Legal
Terms of service
Every section below opens with a plain-English summary of what it actually means, and the legal wording follows it. Each summary is written to be accurate rather than reassuring.
Legal
Every section below opens with a plain-English summary of what it actually means, and the legal wording follows it. Each summary is written to be accurate rather than reassuring.
Gemmein is the backend for web and mobile apps: sign-in, protected data, payments (Stripe built in, other providers through a relay, App Store and Play through RevenueCat), AI tools and credits, relays, and a dashboard to run your customers. Payments are processed by your provider on your own account; Gemmein never holds or moves funds.
Gemmein ("we", "us", "our") is operated by Gemmein Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17339623). Gemmein provides a hosted backend platform that gives your web and mobile applications passwordless authentication, structured data storage, and managed subscription and purchase state through an API. Payments are processed by your provider on your own account; Gemmein never holds or moves funds. When we say "the service", we mean the Gemmein API, dashboard, documentation, and client libraries.
"You" means the person or entity that creates a Gemmein account and builds applications on the service. "End-users" means the people who use your applications.
Every application on Gemmein — including apps still being built for free — includes the following security and infrastructure features at no additional cost:
These are not add-ons. They are how the service works.
The gemmein command-line launcher is distributed under the MIT license. The engine it downloads is licensed separately under the Gemmein Engine License, available at downloads.gemmein.com/engine/LICENSE.
You need to be 18 or older, use a real email address, and keep your credentials safe. One person, one account per business.
To create an account you must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding agreement under the laws of your jurisdiction. By creating an account you confirm that you meet this requirement.
Each account is for a single person or legal entity and carries one application: we treat an account as a business surface, so its billing, customers, and records stay its own. To run more than one application, create a separate account for each — you may hold as many accounts as you operate businesses, and the same Stripe account may back more than one of them. Sharing account credentials is not permitted.
We will verify your email address during signup. You must keep your email address current so we can reach you about billing, security, and service changes.
You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, including the security of your secret keys. If you believe your account or keys have been compromised, rotate your keys immediately and contact us at legal@gemmein.com.
No card at signup. Building is free. One plan covers your whole account, not each app: it sets how many apps may go live, and a pooled storage allowance, with a fixed monthly or yearly price. Reaching the storage allowance never charges you: you get a short grace period and an alert, and only you can change your plan. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax.
Building and testing are free, with no payment method required, for up to 3 apps. Putting an app live puts your whole account on a paid plan:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Your account includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build | $0 | — | Up to 3 apps, development only |
| Launch | $29 | $290 | Up to 5 apps, 50 GB pooled storage |
| Run a business | $79 | $790 | Up to 10 apps, 200 GB pooled storage |
| Grow | $199 | $1,990 | Up to 25 apps, 500 GB pooled storage, "Powered by Gemmein" removable |
| Beyond | Agreed individually | Above 25 apps, pricing is agreed individually — contact hello@gemmein.com | |
Any app on the account may go live under the plan you pick. Active people are never priced or limited by your plan: we track fair use, and would reach out long before it could ever matter. A card is required the first time you go live or buy a plan ahead of it, collected and processed by Stripe.
Storage packs. On any paid plan you can add storage in packs of 50 GB for $5 a month ($50 a year on yearly billing), as many as you like. Each pack adds 50 GB to your account's pooled storage. Packs are chosen by you in advance, never added automatically, and are billed on the same monthly or yearly cycle as your plan.
Referral codes. If you sign up with an affiliate's referral code, you get $5 off your first payment, monthly or yearly. It applies once and can't be exchanged for cash.
Your plan's price is fixed. Going over your account's pooled storage never adds a charge: we alert you and give you a grace period, up to 10% over the allowance, for up to 7 days, whichever ends first. After it, existing files stay available, but new uploads are refused with a clear error until files are deleted, you add a storage pack or you move to a bigger plan.
Downloads and emails sent are fair use on every plan: there's no allowance or figure, and going over never refuses or charges anything automatically — we reach out first. Edge function runs have a pooled monthly allowance, stated in the plan comparison; past it, Edge function calls pause until the next period starts or you move to a bigger plan — never a charge. Moving plan is always your own action. We never change your plan or your price automatically.
Every plan, including Build, also has technical limits on things like requests, emails sent and compute, so that one app can't slow Gemmein down for everyone else. We publish the current limits for each plan on our usage and limits page. Bandwidth has no fixed limit, but it is covered by this section.
