Terms of Service

The agreement between you and Screaming Engine covering subscriptions, acceptable use, liability and how either side can end things.

1. The agreement

The agreement between us consists of these terms, the plan details on our pricing page, our Privacy Policy, any order form or quote we have both signed, and our Data Processing Addendum where personal data is processed on your behalf. Where a signed order form conflicts with these terms, the order form prevails for that customer.

If you do not accept these terms, do not use the service.

2. Definitions

3. Accounts and eligibility

You must be at least 18 and able to enter a contract. Give accurate registration details and keep them current. You are responsible for everything done under your account, for the security of your credentials, and for the acts of every user you invite into your workspace.

Tell us promptly if you believe an account has been compromised. Accounts are for your organisation's use; do not share a single login to avoid seat or plan limits.

4. Plans, trials and free scans

What each plan includes — domains, prompt volume, scan frequency, engines, seats and retention — is set out on the pricing page at the time you subscribe. Fair-use limits apply and are published; if you exceed them consistently we will contact you about the right plan rather than cutting you off without notice.

Free scans and trials are provided as they are, may be limited in scope or frequency, and may be changed or withdrawn. We may decline to run a free scan on a domain we have already scanned for another party or where we suspect abuse.

5. Fees, billing and taxes

Fees are payable in advance in the currency shown at checkout. Prices exclude VAT and sales tax, which are added according to your location. You authorise us and our payment processor to charge your payment method for each subscription term and for any upgrade you select.

If a payment fails we will retry and email you. Access may be suspended if an invoice is more than 14 days overdue. Undisputed overdue amounts may carry interest at 4% above the Bank of England base rate, and we may recover reasonable collection costs.

Upgrades take effect immediately and are pro-rated. Downgrades take effect at the start of the next term. We may change list prices with at least 30 days' notice before your next renewal; your current term is unaffected.

6. Renewal, cancellation and refunds

Subscriptions renew automatically for a further term unless cancelled before the renewal date. Monthly plans can be cancelled in the dashboard at any time with no notice period; you keep access until the end of the paid month. Annual plans can be cancelled to stop the next renewal.

Fees already paid are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise, where we have materially failed to provide the service and not fixed it within 30 days of your written notice, or where we agree a refund in writing. Consumers in the UK and EEA have statutory cancellation rights, which we do not exclude; note that asking us to run a scan immediately begins performance of the service.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to: use the service unlawfully or to infringe anyone's rights; reverse engineer, decompile, scrape or copy the platform, or attempt to derive its scoring logic other than through documented features; resell, sublicense or provide the service to a third party except as permitted for agency plans; bypass rate limits, quotas or access controls; upload malware or attempt to disrupt or gain unauthorised access to our systems or another customer's data; use the service to generate spam, deceptive content or material designed to manipulate an engine through misrepresentation; or use it to benchmark for a competing product without our written consent.

Security testing is welcome by arrangement. Report anything you find to info@screamingengine.com and give us reasonable time to fix it before disclosure.

8. Domains you ask us to scan

You warrant that for every domain you add you either own it, operate it, or have permission from the party that does, and that adding it does not breach any agreement or law. Competitor monitoring uses only publicly available information and public engine responses; you must not use the service to attempt access to a competitor's private systems.

You are responsible for the prompts you configure. Do not include personal data, confidential information or anything defamatory.

9. Your data and content

You keep all rights in your customer data. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to host, process, transmit and display it for as long as needed to provide, secure and support the service. We use it to deliver the service to you, not to train third-party models.

We may produce aggregated, de-identified statistics from platform activity to improve our scoring and to publish category-level research. These statistics never identify you, your domains or your reports.

You can export your data at any time while the subscription is active. On termination we make it available for 30 days, then delete it in line with our Privacy Policy.

10. Our intellectual property

We and our licensors own the service, including its software, scoring methodology, models, documentation, design and brand. Subject to these terms and payment of your fees, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the service and to use the reports it generates for your own business purposes or those of your clients.

Nothing else is assigned or licensed. Do not remove proprietary notices, and do not use our name or logo in a way that implies endorsement without our written consent. Feedback you send us may be used freely to improve the service, without obligation to you.

