Terms of Service

1.1 Speech To Text Tools LLC ("we", "us", "our") is a limited liability company formed under the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States.

1.2 These terms are the agreement between us and you ("you") for your use of speech-to-text-tools.com and the services offered on it (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, uploading a file, or buying credits, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1.3 You can reach us at [email protected]. Our registered office is 30 N Gould St, STE R, Sheridan, WY, 82801, USA.

1.4 If you are entering into these terms for an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

2.1 The Service accepts audio and video files, transmits them to one or more third-party speech recognition providers that you select, and returns the transcripts and the measurements those providers produce. It also publishes comparisons and benchmarks of those providers.

2.2 We are not the speech recognition provider. We do not produce the transcript; we route your file to the provider you chose and return what it gives us. Clause 4.3 and clause 11 follow from this and you should read them.

2.3 The Service is under active development. Providers, models, features and prices are added, changed and withdrawn. We do not promise that any particular provider or model will remain available.

3.1 You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live, to hold an account.

3.2 Accounts are created by signing in with Google or GitHub. You are responsible for keeping access to that account secure and for everything done through yours.

3.3 One person or organisation, one account. Creating additional accounts in order to claim free credits more than once is a breach of clause 5 and we record attempts at it.

3.4 You may close your account at any time from your account page. Clause 13 says what happens to your credits and your content when you do.

4.1 Your content stays yours. We claim no ownership of the files you upload or the transcripts produced from them.

4.2 You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, store, transcode and transmit your content, and to produce transcripts and derived measurements from it, for the sole purpose of operating the Service for you. The licence exists so that we can run your file; it is no wider than that, and it ends when the content is deleted under clause 9.

4.3 Selecting a provider instructs us to send your file to that provider. Your content will be transmitted to the third party you chose and processed on its systems under its own terms and its own retention practices. We identify the providers we use in our Privacy Policy, clause 6. If that is not acceptable for a particular file, do not upload it.

4.4 We do not train models on your content and we do not sell it. We use it to operate the Service, to diagnose faults, and to substantiate the measurements we publish — and published measurements never include your content.

4.5 You warrant that you hold the rights necessary to upload each file and to have it processed as described above, including the consents required from anybody recorded in it. Recording and transcribing other people is regulated differently in different places and that is your responsibility, not ours.

5.1 You must not use the Service to:

• upload content you have no right to upload, or content whose processing would be unlawful;
• process recordings made without a consent that the law of the relevant place requires;
• upload material that is unlawful in itself, including child sexual abuse material, which we report;
• interfere with the Service, circumvent the credit system, evade rate limits, or probe our infrastructure or our providers';
• create multiple accounts, or use false details, in order to obtain free credits repeatedly;
• resell the Service, or use it as an unbranded backend for a competing product, without our written agreement;
• scrape the published benchmarks at a volume or frequency that burdens the site, as opposed to reading them.

5.2 We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches this clause, under clause 13.

6.1 The Service is paid for with credits, bought in advance. Current prices are on our pricing page.

6.2 Credits are a prepaid balance, not a subscription. Buying credits creates no recurring charge and nothing renews. We will never charge your payment method again without you starting a new purchase.

6.3 What you buy is the credit figure shown to you at the point of purchase. Our payments are processed by Paddle, which acts as merchant of record and is the seller of record for the transaction; your purchase is also subject to Paddle's buyer terms. Paddle charges you in your local currency and collects any sales tax or VAT due, so the amount that appears on your statement may differ from the amount of credit you receive. The credit figure stated beside the pack when you bought it is what you get, and it is the figure this agreement is about.

6.4 The cost of a transcription is a fixed fee per run plus a rate applied to the duration and channel count of the audio, at the rate applicable to the provider and model you selected. The exact cost of any job is quoted to you before it starts.

6.5 Credit is reserved before work begins. When you start a run we hold the quoted amount, including a margin for the fact that duration is estimated before transcoding. We charge the actual figure on completion and release the remainder. Held credit is not available to spend on something else in the meantime.

6.6 Credits do not expire. A balance you have bought remains available until you spend it or it is refunded under clause 7.

6.7 Your balance cannot go below zero and we will not invoice you. If you do not hold enough credit for a job, the job is refused before anything is sent to a provider and you are told what it would have cost. Where a batch runs out part-way, the work already done is kept and the remainder resumes when credits arrive.

6.8 We may change prices. A change applies to purchases and runs made after it takes effect; it never reprices credit you already hold or work already enqueued.

