Terms of Service

1. Provider, Agreement, and Scope

ResearchCast is operated by ResearchCast GmbH, Angerstrasse 12, 85354 Freising, Germany ("ResearchCast", "we", "us", or "our"). These Terms govern your access to and use of the ResearchCast website, web application, paper-discovery and generation features, Research Profiles, ResearchCasts, audio playback, playlists, publishing and sharing features, paid plans, credit packs, reports, and related services (the "Service").

These Terms are the supplier agreement governing use of the Service. If you purchase through Paddle, you also enter into Paddle's buyer agreement for the transaction. Section 13 explains how those agreements work together.

You accept these Terms when you affirmatively agree to them during signup or checkout. The Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy explain data processing and are notices rather than contractual consent to optional processing. Mandatory rights that cannot lawfully be excluded remain unaffected.

These Terms apply to new users who accept them on or after August 4, 2026. For an account created earlier, materially adverse changes take effect on September 3, 2026, or when the account holder expressly accepts them, whichever occurs first, subject to mandatory law and the notice rules in Section 25.

2. Definitions and User Categories

• "User Content" means files, links, prompts, instructions, profile definitions, playlist names and descriptions, feedback, metadata, and other material you submit or direct us to process.
• "Output" means scripts, summaries, audio, voices, titles, tags, recommendations, metadata, and other material generated or assembled by the Service.
• "Private Output" means Output generated specifically from a private user upload and made available only through the requesting account unless the Service expressly states otherwise.
• "Public-Source Output" means Output derived from public or licensed scholarly sources, official APIs, public metadata, or other sources that the Service may process once and reuse for more than one user.
• A "Consumer" is a natural person acting mainly outside their trade, business, craft, or profession. A "Business User" uses the Service for a trade, business, profession, employer, university, or other organisation.
• A separate written order, team agreement, enterprise agreement, or data processing agreement controls to the extent it expressly conflicts with these Terms.

3. Eligibility, Authority, and Accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old. ResearchCast is not offered to minors.
• You must provide accurate and complete account and billing information and keep it current.
• Your account is personal to you. Do not share credentials, make the account available to another person, or allow another person to impersonate you.
• You must use reasonable care to protect credentials and promptly tell us at the contact in Section 27 if you suspect unauthorised access. Subject to mandatory law, you are responsible for activity you authorise or that results from your failure to use reasonable care.
• If you use the Service for another person or organisation, you represent that you have authority to accept these Terms and provide User Content on their behalf.
• You can delete your account from settings. Deletion may not remove records we must keep for tax, accounting, security, legal defence, dispute handling, consumer-law, or other legal reasons.

4. Right to Use the Service and ResearchCast IP

Subject to these Terms, ResearchCast grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to access and use the Service for your personal or internal research and business purposes during the term of your account.

ResearchCast and its licensors retain all rights in the Service and its software, interfaces, design, databases, documentation, branding, trademarks, system prompts, workflows, and other technology or materials, excluding User Content and rights expressly granted in Output. Open-source components remain subject to their applicable licences.

5. User Content and Source Rights

As between you and ResearchCast, you retain your rights in User Content. You are responsible for User Content and for deciding whether it may lawfully be submitted, processed, stored, generated from, played, published, or shared.

You represent that you have the rights, licences, permissions, consents, and lawful basis needed for ResearchCast and its providers to process User Content as requested. Do not submit infringing, unlawful, paywalled, access-controlled, technically restricted, personal, confidential, or sensitive material unless you are authorised to do so and provider processing is permitted.

• Remote third-party PDF ingestion is blocked unless the source is allowlisted or passes the source-compliance controls configured for the Service.
• arXiv and other official APIs may be used where permitted by their access terms and technical controls.
• We may refuse, remove, or restrict content where rights, licensing, source terms, platform rules, text-and-data-mining reservations, robots rules, or abuse controls require it.
• ResearchCast does not grant you rights in a paper, abstract, dataset, metadata record, voice, image, or other third-party material merely because the Service can access or generate from it.

6. Licences to Operate and Share

You grant ResearchCast and its contracted service providers a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy, parse, analyse, transform, generate from, store, transcode, stream, display, and otherwise process User Content only as needed to provide, maintain, secure, troubleshoot, support, and enforce the Service; comply with law; and prevent fraud or abuse.

