Terms and Conditions

These Terms and Conditions govern your access to and use of Substrate, including the Substrate dashboard, databases, storage, realtime services, workflows, machines, AI services, developer tools and related features (the “Services”).

Substrate is a trading name used by the individual operating the Services. Until a company or other entity is formed, that individual is the contracting party and is personally responsible for Substrate’s obligations. In these Terms, “Substrate”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that operator. By creating an account or using the Services, you agree to these Terms.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract. If you use the Services for a company or another organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind it to these Terms.

In these Terms, a “Business User” is anyone using the Services wholly or mainly for trade, business, craft or professional purposes. A “Consumer” is an individual using the Services wholly or mainly for personal purposes. Clauses expressly applying to Business Users do not apply to Consumers.

You are responsible for your account, workspace members, end users, credentials, API keys and all activity performed through them, whether or not you authorised that activity. You must keep credentials secure, configure access controls appropriately, and tell us promptly if you believe an account or credential has been compromised.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Services in accordance with these Terms. Features may change as Substrate develops. Preview, beta and experimental features may be changed or withdrawn at any time and may be less reliable than generally available features.

Unless an order form or service-level agreement says otherwise, we do not guarantee that the Services will always be available, uninterrupted or error-free.

We may add, remove, limit, suspend or change features, integrations, providers, usage limits and technical requirements. We are not responsible for internet failures, infrastructure providers, model providers, payment providers, integrations or other third-party products and services. Your use of a third-party service is governed by your agreement with that third party.

You retain ownership of data, code, prompts, files and other material that you or your users submit to the Services (“Customer Data”). You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to host, copy, process, transmit, back up and otherwise use Customer Data only as needed to provide, secure and improve the Services and as described in these Terms.

You are responsible for Customer Data, including its legality, accuracy, integrity and your right to use it. You are also responsible for maintaining appropriate independent backups. We do not monitor, verify or endorse Customer Data.

You represent and warrant that Customer Data and your use of it do not violate law, contract, confidentiality, privacy, data-protection, intellectual-property or other rights; that you have obtained all required notices, permissions and lawful bases; and that your applications and end users comply with these Terms. You are solely responsible for responding to claims and requests concerning Customer Data and your applications.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Substrate is not responsible for Customer Data itself or for loss, corruption, disclosure or other harm caused by your content, configuration, instructions, credentials, integrations or failure to maintain backups. This allocation of responsibility is subject only to Clause 13 and rights that cannot legally be excluded.

Substrate is a technical service provider, not the publisher, owner, custodian, trustee, fiduciary or professional adviser for Customer Data. We have no duty to review, preserve, insure, recover or correct Customer Data, or to determine whether your use of it is lawful or appropriate.

If you use the Free plan, we may use Customer Data and information generated through your use of the Services—including prompts, outputs, usage data, diagnostics and logs—to operate and secure Substrate, understand usage, perform analytics, improve our products, and train or evaluate models owned by Substrate. This use is part of the Free plan and cannot be disabled while your account is not part of an eligible paid workspace.

Do not place Customer Data on the Free plan unless you have the rights and permissions needed for this use. Eligible paid workspaces may be given a setting to disable certain product-improvement uses. Essential operational, security, fraud-prevention and billing logs may still be collected and used where necessary.

You grant Substrate and its service providers a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to carry out those Free-plan uses. To the extent permitted by law, we may retain and continue using aggregated or de-identified analytics, evaluations, model weights and other learnings that do not identify you after Customer Data is deleted or your account ends.

AI features may send prompts, context and outputs to Substrate or third-party model providers. Models and providers may change. AI output can be incomplete, inaccurate, offensive or unsuitable, and must not be treated as professional advice.

You are responsible for reviewing AI output and for decisions, code, queries and actions based on it. You must not use the AI services for unlawful purposes or in a way that could make decisions about a person’s legal rights, health, safety, employment, credit or access to essential services without appropriate human review and all legally required safeguards.

AI output may not be unique, and another user may receive the same or similar output. Substrate does not represent that output is accurate, secure, non-infringing or fit for any purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you assume all risk arising from prompts, tool calls, generated code, queries, navigation, output and actions taken or omitted in reliance on an AI feature.

The Services and AI features are not designed as a substitute for independent controls in high-risk or safety-critical systems. You must not rely on them where a failure or incorrect output could cause death, personal injury, environmental harm, loss of essential services or substantial financial damage unless you implement appropriate independent testing, human review, fail-safes and recovery measures.

You must not use the Services to:

• break the law, infringe rights or process data without required permission;
• distribute malware, spam, abusive material or illegal content;
• attack, disrupt, probe or bypass the security or limits of any system;
• misrepresent identity or use credentials you are not authorised to use;
• facilitate exploitation, harassment, fraud or harm; or
• avoid sanctions, export controls, billing or usage restrictions.

We may investigate suspected misuse and remove or restrict access to content or Services where reasonably necessary to protect users, comply with law or enforce these Terms.

You are responsible for products, services and decisions you build on or connect to Substrate, including their end users, security, disclosures and legal compliance. We may preserve evidence, cooperate with authorities, notify affected parties, and suspend or terminate access without prior notice where we reasonably believe delay could create legal, security, financial or operational risk.

Paid plans may include subscription fees, usage-based charges or both. You authorise us and our payment provider to charge the payment method associated with your account. Fees are exclusive of taxes unless stated otherwise. You are responsible for applicable taxes, duties and similar charges.

Subscriptions renew automatically for the same billing period until cancelled. You may cancel through the available billing controls, and cancellation normally takes effect at the end of the current paid period. Payments and credits are non-refundable, non-transferable and have no cash value except where required by law or expressly stated otherwise.