7.1 A run that fails is refunded in credits automatically. This covers both our failures and the provider's — a rejected pre-check, an abandoned job, a transport fault, a provider error or timeout. You do not need to ask, and the refund appears in your balance.

7.2 Refunds of money to your payment method are governed by our Refund Policy, which forms part of these terms. In summary: unused credit is refundable within 14 days of purchase, and credit you have already spent on transcription is not, because the service was performed.

7.3 Nothing in these terms limits a statutory right you have as a consumer. Clause 15.4 says so again and means it.

8.1 We do not offer a service level agreement. The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, and we do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, timely, or free of error.

8.2 We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the Service, including any provider or model, with or without notice. Where a withdrawal makes your credit unusable for its intended purpose, clause 13.4 applies.

8.3 To the extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties not expressly given in these terms, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

9.1 We do not keep your content indefinitely. Uploaded audio, library files, guest sessions and captured provider exchanges are each deleted on their own clock. The authoritative figures are in our Privacy Policy, clause 5, and you can see and adjust the applicable retention for library files from your account.

9.2 Deletion is not reversible. You are responsible for keeping your own copies of anything you need.

10.1 The Service, the site, its software and the benchmarks and comparisons we publish are ours or our licensors'. These terms grant you no right in them beyond using the Service as it is offered.

10.2 You may quote and cite our published measurements with attribution. You may not present them as your own or republish them wholesale.

10.3 Provider, vendor and model names are the trade marks of their owners and are used to identify what is being measured. Their use does not imply any endorsement, in either direction.

11.1 Transcription is machine-generated and will contain errors. Accuracy varies with audio quality, accent, language, terminology, background noise and the provider chosen. No provider on this platform is error-free and we do not represent that any output is accurate, complete or fit for any particular purpose.

11.2 Do not use the Service as the sole basis for a decision with legal, medical, financial, employment or safety consequences. Where accuracy matters, have the output reviewed by a person.

11.3 Our published benchmarks are measurements taken under stated conditions at a stated time. They describe what we observed. They are not a prediction of what a provider will do with your audio, and they are not advice about which provider to buy.

12.1 The Service depends on third parties: the speech recognition providers you select, our authentication providers, our payment processor and our infrastructure suppliers. Their acts and omissions are not within our control.

12.2 We are not liable for a third-party provider's output, availability, pricing or handling of data beyond what clause 15 provides. Where a provider fails, clause 7.1 returns your credit, and that is the remedy this agreement gives for it.

13.1 You may stop using the Service at any time and may close your account from your account page.

13.2 We may suspend or terminate your access where you breach these terms, where we are required to by law, or where your use presents a security or solvency risk to the Service. Where it is reasonable to do so we will tell you why and give you a chance to put it right first.

13.3 If we terminate for your breach, unused credit is forfeited. We will say so at the time, and clause 7.3 is unaffected.

13.4 If you close your account, or we withdraw the Service or terminate without cause, you may ask for your unused credit back under the Refund Policy, and the 14-day limit in that policy does not apply to a refund under this clause.

13.5 On termination, your content is deleted on the clocks in clause 9. Clauses 4.1, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 survive.

14.1 You will indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from content you uploaded that you had no right to upload or process, or from your breach of clause 5.

14.2 We will tell you promptly of any such claim, will not settle it without your agreement, and will let you control its defence if you ask.

15.1 Neither party excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

15.2 To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, nor for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, data, or anticipated savings, however arising.

15.3 To the extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of or in connection with these terms in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in that period and one hundred United States dollars.

15.4 If you are a consumer, nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights. Where the law of your country of residence gives you a right that this agreement purports to limit, that law applies and this clause does not.

16.1 We may change these terms. The current version is always at this address, with the date it took effect at the top.

16.2 Where a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email to the address on your account before it takes effect.

16.3 If you do not accept a change, stop using the Service before it takes effect and ask for your unused credit back under clause 13.4. Continuing to use the Service after that date is acceptance.

16.4 A change never applies retrospectively to a purchase or a run already made.

17.1 These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. The courts of the State of Wyoming have exclusive jurisdiction, save that a consumer may bring proceedings in the courts of their country of residence where the law of that country gives them that right.

17.2 If a clause is held unenforceable, the rest stands and that clause applies to the greatest extent permitted.

17.3 A failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of it.

17.4 These terms, with the Privacy Policy and the Refund Policy, are the entire agreement between us about the Service.

17.5 You may not assign these terms without our consent. We may assign them to a successor to the business, and will tell you if we do.

17.6 Neither party is liable for a failure caused by something outside its reasonable control.