Terms of service

1. Agreement

These terms cover your use of SOS Scraper: the website at sosscraper.com, its tools, and the API (together, the “service”). SOS Scraper is run by Tirthak, an independent developer based in India (“we”, “us”).

By creating an account, using an API key or using the tools on the site, you agree to these terms, our Privacy policy and our Refund policy. If you use the service for a company, you confirm you can agree for that company, and “you” includes it.

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract to use the service.

2. What the service does

The service gives you information about US businesses and state filing requirements: company lookups and name availability checks in the states we support, state filing fees, compliance deadlines, processing times and expedite options, and state tax registration requirements. This information comes from public sources, mainly the official websites, fee schedules and rules of state agencies and the IRS.

SOS Scraper is independent. It isn't run by, affiliated with or endorsed by any Secretary of State, state agency, the IRS or any other government body. Results are not official records or certificates.

It isn't legal or tax advice. The service is a source of general information. A name being shown as available doesn't reserve it or guarantee a state will accept it, and estimated dates are estimates. Check with the relevant agency, or a qualified professional, before you file anything or rely on a result.

3. Your account and API key

• Give a real email address you can receive mail at, and keep it up to date.
• One free account per person. Temporary email addresses can't be used, and aliases of the same inbox count as one address.
• Keep your API key secret. Anything done with your key counts as done by you, including credits used. If you think your key has leaked, create a new one on your dashboard straight away; the old one stops working at once.
• Don't share your login or key with people outside your organisation.

4. Plans, credits and payment

• Each plan includes a number of credits per calendar month. What each call costs is listed on the Pricing page.
• Credits are used only when a call returns data. Calls that fail, find nothing or return nothing are free.
• Credits reset on the 1st of each month (UTC) and don't carry over.
• Each plan has limits on calls per minute and per day. Calls over a limit are refused until it resets.
• Prices are in US dollars. To move to a paid plan, you ask for it on your dashboard and we email you a payment link from our payment provider. Your plan changes once the payment is made. Fees charged by your bank or card issuer, such as currency conversion, are yours.
• We may change prices or plan limits. For a paid plan, a change applies from your next payment, and we tell you by email at least 14 days before it does.

5. No refunds

All payments for plans and credits are final and non-refundable, including unused credits and plans cancelled partway through a paid period. The only exception is a billing error, as described in our Refund policy.

6. Acceptable use

You may use results from the service in your own products and for your customers, for example to show a filing fee or a due date in your app. You must not:

• resell or give others direct access to the API itself, or build a service that mainly passes our API through to others;
• share an API key outside your organisation, open several free accounts, or try to get around credits or rate limits;
• use the service to harass, stalk or profile private individuals, or to send spam;
• present results as official government records, or use them to file false or fraudulent documents;
• overload, probe, scan or disrupt the service, try to get into accounts or systems that aren't yours, or copy the website or API by automated means other than the API itself;
• use the service in breach of any law that applies to you.

7. Accuracy and availability

We work to keep the data correct: every fee, deadline, processing time and tax registration rule links to its source, and official pages are re-checked regularly. But state websites change, can be wrong or out of date, and are sometimes unavailable or block access. So results can be incomplete, delayed or wrong, and an entry may be marked as not yet confirmed or being re-checked.

We don't promise the service will be available at any particular time or without interruption. We may add, change or remove states, endpoints or features. When we remove something you rely on, we'll try to tell you in advance by email or in the docs.

8. Ownership

The website, the API, our code, design and documentation, and the way we organise and check the data belong to us. Public records belong to no one, and we don't claim them. You keep everything you send us, such as the names you search. Subject to these terms, you may use the results you receive as described in section 6.

9. Suspension and closing an account

You can stop using the service at any time and ask us to close your account by emailing hello@tirthak.in.

We may suspend or close an account, or block a key, if it breaks these terms, puts the service or other users at risk, is used for fraud, or has a payment disputed. Where we reasonably can, we'll tell you why first and give you a chance to fix it. Payments already made aren't refunded.

10. No warranty

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we make no promises about it beyond those written in these terms, including that it is accurate, complete, fit for a particular purpose or free of errors.

11. Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows:

• we aren't liable for indirect or consequential losses, lost profits or business, or for penalties, late fees, rejected filings, lost names or missed deadlines that result from relying on the service;
• our total liability for any claim about the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 3 months before the event that led to the claim, or US$50, whichever is greater.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited by law.

12. Your responsibility

If someone makes a claim against us because of how you used the service in breach of these terms or the law, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For important changes, we'll email account holders at least 14 days before they take effect. If you keep using the service after that, the new terms apply. The date at the top of this page shows when they were last changed.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India. If a dispute can't be settled by talking to us first, the courts of India have jurisdiction.