11. White-label reports and agency use

On plans that include it, you may present reports under your own brand and share them with your clients. You remain responsible to your clients for the work, for how the figures are explained and for any commitments you make on the strength of them.

You must not claim to have built the underlying platform, resell bare access to it as your own product, or grant your clients rights greater than those you hold under these terms.

12. Third-party engines and services

The service depends on AI engines and other platforms we do not control. They change their models, interfaces, rate limits and terms without notice, and any of them may become unavailable to us. We may add, replace or remove engines, and we will tell you if a change materially affects a plan you are paying for. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy or availability of third-party services, or for how they handle information sent to them.

13. No guaranteed results

AI engines are generative and probabilistic. The same prompt can produce different answers at different times, and no provider can guarantee that a brand will be named, described in a particular way, or cited at all.

Our scores, visibility figures and recommendations are measurements and informed opinion, reported with confidence ranges. They are not a promise of citations, rankings, traffic, leads or revenue, and they are not professional advice. Decisions you take on the strength of them are yours.

14. Availability, changes and support

We aim for high availability but do not promise uninterrupted service on standard plans. Planned maintenance is scheduled outside UK business hours where practical and announced in advance. Enterprise customers may agree a written service level with credits as the sole remedy for downtime.

We improve the service continuously and may modify features. We will not materially reduce the core functionality of a plan during a term you have paid for without offering you a pro-rated refund for the remainder. Support is provided by email at the response times published for your plan.

15. Confidentiality

Each of us may receive information the other treats as confidential, including your scan data and our non-public methodology and pricing. Each side will protect the other's confidential information with at least reasonable care, use it only for the agreement, and disclose it only to staff and advisers who need it. This does not apply to information that is public through no breach, independently developed, or required to be disclosed by law, provided reasonable notice is given where permitted. These obligations continue for three years after the agreement ends.

16. Data protection

Each party will comply with applicable data protection law. Where we process personal data on your behalf we do so as processor under our Data Processing Addendum, which is incorporated into these terms and available on request. Our handling of personal data as controller is described in the Privacy Policy.

17. Warranties and disclaimers

We warrant that we will provide the service with reasonable skill and care and in accordance with its published documentation. You warrant that you have the rights and permissions described in section 8 and that your use will comply with section 7.

Beyond that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the service is provided as it is and we exclude all other warranties, conditions and terms implied by statute or common law, including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

18. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, neither party is liable for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, anticipated savings, or for indirect or consequential loss, however arising. We are not liable for loss caused by an engine's decision not to cite you, by changes a third-party engine makes, or by action you take on the basis of a score.

Our total liability arising out of or in connection with the agreement, whether in contract, tort or otherwise, is capped at the total fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or £100 where no fees have been paid.

19. Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from your breach of section 7 or section 8, from content or prompts you submit, or from your use of reports with your clients, other than to the extent caused by our own breach. We will notify you promptly of any such claim and let you control its defence, provided any settlement does not impose obligations on us.

20. Suspension and termination

We may suspend access immediately where there is a security risk, unlawful use, a serious breach of section 7, or an unpaid invoice more than 14 days overdue. Where circumstances allow we will warn you first and restore access as soon as the cause is resolved.

Either party may terminate for material breach that is not remedied within 30 days of written notice, or immediately if the other becomes insolvent. On termination your licence ends, outstanding fees fall due, and sections on data, confidentiality, intellectual property, liability, indemnity and governing law survive.

21. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms to reflect changes in the service or the law. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice by email or in the application. If you object to a material change you may terminate before it takes effect and we will refund the unused part of any prepaid term. Continuing to use the service after the effective date means you accept the new version.

22. General

Neither party is liable for delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control. You may not assign the agreement without our consent; we may assign it to a group company or an acquirer of the business. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it. We are independent contractors, not partners or agents, and there are no third-party beneficiaries.

Notices to us go to info@screamingengine.com; notices to you go to the email on your account. The agreement is the entire understanding between us on its subject matter and replaces earlier discussions, except that nothing excludes liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.

23. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, this does not affect your right to rely on the mandatory law of the country where you live or to bring proceedings there. Before litigating, both sides agree to raise the issue in writing and attempt to resolve it in good faith for 30 days.