Your account is billed either monthly or yearly; all your plans and storage packs follow the same cycle. Yearly costs the price of 10 months: 2 months off, a saving of about 17%. Billing renews automatically at the end of each period until you cancel. For yearly billing, we email you at least 30 days before each renewal with the date, the amount and how to cancel, and we send a receipt when it renews.
You can cancel any time from the dashboard or billing portal. Cancelling stops future renewals. Your plan keeps running until the end of the period you've paid for, then only Live pauses, as described below. Building stays free.
Apart from the first-charge refund below and refunds under section 8 if we end your account without a reason, we don't refund the unused part of a monthly or yearly period, including when you cancel or move down.
Your first charge is refundable within 14 days, no questions asked
If your first paid charge isn't what you expected, monthly or yearly, email legal@gemmein.com within 14 days and we will refund it in full. This is a one-time, unconditional refund on your very first paid charge.
If you're a consumer, you also have a legal right to cancel within 14 days of your first payment. Our first-charge refund above gives you at least that: a full refund within those 14 days.
We may change our prices, including starting to charge for something that is currently included, such as bandwidth. We'll email you at least 30 days before a new price applies to you, and it applies only from your next renewal after that notice. A yearly period you've already paid for keeps its price until it ends. If you don't want the new price, cancel or change plan before it applies.
Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT and other taxes. Where tax applies, we add it at checkout and show it on your invoice. If you give us a valid EU VAT number, we treat the sale as business-to-business and you account for any VAT under the reverse-charge rules. Currency conversion and any fees your bank charges are your responsibility.
Your Gemmein subscription pays for Live: your apps answering real users. If it ends or isn't paid, only Live pauses. Development keeps working, free, and nothing is deleted.
Your own customers. Your users' contracts are with you, not with Gemmein. While Live is paused, you are responsible for your users, including telling them, any refunds or compensation they're owed, and pausing or adjusting any billing you run for them in your own Stripe account. We aren't liable for losses that come from a pause caused by an unpaid or cancelled subscription.
You will never wake up to a bill you didn't choose. You pay for the plans and storage packs you picked, and only you can change them.
Build what you want, but don't use Gemmein for anything illegal, harmful, or that puts children at risk. If you see abuse, report it.
You agree not to use the service, or allow your end-users to use applications built on the service, to:
By using the service, you warrant that your applications are not directed at children. End-users of your applications must meet the applicable minimum age: 13 years in the United States and United Kingdom, 16 years in the European Union, or the minimum age required by the laws of their jurisdiction, whichever is higher.
You are responsible for ensuring that your applications comply with all laws applicable to you and your end-users.
Content returned to the service by a pipeline you configure is your responsibility in the same way as content you upload.
If you become aware of content or usage that violates these terms, report it to abuse@gemmein.com. We review every report.
Your data belongs to you. We process it on your behalf, we don't sell it, and you can export or delete it at any time.
You retain all rights to the data you and your end-users store on the service. Gemmein claims no ownership of your data.
When you store your end-users' personal data on the service, you are the data controller and Gemmein is the data processor. Relays run on the service; processing at a URL a relay calls, or at a pipeline you configure, happens outside it. AI tool calls go to the provider you name, on your key and under your agreement with that provider. It is yours, under your own agreements with your users; Gemmein does not process, review or take responsibility for what happens at that endpoint or at any third party it calls. The same applies to an AI assistant or other client you connect to Gemmein: data you let it read is processed under your agreement with its provider, not ours. Our processing of that data is governed by our Data Processing Agreement (DPA), which is incorporated into these terms by reference. You can read it at gemmein.com/dpa; a countersigned copy is available on request at legal@gemmein.com.
You may request an export of your stored data at any time by contacting us: your records, your files, and the details of your end-users as they relate to that data. We will provide the export in a standard machine-readable format within a reasonable timeframe. Exports cover the data you and your end-users stored on the service; they do not include operational information Gemmein generates in running it.
When you delete a record through the API or dashboard, it is soft-deleted and recoverable for 30 days. After 30 days, it is permanently purged.
When you delete your account, we begin permanent deletion of all associated data. The process completes within 30 days, with encrypted backups aging out over an additional 7 days (37 days total from the deletion request).
