it, and you have a rendered PDF before you have written a single band. ## The PDF export is a plugin, and the full-featured one is not here This is the limitation that decides adoption more often than anything else in the README. FastReport Open Source can save documents in HTML, BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and EMF directly. PDF is not in that list. PDF export is available as a plugin, `FastReport.OpenSource.Export.PdfSimple`, and the README is blunt about what it is: simple export in PDF format. The README then states the boundary in plain terms. If that export is not enough and you need a full-featured PDF export with encryption, digital signing and font embedding, it directs you to FastReport .NET Core, the commercial product. So the honest reading is that the open source path covers document generation and raster or HTML output well, and covers PDF at a basic level. If your requirement is signed, encrypted PDFs with embedded fonts, the open source edition is the wrong tool and the README says so rather than leaving you to discover it. A second boundary sits in the designer. The FastReport Designer Community Edition is a freeware Windows program distributed through the releases page. The README states that its source code is not supplied because the editor is part of the commercial FastReport .NET product, that publishing it is an act of goodwill, and that the MIT license does not cover the editor's source code. So the MIT grant applies to the engine in this repository, not to the tool you will most likely use to author templates. That distinction matters if your organisation's policy is built around permissive licensing of everything in the toolchain. ## FastReport Open Source compared with JasperReports and Crystal Reports The comparison people search for most is against JasperReports, and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic. JasperReports is a Java library with its own template format and a separate visual designer, Jaspersoft Studio, and it runs on the JVM. FastReport Open Source is C# targeting .NET Standard 2.0 and higher, so the choice is usually already made by your runtime. Where the two differ inside a .NET shop is the scripting story: FastReport embeds a C# and VB.NET script engine in the report, while a JVM reporting engine would not give you that in a .NET process. Against Crystal Reports the split is licensing and lifecycle. Crystal Reports is a commercial product with a long history in .NET applications, and FastReport Open Source is the MIT-licensed runtime of a commercial suite. The practical difference is that you get the engine, the template XML and the export plugins in source form here, and you get the designer as a freeware binary whose source is withheld. ReportBuilder, meanwhile, is the closest thing to a philosophical match: the README includes an `Extras/ReportBuilder` module described as a simple report builder from code without using templates. If you would rather construct reports programmatically and skip the XML template format entirely, that module is the FastReport answer, and it is worth reading before you commit to template-based authoring. ## Maintenance, licence and what an upgrade actually costs The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-09-11. Releases are not frequent: v2026.2.0 was published on 2026-04-07, preceded by v2026.1.0 on 2025-10-13 and v2025.2.0 on 2025-04-07. That is roughly two releases a year, which is a cadence to plan around rather than a stream of patches. The CHANGELOG.md at the repository root is where release-level changes are recorded, and it is the file to read before moving a production application between versions. Upgrade cost has two components. The NuGet packages, `FastReport.OpenSource` and `FastReport.OpenSource.Web`, move together, so a version bump touches both. The second component is the template format. Because templates are XML files that can embed data sources, queries and C# or VB.NET scripts, a change in the engine can interact with a template in ways a package restore will not reveal. The Demos folder is the practical regression surface: running the demo projects after an upgrade exercises rendering and export paths that your own application may use. On licensing, the repository is MIT and the LICENSE.md file is at the root. The README's caveat is specific and worth repeating: the MIT license does not cover the source code of the Designer Community Edition, which is withheld because it belongs to the commercial product. The engine is permissive; the editor is freeware. Whether that combination satisfies your legal review is a question for your legal review, not for this article. ## Conclusion Adopt FastReport Open Source if you need a band-oriented report engine inside a .NET application and you are willing to author templates either in the free Windows Designer Community Edition or as XML. Do not adopt it expecting the full commercial PDF pipeline: encryption, digital signing and font embedding are the parts the README points at FastReport .NET Core for. Before committing, compile the solution with pack.sh or pack.bat and open one of the Demos projects, then confirm that the PdfSimple plugin produces the layout your report actually needs. ## FAQ ### How do I install FastReport Open Source? The README gives two routes: install the FastReport.OpenSource and FastReport.OpenSource.Web NuGet packages, or clone the repository and run pack.bat on Windows or chmod 777 pack.sh && ./pack.sh on Linux, which places the package in the fr_packages directory. ### How do I use FastReport in C#? You add the NuGet packages to your project, author a report template either from code, as XML, or in the Designer Community Edition, and render it from your application data. The README points at the Demos folder for examples, including a console app that demonstrates PDF export. ### Is FastReport free? The FastReport Open Source engine in this repository is MIT licensed, with LICENSE.md at the root. The README notes that the MIT license does not cover the source code of the FastReport Designer Community Edition, which is freeware and whose source is withheld because it belongs to the commercial FastReport .NET product. ### What is FastReport .NET? FastReport .NET is the commercial product that the open source edition is derived from. The README directs users to it when they need full-featured PDF export with encryption, digital signing and font embedding, which the open source PdfSimple plugin does not provide. ### FastReport vs Crystal Reports: what is the difference? Crystal Reports is a commercial reporting product, while FastReport Open Source is the MIT-licensed runtime of a commercial suite, released in source form for .NET Standard 2.0 and higher. The README does not compare the two directly, and the designer for FastReport ships as a separate freeware Windows download rather than as source. ## Sources - [FastReports/FastReport on GitHub](https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport/blob/master/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://www.fast-report.com) - [README](https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/FastReports/FastReport/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/fastreports-fastreport