We may change prices with reasonable advance notice. Usage records maintained by Substrate are the basis for usage billing unless you show that they contain a material error.

You must raise a billing dispute within 30 days after the relevant charge. You remain responsible for undisputed charges, collection costs and reasonable expenses caused by failed or reversed payments, to the extent permitted by law.

Substrate and its licensors retain all rights in the Services, software, documentation, branding and models, excluding Customer Data. These Terms do not give you ownership of Substrate intellectual property.

If you provide feedback, you allow us to use it without restriction or payment. Open source and third-party components remain subject to their own licences and terms.

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures intended to protect the Services, but no system is completely secure. Each party must protect the other party’s non-public confidential information and use it only for the relationship described by these Terms.

Security measures reduce but do not eliminate risk. We do not warrant that Customer Data cannot be accessed, altered, lost or disclosed. You are responsible for deciding what data to submit, encrypting sensitive data where appropriate, managing access, and maintaining business-continuity and disaster-recovery arrangements suitable for your use.

Our privacy disclosures describe how we handle personal data for our own purposes. Where Substrate processes personal data for you, additional data-processing terms may apply. You are responsible for determining whether the Services are suitable for your legal and regulatory requirements.

You may stop using the Services at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for non-payment, material breach, security risk, unlawful use or where required by law. Where practical, we will provide notice and an opportunity to resolve a remediable breach.

You should export Customer Data before closing an account or workspace. After termination, we may delete Customer Data and account material, subject to reasonable backup cycles and any retention required for security, billing, dispute resolution or law. Outstanding charges remain payable.

We do not guarantee a post-termination retrieval period or successful recovery of deleted Customer Data unless a separate written agreement expressly provides one. Clauses intended by their nature to continue—including payment, data-use rights, intellectual property, disclaimers, indemnities and liability limits—survive termination.

We will provide paid Services with reasonable care and skill. Except for promises expressly stated in these Terms or rights that cannot be excluded by law, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not promise that the Services will meet every requirement, prevent every loss or produce accurate AI output.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all implied warranties, conditions and representations, including merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, compatibility, security and results. Free, preview, beta and experimental Services are provided without any warranty, service commitment, support obligation or liability except where exclusion is prohibited by law.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any liability that cannot legally be limited.

For Business Users, and subject to the paragraph above, Substrate is not liable under any legal theory—including contract, tort, negligence, misrepresentation, restitution or breach of statutory duty—for any indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, punitive or consequential loss; loss or corruption of data; security incidents; unauthorised access; loss of profits, revenue, business, contracts, opportunity, goodwill, anticipated savings or reputation; business interruption; replacement-service costs; third-party claims; or losses caused by Customer Data, customer applications, end users, credentials, integrations, AI output or third-party services, whether direct or indirect and whether or not foreseeable.

For Business Users, Substrate’s total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Services and these Terms will not exceed the greater of £100 and the fees actually paid to Substrate for the affected Services during the six months before the first event giving rise to liability. All connected events are treated as one event. You must bring any claim within 12 months after you became aware, or reasonably should have become aware, of the event giving rise to it.

You must take reasonable steps to avoid and reduce loss. Substrate is not liable to the extent a loss was caused or increased by your act, omission, breach, delay, configuration, failure to follow documentation, or failure to maintain backups or security controls.

For Business Users, each exclusion and limitation in these Terms is separate and applies even if another remedy does not compensate a loss. You acknowledge that the charges and availability of the Services reflect this allocation of risk and that you are responsible for arranging any insurance appropriate to your use.

These exclusions and limits apply only to the fullest extent permitted by law. If you are a Consumer, they do not apply to the extent that they would exclude or restrict statutory rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted.

If you are a Business User, you will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Substrate, its operator, personnel, contractors and service providers from claims, proceedings, damages, losses, liabilities, penalties, fines and reasonable professional costs arising from or relating to Customer Data; your applications, products, end users or instructions; your breach of these Terms; alleged infringement or unlawful processing; your use of AI output; or your violation of law or third-party rights.

Substrate will give reasonable notice of a covered claim where practicable. You may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault by, imposes obligations on, or requires payment from Substrate without our written consent. This section does not apply to Consumers where prohibited by law and does not cover a claim to the extent finally determined to have been caused by Substrate’s fraud or wilful misconduct.

If you use the Services mainly for personal purposes, mandatory consumer protections in your country may apply. Nothing in these Terms removes those protections. Where law gives you a cooling-off or withdrawal right, you may exercise it within the applicable period. If you ask us to begin a paid service immediately, you may have to pay for the service already supplied and, where law permits, may lose the right to withdraw after full performance.

You must comply with applicable sanctions, export controls and local laws. You may not use or make the Services available where doing so would cause Substrate to break the law.

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. If you use the Services for business purposes, the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, you may also have the right to bring a claim in your home courts under mandatory local law.

We may update these Terms to reflect changes to the Services, law or our business. We will post the updated version and revise the effective date. If a change materially reduces your rights, we will provide reasonable notice where practical. Continued use after the change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

If part of these Terms is unenforceable, the remaining parts continue to apply. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them as part of a reorganisation, financing or transfer of the Services. An enterprise order form, data-processing agreement or service-level agreement prevails over these Terms where it expressly says so.

Substrate is not responsible for any failure or delay caused by events outside its reasonable control, including failures of hosting, cloud, model, network, utility, payment or other third-party providers; internet or telecommunications disruption; cyberattack; labour dispute; government action; natural disaster; epidemic; war; or civil disorder.

These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, employment, agency, fiduciary or advisory relationship. You have no authority to bind Substrate, and no person other than you and Substrate has a right to enforce these Terms. These Terms, together with any documents that expressly form part of them, are the entire agreement about the Services and replace prior discussions or representations about their subject matter.