Terms of service

DRAFT v0.1 — 2026-09-22 — not yet reviewed by a lawyer. Items in [BRACKETS] must be completed before publication.

Effective date: [DATE]

These terms are an agreement between you and [LEGAL ENTITY NAME] ("carstandings", "we", "us"), which operates carstandings.com and api.carstandings.com (together, "the Service"). By using the Service you agree to them. If you use the Service for an organisation, you confirm you may bind that organisation.

1. What the Service is

carstandings publishes figures about new cars sold in the United States and Canada — fuel economy, emissions, power, weight, safety ratings, recalls, complaints, warranty terms and similar — as published by government agencies and manufacturers, with the publisher of every figure named beside it. We do not rank cars and we publish no overall score. Where a figure is missing, we say why.

The figures are compiled from public sources such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Natural Resources Canada, the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Statistics Canada, and from manufacturers' published warranty statements. The licences that govern those sources, and what they require of you, are set out in the Data Licence, which forms part of these terms whenever you download or fetch data from us.

2. Free use and accounts

Anyone may browse the Service without an account: the list of cars, and for each car a small set of figures that the publishers already make freely available (such as combined fuel economy, CO₂, the NHTSA overall safety rating and the count of recall campaigns). Full records are open to everyone for a small set of the most popular models each model year, so you can judge the Service before creating an account.

A free account lets you read up to five different cars a day in full, each showing every figure we hold for it (the day resets at 00:00 UTC); opening a car you already read that day again does not use up another. The limit is counted on our servers per account, by which cars you read, not how many times. To create an account you need a valid email address; a name is optional. You are responsible for what happens under your account, and you must not share it or let anyone else use it. Tell us at [CONTACT EMAIL] if you think it has been used without your permission.

3. Paid plans

Two paid plans exist:

Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax that applies where you are. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice; a change applies from your next billing period.

4. Billing, changes and cancellation

Payments are processed by Paddle.com Market Ltd, our merchant of record, under Paddle's buyer terms. Plans renew automatically until cancelled.

5. What you may not do

You must not:

We may suspend or close an account, and revoke an API key, if we reasonably believe these terms have been broken. Where practical we will tell you why.

6. Accuracy and what we do not promise

We take care over the figures: each one names the organisation that measured or published it, we cross-check figures between sources where we can, and where only one source states a figure we say so and do not use it to order lists. Even so, the figures are the publishers' figures, published on their own test bases, and manufacturers' and agencies' data contain errors and revisions. The Service is provided as is. We give no warranty that any figure is accurate, complete or current, that the Service will be uninterrupted, or that it is fit for any particular purpose, and nothing on the Service is advice about which car to buy.

7. Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue or data, arising from your use of the Service or reliance on any figure. Our total liability to you for anything arising from the Service in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you paid us in that period, or US $100 if you paid nothing. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

8. Your content and feedback

If you send us corrections, suggestions or other feedback, you allow us to use them without obligation to you.

9. Ownership

The Service, its design, software and the selection and arrangement of its data are ours or our licensors'. The underlying government figures remain the property of their publishers under their own licences. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership of anything to you; your rights to use data are set out in the Data Licence.

10. Changes to the Service and to these terms

We may change or withdraw features of the Service. We may change these terms; when we do, we will post the new version with a new effective date and, for changes that matter to paying customers, email account holders at least 30 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept it. If you do not, cancel your plan before the change takes effect.

11. Ending the agreement

You can close your account at any time from your account page [CONFIRM: or by emailing us]. We may end the agreement on 30 days' notice, or immediately for a breach of section 5. Sections 6, 7, 9, 12 and 13 survive the end of the agreement.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [STATE/PROVINCE, COUNTRY], and disputes are subject to the courts there, except where the law of the place you live gives you protections that cannot be taken away.

13. Contact

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME] [POSTAL ADDRESS] [CONTACT EMAIL]