ResearchCast does not use private uploaded content to train ResearchCast generative models. We may use de-identified operational measurements that do not reproduce or identify User Content to understand reliability, safety, and product performance, as described in the Privacy Policy.

When you deliberately publish or share User Content, you additionally grant ResearchCast a non-exclusive licence to display, reproduce, distribute, and make that shared material available to the audience you selected. This sharing licence ends when you unpublish or delete the material, except that copies already imported by another user, collaborative content, cached copies, backups, legal records, and integrity records may remain where the product disclosed that result or law permits it.

The operational licence ends when the relevant content is deleted from the Service, except where continued retention is required for backups, legal obligations, disputes, billing, security, abuse prevention, or service integrity.

7. Output Rights and Restrictions

For Private Output, as between you and ResearchCast and to the extent transferable rights exist, you own newly created elements of that Output and ResearchCast assigns to you any rights it may have in those elements. This does not transfer rights in source material, third-party content, provider technology, or ResearchCast service technology.

Public-Source Output may be a canonical artifact generated once and reused for multiple users. ResearchCast retains any rights it has in the production elements of Public-Source Output and grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide right to access and use it through the Service and for personal or internal research. Public redistribution, commercial exploitation, re-hosting, or resale is permitted only where the Service expressly enables it and the source rights and applicable law allow it.

Output may not be unique. Other users may receive similar or identical Output, and no right granted to you extends to another user's private content or to third-party material.

• Preserve required source attribution, copyright notices, and AI-generated labels when using or sharing Output.
• Do not imply that an author, publisher, source provider, voice owner, or ResearchCast endorses Output unless they have expressly done so.
• Direct public sharing of generated audio may be restricted even when a playlist or source link can be published.

8. AI-Generated Output and Human Review

• ResearchCasts, scripts, summaries, voices, tags, titles, and metadata may be generated or assisted by AI.
• Output can be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, offensive, misleading, or non-verbatim and may omit nuance, misstate a paper, invent or misformat a citation, or mispronounce technical terms.
• Output is for research awareness and convenience and must not be treated as the sole source of truth.
• Outputs are not legal, medical, financial, academic, or professional advice.
• You must evaluate Output for accuracy, appropriateness, source fidelity, and rights compliance, using qualified human review where appropriate, before relying on, publishing, or redistributing it.
• Do not represent AI-generated Output as wholly human-generated or remove a required disclosure that it was generated or manipulated by AI.
• Do not use Output about a person as the sole or decisive basis for a legal or similarly significant decision concerning education, employment, health, credit, insurance, housing, or another high-impact matter.

9. Private Uploads and Confidential Material

The Service keeps uploaded PDFs and upload-derived Output private to the requesting account unless a feature expressly states otherwise. Those materials are still processed by the providers identified in the Privacy Policy and Subprocessor list.

Unless a separate written business agreement says otherwise, the Service is not a legal-privilege repository or a substitute for a negotiated confidentiality agreement. Do not submit trade secrets, unpublished material governed by a confidentiality restriction, regulated health data, government-classified information, export-controlled technical data, or third-party confidential information unless you are authorised to use the configured providers for that processing and the Service is suitable for it.

10. Acceptable Use

• Do not use the Service or any content for unlawful, fraudulent, infringing, deceptive, defamatory, harassing, hateful, threatening, violent, exploitative, or abusive activity.
• Do not bypass paywalls, access controls, rate limits, source restrictions, text-and-data-mining reservations, copyright notices, safety measures, or other technical protections.
• Do not upload malware, disrupt the Service, probe or test security without written authorisation, or attempt to access another account, private content, or non-public system.
• Do not scrape, crawl, mass-download, systematically extract, or use automated means to access the Service or Output except through a feature or API that ResearchCast expressly provides for that purpose.
• Do not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, discover source code or underlying system components, or create derivative services from the Service, except to the limited extent applicable law does not permit that restriction.
• Do not share or sell accounts, credits, access tokens, or rate-limit capacity; manipulate billing or generation accounting; submit fraudulent chargebacks; or misuse reporting and appeal processes.
• Do not impersonate another person, clone or misleadingly simulate a person's voice or identity, create deceptive synthetic media, or falsely present Output as human-authored.
• Do not submit personal data, health data, confidential data, or other sensitive third-party data unless you have a lawful basis, provider processing is permitted, and the data is necessary for your use.
• Do not resell, re-host, mass-download, publicly perform, or redistribute generated audio or other Output unless the Service, the source licence, and applicable law permit it.
• Do not remove source attribution, proprietary notices, safety information, or AI disclosures required by the Service or law.

