Terms of Service

These Terms of Service govern your use of ChapterUp, the gamified reading habit tracker made by Sideways Lab ("we", "us", or "our"). By using ChapterUp, you agree to these terms. How we handle your data is covered separately in our Privacy Policy.

1. The Service

ChapterUp helps you build a reading habit. You track books and reading sessions, and the app turns that into streaks, experience points, levels, achievements, and quests. You can optionally add friends, join book clubs, write reviews, and appear on friends-only leaderboards.

2. Accounts and Age

You need an account to sync across devices. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up so we can apply the right protections — it is not optional, and you can update it later in Settings.

Users under 13 get a restricted experience: a private profile, no friends, book clubs, reviews, discussions, or leaderboards, no in-app purchases, and only non-personalised ads. If you are under the age of digital consent where you live (13 to 16 depending on the country), a parent or guardian should agree to these terms on your behalf.

You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your login details secure.

3. Purchases: ChapterUp+ and Runes

ChapterUp+ is an optional subscription that removes ads and unlocks premium features. Runes are a consumable in-app currency you can buy and spend inside the app.

• All purchases are billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play, whichever you bought through. Manage, cancel, or request a refund there — we cannot process billing changes directly.
• Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends to avoid the next charge.
• Runes have no cash value, cannot be exchanged for money, transferred between accounts, or redeemed outside ChapterUp. Unused Runes are lost if you delete your account, and we are not required to compensate you for them.
• Prices may change. We will not change the price of a subscription period you have already paid for.
• Nothing here removes statutory rights you have as a consumer, including any right to cancel or to a refund under the law where you live.

4. Acceptable Use

Use ChapterUp for its intended purpose: tracking your reading and taking part in the community. Don't use it to harass, bully, threaten, or impersonate anyone; attempt to access another user's account or data; scrape, disrupt, or reverse engineer the service; or manipulate streaks, XP, achievements, leaderboards, or Rune balances by any means other than normal use of the app.

5. Your Content and Community Rules

You own the reviews, ratings, notes, highlights, discussion posts, bookshelf names, and other content you create. By posting content that others can see, you give us permission to store, display, and distribute it within ChapterUp for the purpose of running the service. You keep the right to delete it at any time.

We have zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive behaviour. Do not post content that is unlawful, hateful, harassing, threatening, sexually explicit, violent, or that infringes someone else's rights. Do not post spam or content you don't have the right to share.

To keep the community safe, ChapterUp provides:

• Filtering — book search results are filtered to exclude mature and explicit titles.
• Reporting — you can report any review from the menu on the review itself. We review reports and aim to act on them within 24 hours.
• Blocking — you can block another user from their profile, which removes the connection between you.

We may remove content and suspend or terminate accounts that breach these rules, and we may do so without notice where the breach is serious.

6. Advertising

ChapterUp shows ads unless you subscribe to ChapterUp+. Rewarded ads are optional — you choose to watch one in exchange for Runes. Your ad choices, and how to change them, are explained in our Privacy Policy.

7. Book Data

Book titles, covers, descriptions, and other metadata come from third-party sources including Google Books and Open Library. We don't control that data and can't guarantee it is accurate or complete.

8. Termination

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete Account in the app; see Delete Your Data for exactly what that removes. Deletion is permanent. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or where we are required to by law.

9. Disclaimers and Liability

ChapterUp is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind. We don't guarantee the app will be uninterrupted or error-free, and reading statistics, streaks, and estimates are approximations rather than exact measurements. To the extent permitted by law, Sideways Lab is not liable for indirect or consequential damages arising from your use of the app. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded by law — nor any statutory consumer rights you have that cannot be excluded by agreement.

10. Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. If you are a consumer living elsewhere, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of the law where you live.

11. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms as the app changes. We'll update the date above when we do, and give notice in the app for material changes; continued use of ChapterUp after a change means you accept the updated terms.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email [email protected]. For privacy questions, use [email protected].