Terms

These cover Ratproof, the free tool, and Ratproof Pro, a monthly or yearly subscription. They are short, because nothing you put into either one reaches us. Most of what a software agreement usually covers doesn't apply here.

Last updated 2026-10-14.

1. Who you are dealing with

Ratproof is made by Sitananda Prasad Josyula, a sole proprietor trading as Ratproof, in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Reach a person at support@ratproof.app.

These terms apply if you use the browser tool, the self-hosted bundle or Ratproof Pro. Using Ratproof means you accept these terms, an agreement between you and Sitananda Prasad Josyula. If you don't accept them, don't use them. If you have already paid, you can ask for a refund under section 5.

2. Ratproof, the free tool

The tool at app.ratproof.app, and the self-hosted bundle of the same thing, are free to use for any purpose, personal or commercial. No account. Transcription stays free and unlimited: every export, search and summaries included. From 10 November, speaker labels past the first 10 minutes of a file, adding many files at once, and searching more than your 5 most recent transcripts are part of Ratproof Pro. You may run the bundle on your own network and give copies to people inside your organisation.

You may not sell it, or present it as your own product. The open-source parts inside it have their own licences, listed with the tool. Those licences still apply to those parts.

It is free, but not guaranteed. We can change or withdraw the hosted copy. That is why the self-hosted bundle exists and is also free: a copy you already have can't be taken away.

3. Ratproof Pro, and the licence you get

Ratproof Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription. While your subscription is paid, you have a non-exclusive licence to use it, with every update, including security fixes.

One subscription covers one person, on as many devices as they use. An organisation subscribing for several people needs one subscription per person , or, for a lab or a department, one yearly payment for the group: write to us (see For organisations) .

Cancel any time. You are not charged again, and Pro keeps working to the end of the period you paid for. Your recordings and transcripts are not touched either way. They are on your computer. We have no copy, and nothing about them is ours to take back.

About once a month, and daily if a renewal is late, Ratproof Pro fetches a fresh licence key. That request carries only the licence key, which includes your email address. Nothing you record, keep or ask is ever sent. Beyond fetching itself, that renewal request and, if you ask for it, "Email me my licence", it makes no other request of its own: no telemetry, no analytics. A renewal tells the licence server which licence is renewing, and when, and the server checks with Paddle that it is still paid. Nothing about what you transcribe, or how much, reaches Paddle or us.

You may not resell, sublicense, rent out or redistribute Ratproof Pro. You may not decompile it, except where the law allows that regardless of this sentence.

4. Who sells it to you

Ratproof Pro is sold by Paddle.com Market Ltd (Paddle) as the merchant of record. They take each payment, in rupees in India and in US dollars everywhere else. They collect and pay the tax due where you live, including GST in India, under their own registrations. Their name appears on your card statement and your invoice, not ours.

Paddle is a reseller, not our agent. They buy the licence and sell it on to you. So your contract for the purchase is with them, under their buyer terms. This page is the licence for the software, granted by Sitananda Prasad Josyula: what you may do with Ratproof Pro once you have it. Two documents, two jobs.

5. Refunds

14 days on any payment, no reason needed. The policy is ours. Paddle applies it, because they hold the money and only they can return it. Ask at paddle.net using the email you paid with.

As merchant of record, they have the final say on any single payment, so they can overrule us. The refunds page says so plainly, and says what we will do if it happens to you.

6. What you may not do with it

Don't use Ratproof or Ratproof Pro to:

break the law;
commit fraud or send spam;
infringe anyone else's copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property;
interfere with the security of Ratproof or its servers, for example by spreading malware, probing for weaknesses, or scraping.

7. Recording other people is your responsibility

Ratproof can record a meeting you are in. Whether you are allowed to depends on where you and everyone else are. Several US states, and a number of countries, require everyone to agree.

You are responsible for getting consent before you record. The software reminds you while it records, but it can't check. It doesn't join calls or appear in any attendee list. That protects privacy. It is not cover for recording people who haven't agreed. Don't use Ratproof to record anyone secretly where that is illegal.

8. Who owns what

Sitananda Prasad Josyula keeps ownership of Ratproof and Ratproof Pro, and of the intellectual property in them: the software, the documentation and the Ratproof name and branding. These terms give you a licence to use them, not ownership. The open-source parts inside are under their own licences, listed with the tool, and nothing here overrides those.

Your recordings and transcripts are yours. These terms give us no rights to them.

9. Suspending or ending Pro access

We can suspend or end your access to Ratproof Pro if:

you seriously break these terms;
a payment is not made;
there is a security or fraud risk;
you break these terms again after being told.

Your recordings and transcripts stay on your computer either way.

10. What it does not promise

Transcripts are not evidence. Speech recognition mishears. Given silence or noise, it can write clean sentences nobody said. Ratproof flags what it can detect and never quietly edits your text, but it can't catch everything. The accuracy figure is published. Check anything important against the recording.

The software is provided as it is. We don't promise it is free of faults, that it will run on any particular computer, or that it will reach any particular accuracy. Whether it runs depends on your browser, your hardware and your free memory. The numbers page gives the details.

No guarantee it is always available or free of errors. This covers the free tool and Ratproof Pro. Either one can stop working for a time, or make mistakes.

Your recordings and transcripts are yours, and keeping them safe is up to you. They live on your computer, in your browser's storage. We have no copy and can't recover anything. Clearing your browser data deletes them. Back up what you would mind losing.

11. Liability

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit. That includes your rights as a consumer, which these terms don't reduce.

Beyond that, our total liability to you for any claim connected with Ratproof is limited to what you paid for Ratproof Pro. We are not liable for lost profit, lost data, lost business or other indirect loss. For the free tool, where you paid nothing, the cap is nothing. That is the normal deal for free software, and it is why section 10 is written plainly.

12. Changes

We can change these terms for new subscriptions, and for continued use of the free tool. A change never applies to a period you have already paid for. The date at the top is the version you agreed to.

13. Law

These terms are governed by the law of India, and disputes go to the courts of Hyderabad, India. If you are a consumer somewhere else, you keep the protection of the mandatory law where you live. You also keep any right you have against Paddle over the sale itself, which is a contract you made with them.

14. Contact

About the software: support@ratproof.app. About a payment, invoice or refund: that address, or Paddle directly, since they hold the money. About your personal data: support@ratproof.app, and the privacy policy covers what little there is. The contact page has all of this in one place.