Explainaloud

Terms of Service

Effective August 18, 2026.

These Terms are a binding agreement between you and Explainaloud (“Explainaloud”, “we”, “us”) covering your use of the Explainaloud website and service (the “Service”). By checking the acceptance box at signup, or by using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Our Privacy Policy explains what personal information we handle and is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

1. Who may use Explainaloud

You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of it.

You may not use the Service if you are barred from doing so under applicable law, or if we have previously terminated your account for breach of these Terms.

2. Your account

You are responsible for the credentials used to access your account and for everything done through it. Give us accurate information when you sign up, keep it current, and tell us promptly at hello@explainaloud.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

Accounts are personal to you. Do not share, sell, or transfer an account to anyone else.

You can sign in with your email address or your username. Either one, with your password. A username is not a secret and is not a second credential; your password is what protects the account, so use one you do not use anywhere else.

Your username and your date of birth are set once and cannot be changed afterwards. Your username is how other people find and recognise you, and your date of birth is what your eligibility for an account rests on. Choose both carefully at signup. If you need one corrected because of a genuine mistake, write to us at hello@explainaloud.com; we are not obliged to change either, and we will not do so to facilitate a transfer of the account.

We may refuse, reclaim, or remove a username that impersonates somebody, that suggests an official or staff account, that infringes a trademark, or that is abusive. If we reclaim one, we will tell you and you will be asked to choose another.

3. What the Service does, and what it does not

Explainaloud records you explaining a topic out loud, transcribes what you said, and uses automated systems, including third-party artificial intelligence models, to score the explanation and identify gaps in it.

Scores, feedback, and gap analysis are generated automatically and will sometimes be wrong. They are a study aid and nothing more. They are not an assessment of your ability, not a substitute for instruction from a qualified teacher, and not academic, medical, legal, financial, or professional advice. Do not rely on the Service as your only measure of whether you understand something.

Speech recognition accuracy varies with your microphone, your surroundings, your accent, and your speech patterns. We do not warrant that any transcript is accurate or complete.

You are responsible for complying with the rules of your school, university, or institution. Using a study tool may be restricted in some academic contexts, and that is between you and your institution.

4. Plans and pricing

The Service is currently free. There is no paid plan, no subscription, and nothing to cancel. We do not ask for a payment method and we do not charge you.

The free plan includes recordings of up to 3 minutes and a limited number of recordings and new topics per day. Current limits are shown on the pricing section of our home page and in your settings. We may change these limits, and we may introduce a paid plan in future. If we do, we will give you notice first, and we will never charge you without you separately agreeing to a price. Continuing to use the free plan will never itself become a payment obligation.

5. Your content

“Your Content” means the audio you record, the transcripts produced from it, the topics, notes, and source material you add, and anything else you submit to the Service.

You keep ownership of Your Content. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, process, transmit, and display Your Content, and to send it to the third-party processors described in our Privacy Policy, strictly for the purpose of operating and improving the Service for you. This licence exists so we can run the product; it ends when you delete the content or your account, except for backups pending deletion on our normal cycle.

We do not sell Your Content, and we do not use it to train our own or any third party’s AI models.

You are responsible for having the rights to whatever you submit. Do not upload material you do not have permission to use, and do not record another person’s voice without their consent. Some jurisdictions make that a criminal matter, not merely a breach of these Terms.

6. Usernames, friends, and what other people can see

Explainaloud has a friends feature. It works like this, and these are the only things it does.

  • Your username, your first and last name, and your profile picture can be found by other signed-in users. That is what makes it possible for somebody to add you. Treat all of it as public within the Service, and do not use a name or picture you would not want another user to see.
  • You have a profile page at /profiles/your-username, which any signed-in user can open. It carries your name, username, picture, the month you joined, and a button to send you a friend request. It is not public outside the Service: it requires an account, and it is not indexed by search engines. The two numbers below stay behind an accepted friendship.
  • A friendship needs both people to agree. One person sends a request and the other accepts it. Either of you can cancel, decline, or remove the friendship at any time, and either of you doing so ends the sharing below immediately.
  • An accepted friend can see exactly two things about you: how many topics you have created, and how many consecutive days you have recorded on. They cannot see your topics, your recordings, your transcripts, your scores, your gaps, your email address, or your date of birth. Nothing you have said is visible to anyone else.
  • Your streak is counted in your own timezone, which we store for that purpose. See our Privacy Policy.

Streaks are a study prompt, not an entitlement. We may correct or reset a streak that was produced by empty or automated recordings, and gaps caused by downtime, by a device with the wrong date, or by your own deletion of content are not something we restore.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • break the law, infringe anyone’s rights, or use the Service to harass, threaten, or harm anyone;
  • upload malware, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other accounts, or the systems behind them;
  • probe, scan, overload, or otherwise interfere with the Service or the infrastructure it runs on;
  • scrape the Service, or use bots or automated means to create accounts or generate activity;
  • choose a username that impersonates another person, a brand, or an Explainaloud staff or official account, or that is obscene, hateful, or targeted at somebody;
  • send friend requests at scale, or use the search and friends features to collect information about other users;
  • record silence, noise, or automated audio in order to build a streak;
  • circumvent usage limits, rate limits, paywalls, or plan restrictions, including by creating multiple accounts to do so;
  • resell, sublicense, or make the Service available to third parties as your own;
  • reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code or underlying models of the Service, except to the extent that restriction is unenforceable by law.

8. Availability and changes

The Service is provided on an evolving basis. We may add, change, or remove features, and we may impose or adjust usage limits. We may need to suspend the Service for maintenance or for reasons outside our control. We do not guarantee any level of uptime.

Some features depend on third-party providers. If one of them changes or becomes unavailable, the corresponding feature may change or stop working.

9. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use poses a risk to the Service or to other users. Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will give you notice first.

Sections 5, 10, 11, 12, and 13 survive termination.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that any score, transcript, or piece of feedback will be accurate.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. In those places, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and you may have rights that these Terms cannot take away.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Explainaloud will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue, goodwill, or academic or professional opportunity, arising out of or relating to your use of the Service, whether based in contract, tort, or any other theory, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$50.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Explainaloud from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party and arising from Your Content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.

13. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located there, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident in a jurisdiction whose law entitles you to bring proceedings locally, or grants you protections that cannot be waived by agreement, nothing here removes that right.

Before filing a claim, please contact us at hello@explainaloud.com. Most disputes can be resolved that way.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top. If a change is material (for example, one that reduces your rights or expands your obligations), we will give you reasonable notice by email or in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and delete your account.

15. General

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the unenforceable part is limited to the minimum extent necessary. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms: hello@explainaloud.com.

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