Terms of service
These terms are the agreement between you and CiteOwl. In short: what you write stays yours, the agent can be wrong so you check its work before you rely on it, you use it honestly, and you can cancel or delete your account whenever you like.
Who we are
CiteOwl is run by Alexander Matuška, based in Slovakia ("we", "us"). You can reach us at hello@citeowl.com. You accept these terms when you tick the box as you create an account, or by using CiteOwl. If you use it on behalf of a school or another organization, you confirm that you may accept these terms for them. How we handle personal data is set out in the privacy policy.
What CiteOwl is
CiteOwl is a writing editor with an AI agent working inside it. The agent searches for sources, drafts and edits text, adds citations with the passage each one rests on, and makes figures. Every change it makes arrives as a pending change you can keep or reject. It is a tool that helps you write, not an author, an expert or a substitute for your own judgment.
Your account
- Give accurate information and keep your login secure. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
- You must be at least 16, and old enough to enter a contract where you live.
- Tell us at hello@citeowl.com as soon as you think someone else has used your account.
Your content
What you write, import or upload stays yours, and so does the text the agent writes in your documents. We claim no ownership of any of it. You give us only the permission the service needs to work: to store your content, show it back to you, and send the parts a task needs to the AI and search providers listed in the privacy policy. We do not use your content to train AI models, and we do not show it to anyone else.
You are responsible for what you upload. Add only papers and files you have the right to use. A paper you add as a source is stored for your use and is never shown to other users.
Checking the agent's work
CiteOwl cites only sources the agent actually retrieved, and keeps the passage each citation rests on beside it so you can check it. Even so, the agent can be wrong. It can misread a source, summarize it badly, or state a claim more strongly than the source does.
- The final work is your responsibility. Review every change, check that each citation supports its claim, and confirm facts before you submit, publish or rely on anything.
- Follow the rules on AI that apply to you. Your school, journal or employer may limit AI-assisted writing or require you to disclose it, and complying with them is up to you.
- We do not promise that anything the agent produces is accurate, original, complete or fit for a particular purpose.
Acceptable use
Don't use CiteOwl to:
- break the law or infringe anyone's rights, copyright included;
- fabricate or falsify research, data or sources;
- produce content meant to harass, deceive or harm;
- get around usage limits, rate limits or security, including by opening extra accounts;
- scrape, overload, probe or reverse-engineer the service, or reach it by automated means other than the ones we offer;
- resell the service or give others access to it without our written permission.
We may suspend an account that does, as section 10 describes.
Plans and billing
- CiteOwl has a Free plan and two paid plans, Plus and Pro. What each includes and costs is on the pricing page. Prices are in US dollars, and tax is added at checkout where it applies.
- Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through Stripe and renew automatically until you cancel.
- Each plan comes with an amount of usage per billing period. Usage you don't spend does not carry over.
- On Plus and Pro you can switch on extra usage, billed at a per-use rate on top of the plan, up to a cap you set for each billing period. It stays off until you switch it on.
- An upgrade applies at once, and you pay the difference for the rest of the current period straight away. A downgrade applies at the end of the period you have paid for. Your documents stay either way.
- If a renewal payment fails, Stripe retries it. You keep your plan while that period's payment is being retried; if it is not recovered, the account continues on Free until it is paid.
- We may change prices or what a plan includes. We will email you at least 30 days before a price change affects you, and it applies from your first renewal after that, so you can cancel before it does.
Cancelling and refunds
You can cancel at any time from your account. Your plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for and does not renew.
If you live in the EU or the UK and buy a plan as a consumer, you can withdraw from it within 14 days of buying it, without giving a reason, by emailing hello@citeowl.com. A plan starts working the moment you pay, so we refund what you paid minus the share of the period you had already used.
Apart from that, payments are not refundable, except where the law requires a refund.
Exports and leaving
Your work is never locked in. On every plan you can export a document as a PDF, export its source list as text or as a .ris file, and download a JSON archive of everything in your account from the Data tab in Settings. Paid plans add Word and LaTeX export. You can delete your account at any time from the same tab, and the privacy policy sets out what that deletes.
Availability and suspension
We work to keep CiteOwl running and your work safe: it saves as you write and keeps checkpoints you can restore. We do not promise any particular uptime, and we may change, pause or remove features, with notice of significant changes where we can give it. Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or to protect the service or other users. Unless the breach is serious or the law prevents it, we will tell you first and give you the chance to export your work.
Disclaimers
CiteOwl is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we give no warranties beyond those in these terms, express or implied, and we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free or that its output will meet your needs. If you are a consumer, you keep every guarantee the law of your country gives you that cannot be excluded.
Limitation of liability
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost data, lost work, or academic or professional consequences of using CiteOwl. Where we are liable, our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the three months before the claim. None of this limits our liability for harm caused intentionally or through gross negligence, or any other liability the law does not allow us to limit.
Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the law of Slovakia, and disputes go to the courts of Slovakia. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory law of the country where you live, and you can bring a claim in its courts. If we cannot settle a complaint between us, a consumer can also turn to an alternative dispute resolution body; in Slovakia, that is the Slovak Trade Inspection (Slovenská obchodná inšpekcia).
Changes to these terms
When these terms change, the date at the top changes too. If a change matters, we will email you at least 14 days before it takes effect. If you don't agree with it, you can cancel and delete your account before then; if you keep using CiteOwl after that date, the new terms apply. Questions about these terms go to hello@citeowl.com.