diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index b2df68f..7603a1d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -14,7 +14,6 @@ authors = [{name = "Revenue Holdings"}]
 dependencies = [
     "typer>=0.9.0",
     "rich>=13.0.0",
-    "revenueholdings-license>=0.1.0",
 ]
 
 [project.urls]
@@ -25,6 +24,7 @@ Documentation = "https://github.com/Coding-Dev-Tools/json2sql#readme"
 
 [project.optional-dependencies]
 dev = ["pytest>=7.0", "pytest-cov"]
+license = ["revenueholdings-license>=0.1.0"]
 
 [project.scripts]
 json2sql = "json2sql.cli:app"
diff --git a/src/json2sql/cli.py b/src/json2sql/cli.py
index 7270a56..ec5e8b9 100644
--- a/src/json2sql/cli.py
+++ b/src/json2sql/cli.py
@@ -6,7 +6,13 @@
 
 import typer
 
-from revenueholdings_license import require_license
+try:
+    from revenueholdings_license import require_license
+except ImportError:
+    import warnings
+    warnings.warn("revenueholdings-license not installed; license checks skipped", stacklevel=2)
+    def require_license(product: str) -> None:  # type: ignore[misc]
+        pass
 
 from .converter import JSONToSQLConverter
 from .dialects import Dialect