11. Third-Party Sources and Services

The Service relies on or links to third-party scholarly sources, metadata services, model and text-to-speech providers, authentication providers, payment services, and other services. Their content and services may be subject to separate terms and licences and may change, become unavailable, or contain errors.

A link, citation, search result, or integration does not imply endorsement or affiliation. ResearchCast is not responsible for third-party content or services to the extent permitted by law, but this does not limit duties ResearchCast cannot lawfully exclude.

12. Feedback and Reviews

If you voluntarily provide product feedback or suggestions, you grant ResearchCast a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use and incorporate them to operate and improve the Service without compensation. This does not transfer ownership of a public consumer review or restrict your right to give an honest review, report unlawful conduct, or exercise a legal right.

13. Plans, Paddle Transactions, Subscriptions, Usage Limits, and Credit Packs

Paddle is the authorised reseller and merchant of record for paid products. You purchase the paid product from Paddle under the buyer terms shown at checkout; ResearchCast makes the Service available under these Terms. Paddle handles payment collection, applicable taxes, invoices, subscription billing, transaction refunds, and payment-method requirements. ResearchCast remains responsible for the product obligations it undertakes in these Terms and for mandatory duties that cannot be delegated.

Subscriptions renew automatically for the selected billing interval until canceled in the billing portal.

One-time credit packs expire 12 months after purchase unless law requires longer.

• The plan, features, limits, billing interval, total price, recurring price, and applicable taxes are shown before purchase. Subscription fees are charged in advance for the selected monthly or yearly interval.
• Each subscription plan includes the usage limits shown at checkout and in the account, including a monthly allowance for new ResearchCast generations and, where applicable, a limit on active Research Profiles. The monthly generation allowance resets according to the schedule shown in the account. Unused allowance does not carry over to the next usage period. Annual billing does not change the monthly reset schedule unless expressly stated at purchase.
• Credit packs are one-time purchases. Credits are non-transferable, have no cash value, cannot be redeemed for money, and are consumed in the order implemented and disclosed by the Service. Purchased credit packs expire 12 months after purchase unless mandatory law requires otherwise.
• A generation request is normally counted against the applicable monthly generation allowance or deducted from an available extra credit when it starts. If a qualifying generation job ends in a terminal failure, the Service restores the allowance unit or extra credit that was used; no duplicate restoration is issued for the same request.
• When a subscription ends, access to its plan-specific features and usage limits ends as well. An unused subscription allowance is not a transferable balance and is not paid out in cash. Separately purchased credits remain governed by the terms of their purchase. If payment fails or a subscription becomes past due, paused, cancelled, or otherwise inactive, we may suspend paid benefits or downgrade the account in line with the billing status, after any notice or opportunity to cure required by law.
• If a subscription price increases, we or Paddle will give any advance notice required by law and, where ResearchCast controls the change, at least 30 days' advance notice before the increase applies at renewal. You may cancel before the higher price takes effect.
• Refunds are provided where required by law, Paddle's buyer terms or refund policy, an express product promise, or our discretion. Refunds for Paddle transactions are issued through Paddle rather than directly by ResearchCast.

14. Consumer Withdrawal and Digital Product Rights

If you are a Consumer in the EEA, UK, or another jurisdiction with mandatory withdrawal rights, you may have a right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days. The precise consequence of requesting immediate performance depends on whether the purchase is legally classified as a service, digital service, or non-tangible digital content.

For a service, beginning performance during the withdrawal period does not by itself necessarily end the withdrawal right; you may owe a proportionate amount for performance supplied before withdrawal where law permits, and the right generally expires only after complete performance under the legally required consent and acknowledgement. For non-tangible digital content, the right may expire when performance begins if you expressly consent, acknowledge the consequence, and receive the required confirmation.

The purchase-specific checkout acknowledgement and Withdrawal Instructions explain how to exercise the right. A withdrawal or refund concerning a Paddle transaction may be submitted through Paddle or to the ResearchCast contact in Section 27; we will coordinate a notice received by us with Paddle where needed.

