Terms of Service

1. Who you are contracting with

IELSPEAK is operated by [LEGAL NAME], registered at [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. You can reach a person at [CONTACT EMAIL]. In these terms, “we” and “us” mean [LEGAL NAME]; “you” means the person using the service.

By creating an account you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy and Refund Policy. If you do not agree with them, do not create an account.

2. Payments, and who takes them

Orders are fulfilled by Paddle.com Market Ltd, which acts as the merchant of record and handles all order-related enquiries and returns. Your contract for the purchase itself is with Paddle, and Paddle’s own terms apply to it alongside these.

Charges appear on your statement as PADDLE.NET* rather than as IELSPEAK. This catches people out and leads them to report a card they recognise as fraudulent, so it is worth remembering. Prices are in US dollars; your bank may convert them.

What you buy is AI credit: a prepaid balance spent on the features that use AI or voice. Nothing renews and nothing is charged automatically. Paddle’s fee and any sales tax come out of each payment first, and the rest becomes credit. Credit does not expire and cannot be exchanged for money, except through a refund under the Refund Policy. You may give credit to another account or to the shared Global pool at checkout; once given, it belongs to them.

3. What you get

Everything that does not use AI is free for every account, as described on the pricing page. The AI and voice features are charged against your credit at what they cost us, and your Banking page shows every charge. While the Global pool has money in it, every account also gets a small free daily allowance from it.

Model providers change their prices, so the cost of a feature can change. We show current typical costs on the pricing and Banking pages, and we never charge more than a call cost us.

4. Band estimates are not IELTS scores

Band estimates produced by IELSPEAK are generated by automated systems for practice purposes only. They are not official IELTS scores, are not endorsed by or affiliated with the IELTS partners, and do not predict or guarantee performance on any official test.

This is the most important sentence in this document. We show it beside every score in the product for the same reason. Do not make decisions about test dates, visa applications, university deadlines or money on the strength of an estimate from us.

5. Trademarks

IELTS is a registered trademark of the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge University Press & Assessment. IELSPEAK is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any of them. We use the term descriptively, to say which examination this service prepares you for, and for no other purpose.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• share your account, or use one account for more than one learner;
• automate, script or replay input into the typing engine, or use any tool that produces keystrokes you did not type;
• scrape, copy, republish or resell the essay library or any feedback we generate;
• resell or provide access to the service to third parties, unless you hold a study centre agreement with us;
• attempt to extract the prompts, models or scoring logic behind the service.

We measure typing rhythm to detect automated input (see the Privacy Policy). Sessions that look synthetic still earn practice, but are excluded from leaderboards.

Accounts that repeatedly breach this section may be suspended. Where we suspend an account that has paid for a period it cannot now use, we will refund the unused part.

7. Fair use

Live speaking costs real money per minute, even when it is paid for, so we reserve the right to rate-limit usage that is implausible for one person: currently more than six speaking sessions started in any one hour, or more than three times the expected daily usage for one learner. We would rather slow down one account than put a surprise on anybody’s bill. If you hit a limit and you are a genuine user, write to us and we will lift it.

8. Who owns what

Open source. The IELSPEAK software is published under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0, and that licence, not these terms, governs what you may do with the code. The IELSPEAK name and logo are not covered by it. Your use of this hosted service is a personal, non-transferable licence to use it for your own study; it does not transfer ownership of anything.

Yours. Your recordings, your transcripts and anything you write remain yours. You give us the licence we need to deliver the service — to store them, send them to the sub-processors named in the Privacy Policy, and generate feedback from them — and nothing wider. We do not sell your content, and we do not use it to train third-party models.

Tests you publish. If you publish a test to the community library, you remain its owner and you are responsible for having the right to share it. You let us store, show and serve it to other learners, and use its anonymous results to rank it, for as long as it is published. The content policy sets out what may be published, how reports and copyright notices are handled, and when an account loses the right to publish.

9. Age

You must be at least 16 to hold an account. If you are under 16 and studying with a school or centre, that organisation should contact us so consent can be handled properly. We enforce this at sign-up rather than asking you to tick a box.

10. Ending the agreement

There is nothing to cancel: nothing renews. You can delete your account and all associated data from your account settings without asking us. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone.

We may end this agreement if you breach section 6, if we are required to by law, or if we stop operating the service — in which case we will give notice and refund unused credit.

11. Liability

We provide the service as it is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, that estimates will be accurate, or that using it will improve your result. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury, or fraud, which cannot be limited.

12. Changes and governing law

We may update these terms. If a change is material we will tell registered users by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that is acceptance.

These terms are governed by the law of [GOVERNING LAW], and its courts have exclusive jurisdiction. Paddle’s terms govern the payment transaction itself and may specify differently for that part.