All data is stored in the United States, with Amazon Web Services, Inc.; websites you publish are served from the global network of Cloudflare, Inc. Transfers of personal data from the UK and EU are covered by the UK-US Data Bridge and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework respectively. For further detail, see our Privacy Policy.
Gemmein is in early access. Features may change, and support response times may vary. Removing a feature you pay for comes with 30 days' notice. Our data protection commitments apply in full, now.
The service is currently in early access. During this period:
Service levels will be published from operating evidence, not ahead of it. The status page is where that record accumulates.
Early access affects what we promise about uptime and features. It does not change what we promise about how we protect data.
The security commitments listed in section 1 — including encryption, tenant isolation, audit logging, rate limiting, and every other item on that list — are fully in effect during early access. They are production commitments, not aspirational targets. We do not disclaim or weaken them during this period.
Our liability is capped at what you've paid us in the last 12 months. If you're building for free, that's zero. UK law requires us to say certain things can never be excluded, and we say them clearly here. If someone makes a claim against us because of your app or your content, you cover it, unless we caused it.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the total aggregate liability of Gemmein to you for all claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the service shall not exceed the total fees paid by you to Gemmein in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. For users who are building for free and have paid no fees, this cap is zero.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for:
Subject to the carve-outs above, we are not liable for:
You will indemnify Gemmein against claims by third parties (including your end-users and regulators) arising from your apps, your content, your instructions to us, or your breach of section 4 or of data protection law, and the reasonable costs of dealing with them. We'll tell you promptly about any such claim and let you take part in handling it. This doesn't apply to the extent a claim is caused by our own breach of these terms or the DPA.
You can leave any time. If you don't pay, only Live pauses. We can end your account for a serious breach, sometimes immediately. We can also end it without giving a reason, but then we give you 30 days' notice and refund any prepaid time you haven't used. Either way, you get time to export your data.
You may delete your account at any time by emailing support@gemmein.com from the address you sign in with. Deletion is effective immediately; any remaining time in your current monthly or yearly period is not refunded, except under the first-charge refund in section 3.
We may suspend or end your account:
In these cases we don't refund fees already paid. Where we act immediately, we'll tell you what we did and why as soon as we lawfully can.
Non-payment is handled differently: only Live pauses, after the 7-day grace and reminders in section 3. That's a pause, not an ending of your account.
We may also end your account for any reason, or stop offering the service altogether. If we do, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice by email (90 days if we're closing the whole service), and we'll refund the unused part of any period you've prepaid, worked out pro rata. Your apps keep working during the notice period.
If we end your account, or it ends for any reason other than you deleting it, you can export your data during any notice period and for 30 days after the account ends. After that, we delete it: deletion completes within 30 days, and encrypted backups age out within a further 7 days. If you delete your account yourself, deletion starts straight away, as described in section 5. We may withhold or keep data only where the data itself is unlawful, or where the law requires us to keep or report it. Your users are your customers: when your account ends, telling them, and moving or refunding them, is your responsibility.
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and any disputes go to the courts of England and Wales. If you're a consumer, you keep the protections of your own country's law and can use your local courts.
These terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them (including non-contractual disputes or claims), shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.
The courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with these terms.
If you're a consumer, you keep any mandatory protections of the law of the country you live in, and you can bring a claim in your local courts.
If a change affects what you pay, your data, or your rights, we'll email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Changes that don't take anything away from you take effect when posted. If we're unsure which kind a change is, we treat it as the first kind.
We may update these terms from time to time. If a change affects what you pay, what we do with your data, or any right these terms give you, we will email you at the address associated with your account at least 30 days before the change takes effect.
Changes that do not take anything away from you — clarifications, plain-language rewording, corrections, or terms covering new features you are not yet using — take effect when posted. In every case we update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. Where a change could reasonably be read either way, we give the 30 days' notice.
Your continued use of the service after the effective date of the updated terms constitutes your acceptance of the changes. If you do not agree to the updated terms, you may delete your account before the effective date.
These terms, the DPA, the Privacy Policy and any plan you accept are the whole agreement. If one part can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
These terms, the DPA, our Privacy Policy and any plan or order you accept are the whole agreement between us about the service. We may transfer these terms to a company that takes over the service, and we'll tell you if we do; you may transfer them only with our written agreement. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later. We'll send notices to your account email; you can send notices to legal@gemmein.com. Nobody else has rights under these terms (Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999).
Questions about these terms? Email us.
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