ResearchCast treats subscriptions and credit packs used for future generation requests as access to a digital service for this checkout process. We do not rely on the early-expiry rule for one-off digital content merely because subscription access or credits are made available. If we later sell separately identified non-tangible digital content, its checkout will describe that classification and request the legally required separate consent and acknowledgement.

Nothing in these Terms excludes mandatory rights concerning supply, conformity, functionality, compatibility, accessibility, security updates, cure, price reduction, termination, refunds, damages, or other remedies for digital products and services.

15. Subscription Cancellation

You can cancel a subscription through account billing settings, the Paddle buyer portal, the cancellation method in the purchase confirmation, or another method required by law. For covered German consumer contracts, the continuously and directly accessible “Verträge hier kündigen” flow at /cancel-subscription accepts ordinary and extraordinary cancellation declarations and provides an immediate downloadable and electronic receipt.

Ordinary cancellation stops the next renewal. Paid access normally continues until the end of the current paid period, and cancellation does not automatically produce a prorated refund, delete your account, or delete content, unless mandatory law or the purchase terms provide otherwise.

16. Service Standard, Availability, and Beta Features

We provide the Service with reasonable skill and care and professional diligence. Consumers also receive the mandatory legal guarantee and conformity rights applicable to digital services in their country.

• We do not promise uninterrupted availability, a particular generation speed, complete source coverage, continued third-party availability, or error-free Output.
• Maintenance, incidents, provider outages, source restrictions, and events beyond our reasonable control may temporarily affect the Service.
• Beta, preview, experimental, or free features may be less reliable, may change more frequently, and may be rate-limited or discontinued, subject to mandatory law and any express promise made at purchase.

17. Changes to the Service

We may change the Service to comply with law; maintain conformity; improve security, safety, accessibility, or performance; prevent abuse; adapt to technical standards or provider changes; replace discontinued technology; or develop functionality in the ordinary course. A change will not impose an additional charge unless you separately agree to it.

We will explain material changes clearly. Where a change materially impairs a Consumer's access to or use of a continuously supplied digital service, we will provide advance notice on a durable medium within the period required by law, describe the change and its timing, and explain any right to terminate without charge. Urgent security, legal, or abuse-prevention changes may take effect sooner where permitted.

If we permanently discontinue a paid Service before the end of a prepaid period for reasons not caused by your breach, we will provide a proportionate refund or equivalent remedy as required by law and processed through Paddle where applicable.

18. Moderation, Rights Notices, and Appeals

You can report allegedly illegal content, intellectual-property concerns, or Terms violations through the in-product report flow or the contact in Section 27. A rights notice should identify the protected work or right, the affected content or URL, your contact details and authority, the basis of the complaint, and a good-faith statement that the information is accurate.

We may use automated source controls, security and abuse signals, and human review to refuse generation; restrict visibility or sharing; remove or disable content; limit features; or suspend accounts. We apply restrictions diligently, objectively, and proportionately, considering the nature, severity, frequency, context, and impact of the issue and the rights and legitimate interests of affected parties.

Where required, we will provide an affected user with a statement of reasons and an opportunity to appeal or complain. Repeat or serious infringement may result in account termination. For EU Digital Services Act contacts, complaint options, and recommender information, see the DSA page.

19. Suspension and Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time, cancel a subscription as described in Section 15, and delete your account from settings.

We may proportionately restrict, suspend, or terminate access if you materially or repeatedly breach these Terms; fail to pay; create a security, fraud, legal, or harm risk; infringe rights; misuse the Service or reporting process; or if we must act to comply with law, a binding authority request, or provider restriction. We may terminate an unpaid account after prolonged inactivity if we give reasonable advance notice.

Where appropriate and legally required, we will give advance notice, reasons, and a reasonable opportunity to cure. We may act without advance notice where delay would be unlawful, compromise an investigation, expose another person or the Service to harm, or undermine a security or fraud response.

Where safe and legally required, we will allow a reasonable opportunity to export content before termination and provide a contact to appeal an erroneous decision. Termination does not affect accrued rights or obligations. Sections concerning content and Output rights, payments, liability, disputes, and provisions that by their nature should survive will continue to apply.

