Terms of service

These terms govern your use of the unlob web search API and this website. By creating an account or using the API you agree to them.

The service

unlob provides a web search API returning metadata and extracted passages from publicly accessible web content, together with a coverage graph over that index. Access is by API key, subject to the plan quotas and rate limits published on the pricing page.

Accounts and API keys

You are responsible for keeping your API keys secret and for all activity under them. Keys are stored as cryptographic hashes and cannot be recovered — if a key is lost or compromised, rotate it in the console. Do not share keys between organisations.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the service to violate any applicable law, or to infringe the rights of others.
• Attempt to circumvent quotas or rate limits, including by distributing traffic across multiple accounts to exceed a plan's limits.
• Resell or redistribute raw API responses as a competing search product.
• Use the service to build a bulk copy of the index, or to systematically extract the corpus rather than to answer queries.
• Attempt to interfere with, probe or disrupt the service or its infrastructure.

Content and third-party rights

The index contains metadata about, and extracted passages from, content published by third parties. We do not own that content and grant no rights to it beyond what applicable law permits for search and retrieval. You are responsible for your own use of any content retrieved through the API, including attribution and any licensing obligations that attach to it.

If you are a publisher and wish content removed from the index, see thecrawler page or email us. Adding a Disallow rule for UnlobBot to your robots.txt also removes it on the next crawl cycle.

Fees and billing

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance at the prices published on the pricing page. The free plan hard-caps at its quota. Paid plans continue past quota with usage-based overage at the rate shown in your console. You may change or cancel your plan at any time; changes take effect for the current period as described in the console.

Availability

We aim for high availability but do not offer a contractual uptime guarantee on the published plans. Coverage of the web is inherently incomplete and changes over time; thewhy_not endpoint exists so that absence is explainable rather than silent, and it is not a warranty of coverage.

No warranty

The service is provided as is. We make no warranty that results will be complete, accurate, current, or fit for any particular purpose. Search results are retrieved from third-party content and reflect what was published, not what is true. To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim all implied warranties.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the fees you paid in the twelve months preceding the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits or data.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate access for breach of these terms, for non-payment, or where required by law. You may close your account at any time from the console.

Intellectual property

The unlob service, software, index structure, documentation and this website are our property. Nothing in these terms grants you rights to them beyond the use of the API described here. unlob is not open source and no source-code licence is granted.

Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be notified by email to account holders before taking effect, and the date at the top of this page will change.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@unlob.com.

This page describes our commercial terms in plain language. It is not legal advice, and for a regulated deployment you should have your own counsel review it.