A master services agreement is the umbrella contract two businesses sign once, before any project exists, to govern every engagement they do together afterward. It deliberately leaves out scope of work and fees — those are added later in a separate, incorporated Statement of Work for each project. Download the ready-to-fill template below, or read the full clause checklist first.
A complete, ready-to-fill PDF — 13 clauses, blanks for every detail, and a signature block for both parties. Free, no email, no account. Read it and adapt it before you use it; the cover page explains what it can and cannot do for you.
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This document is a general-purpose template provided for information only. It is not legal advice, it does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and nobody has reviewed it against your situation.
Laws differ by country, state and province, and they change. A clause that is standard in one place can be unenforceable — or illegal — in another. Terms that are ordinary between two businesses can be void in a consumer or employment context.
Read every clause before you use it, fill in every blank, and delete anything that does not apply. For anything high-value, unusual, or that you could not afford to lose a dispute over, have a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction review it before it is signed.
Client & provider names
Full legal names and addresses of both parties. This is the entity that will sign every future Statement of Work under the same agreement.
How Statements of Work attach
The mechanism that lets the parties add a new project without rewriting the contract — each SOW references this Agreement and becomes part of it once both sides sign.
What the SOW controls vs. what the MSA controls
Scope, deliverables, and fees live in the SOW. Everything else — liability, confidentiality, IP defaults, termination — lives in the MSA and applies to every SOW automatically.
No scope or fees in the MSA itself
A master services agreement is deliberately silent on what work gets done or what it costs. If your document names a specific project or a dollar amount, it is a service agreement, not an MSA — use a single-engagement template instead.
Default IP ownership
Who owns deliverables created under a SOW, and on what trigger (typically payment in full) — stated once, so it does not need to be renegotiated on every project.
Confidentiality
What each party may not disclose or use outside the relationship, and how long that obligation lasts once the relationship (or a given SOW) ends.
Insurance requirements
Coverage the provider must carry throughout the relationship — general liability, professional liability, and anything specific to the work, stated once rather than per project.
Liability cap
A limit on what either party owes if something goes wrong, usually tied to fees paid under the specific SOW in dispute rather than the whole relationship.
Termination of the MSA vs. a single SOW
How the overall relationship ends, and what happens to a project already underway — does it wind down with the MSA, or run to completion under its own terms?
Governing law
Which jurisdiction’s law applies to the relationship and to every SOW signed under it.
Signatures & date
Both parties sign the MSA once. Individual SOWs are then signed as they come up, without re-signing the underlying terms.
That absence is intentional, not an oversight. This document is built to be signed once and reused across every future engagement between the same two parties. The template says so explicitly, rather than leaving a reader to wonder why a “services agreement” never describes any services: clause 2 states in plain terms that scope, deliverables, and fees are deferred entirely to the Statements of Work signed under it, and that no work or payment obligation exists until one of those is signed.
Everything else — IP defaults, confidentiality, insurance, liability caps, termination, governing law — is set once here and applies automatically to every SOW, so the parties never have to relitigate those terms for a new project. When you are ready to start actual work, pair this MSA with a Statement of Work that names this Agreement and carries only the scope, schedule, and price.
Fill in the template above, then send it to the other party for signature with a free Evenseal account — 3 documents a month, no card required. They sign online and never need an account, and the finished file comes back sealed with an audit certificate showing who signed, when, and from where.
Only you need to sign your own copy? Use the free self-sign tool instead — no account needed.
Not legal advice — for high-value or long-running relationships, have a local attorney review your agreement before it's signed.