20. Disclaimers and Responsibility

ResearchCast does not warrant that scholarly sources, third-party services, model providers, or Output will be complete, current, accurate, available, non-infringing, or suitable for a particular research or professional purpose. You remain responsible for reviewing sources, Output, and your intended use.

These disclaimers do not exclude an express promise made to you, our obligation to use reasonable skill and care, or a statutory warranty, legal guarantee, conformity duty, or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded.

21. Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body, or health, mandatory product liability, fraud, guarantees, or other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

For slight negligence, ResearchCast is liable only for breach of essential contractual obligations and only for the type of damage that was foreseeable when the contract was made, unless mandatory law provides otherwise. Essential obligations are obligations whose performance enables proper use of the Service and on whose compliance you may regularly rely.

The preceding limitation also applies to our legal representatives, employees, and agents. It does not change the burden of proof to your disadvantage where mandatory law provides otherwise.

22. Additional Terms for Business Users

If you are a Business User, you confirm that you have authority to bind the organisation for which you act. Consumer-only withdrawal, cancellation, guarantee, and local-court rights do not apply to the extent your use is genuinely commercial and law permits.

A Business User will indemnify ResearchCast against a third-party claim to the extent the claim results from the Business User's culpable unlawful User Content, infringement of third-party rights, or material breach of Sections 5, 6, or 10. ResearchCast will promptly notify the Business User, allow reasonable control of the defence, and provide reasonable cooperation. No settlement may admit fault or impose a non-monetary obligation on ResearchCast without our consent.

Institutional, team, enterprise, confidentiality, service-level, security, and data-processing commitments require a separate written agreement. An order form or separate business agreement may replace this Section and will prevail where it expressly conflicts.

23. Trade Controls and Availability by Territory

You must comply with applicable export-control, sanctions, and trade laws. Do not use the Service for a prohibited end use, for the benefit of a restricted person or territory, or with information whose release or export requires an authorisation you do not have. We may restrict availability where reasonably necessary to comply with those laws or a provider or payment restriction.

24. Governing Law, Courts, and Complaints

German law governs these Terms, excluding conflict-of-law rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Mandatory consumer protection laws of your country of residence remain unaffected.

A Consumer may bring a claim in any court available under mandatory law, including the courts of their place of residence where applicable. If you are a merchant, legal entity under public law, or special public fund, the courts with jurisdiction for ResearchCast's registered office in Freising, Germany, have exclusive jurisdiction where legally permitted.

Before formal proceedings, you may contact support@research-cast.com so we can try to resolve the concern. This does not suspend a limitation period or restrict a right to seek urgent relief or use a mandatory consumer remedy.

25. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms for a change in law or regulation; security or safety needs; abuse prevention; a change to providers or technology; new or changed Service features; clarification; or another reasonable operational need. Changes apply prospectively.

We will give at least 30 days' advance notice by email or in-product notice before a change that materially disadvantages you, unless urgent legal, security, or safety reasons require a shorter period. The notice will identify the change, effective date, and available choices. If you do not agree, you may stop using the Service and cancel before the change takes effect. We will request express renewed acceptance where required by law or where the nature of the change makes renewed agreement appropriate.

Non-material changes, such as corrections or changes that do not reduce your rights, may take effect when posted. The version and effective date shown on this page identify the current Terms.

26. General Terms

• You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or successor in connection with a reorganisation, merger, financing, or sale of the relevant business, provided mandatory consumer rights are not reduced and any required notice is given.
• If a provision is invalid or unenforceable, the statutory rules apply in its place and the remaining provisions continue to the extent legally possible. This does not authorise a court to rewrite an invalid consumer clause beyond what law permits.
• A delay in enforcing a provision is not a waiver. A waiver must be express and applies only to the specific instance.
• These Terms, purchase-specific information, and any expressly incorporated separate agreement form the agreement for the Service and replace prior statements on the same subject, without excluding liability for fraud or overriding an express purchase promise.
• The English and German versions are intended to have the same meaning. If they differ, the German version controls to the extent legally permitted. Mandatory consumer-language, transparency, and interpretation rules remain unaffected.
• We may send contractual notices to the email associated with your account or through a clear in-product notice. You are responsible for keeping the account email current.

27. Contact

ResearchCast GmbH, Angerstrasse 12, 85354 Freising, Germany. General support and legal notices: support@research-cast.com. DSA and content reports: support@research-cast.com.