Terms of Service — doc.cheap

Effective date: 2026-09-20 · Version: 1.0 · published at https://doc.cheap/terms.

1. Who this agreement is between

This agreement is between Document Cheap Inc., Midvangur 7, 701 Egilsstaðir, Iceland ("we", "us", the Operator) and the person or organisation that registers an account or calls the API ("you", the Customer). Contact for legal notices: admin@doc.cheap.

2. Acceptance, and the only agreement

You accept these terms by registering an account, by calling the API with any key, or by using the sandbox. This document, together with the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Policy, is the entire agreement. We do not enter into individually negotiated contracts, side letters, service level agreements, security questionnaires, vendor forms or purchase-order terms; any such document you send is of no effect even if we do not reject it. One exception the law requires: where you process other people's personal data through the service, GDPR (EU) 2016/679 Art. 28(3) demands a written processing contract, and clause 5 supplies it — a statutory obligation nothing above waives.

3. The service

A document-recognition API: you send a document image, it returns the extracted fields as JSON. Documentation at https://doc.cheap/docs and the status page at https://doc.cheap/status are informational only — neither is a promise, a specification you may rely on, or a service level.

4. Price, credits and billing

The price is $0.01 (one US cent) per recognised document, flat, at any volume; one credit is one cent. Credits are prepaid — calls draw on the balance, and no credit means no call. Only a successful recognition is charged: a call that finds no document, cannot read the image or cannot determine the document type returns its answer and costs nothing.

Credits are not redeemable for money and do not expire while the account is open. No refunds are given, with three exceptions mandatory law or our own undertaking puts beyond disclaimer: (1) a consumer's 14-day right of withdrawal from a distance contract — under Directive 2011/83/EU Art. 16(a) and 16(m) it is lost for a service already fully performed, or digital content whose supply has begun, only where you gave prior express consent and acknowledged losing it, which we ask at top-up, and if we did not the right stands; (2) the unused balance where we close or suspend your account other than on a serious ground under clause 10; (3) anything a court or a mandatory rule of your own country requires.

5. Data protection (incorporated)

Where the documents you submit contain personal data, you are the controller and we are the processor. Our processor obligations under GDPR Art. 28 are the Data Processing Policy at https://doc.cheap/data-processing, which forms part of this agreement. Those obligations are statutory: nothing in clauses 6 to 9 limits, excludes or varies them, and neither party can contract away a data subject's right to compensation under GDPR Art. 82.

6. Acceptable use

You may submit only documents you are entitled to process, holding a lawful basis under GDPR Art. 6 and, because an identity document routinely carries data revealing racial or ethnic origin, a condition under Art. 9(2). You must not use the service unlawfully, attack, probe or overload it, circumvent rate limits or the free allowance, resell raw access as your own recognition engine, or build a document-forgery or identity-fraud capability. Rate limits, quotas and the free allowance apply as published and may change; enforcement is automated (rate limiting, key revocation, account suspension) and keeps the service available to everyone. There is no content-moderation system and no algorithmic content decision beyond the recognition result itself. That is the restriction-and-enforcement information EU 2022/2065 Art. 14(1) calls for, to the extent it applies to a service of this kind.

7. The service is provided AS IS

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE", with no warranty of any kind, express, implied or statutory — merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy or completeness of recognition, availability, uptime, continuity, freedom from interruption, error-free or secure operation. We do not warrant that a recognition result is correct, and you must not make it the sole basis of a decision about a person; verification is yours.

What survives. Clause 7 applies in full only if you act in the course of a trade or profession. It cannot reach a consumer: the service must be performed with reasonable care and skill (Consumer Rights Act 2015 s. 49), a term excluding that liability is not binding (s. 57(1)), nor is an unfair term (s. 62(1)), and the conformity rules of your own country apply as well — in Czechia a term excluding the consumer's rights from defective performance or to compensation is always abusive (Act No. 89/2012 Coll. § 1814(1)(a); § 1812(2)).

8. Limitation and exclusion of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude liability for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, lost profit, lost revenue, lost or corrupted data, business interruption and the cost of substitute services, however caused; and our total aggregate liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the service is capped at the amount you actually paid us in the one (1) month before the event giving rise to the claim, and at zero where you paid nothing in that period (sandbox, free allowance, trial use).

What the cap does not touch, because it cannot. We remain fully liable for death or personal injury resulting from negligence (Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 s. 2(1); Consumer Rights Act 2015 s. 65(1); Directive 93/13/EEC Annex 1(a)); fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; compensation under GDPR Art. 82; and anything else applicable law does not permit to be excluded or limited. Against a business customer the rest operates only so far as it is reasonable (UCTA 1977 s. 2(2)).

A consumer is outside this clause entirely. An exclusion of the s. 49 duty is not binding (CRA 2015 s. 57(1)), nor is an unfair term (s. 62(1)); the mandatory rules of a consumer's own country reach the same result or further — Czech law, for instance, disregards an advance exclusion or limitation of a weaker party's right to compensation for any harm, and of liability for harm caused intentionally, by gross negligence or to a person's natural rights (Act No. 89/2012 Coll. § 2898). Clause 8 is read down to nothing against a consumer, whose statutory claims stand in full.

9. No support and no service levels

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we give no support: no obligation to answer a message, to maintain, update, patch or keep the service compatible, to meet any response time, or to achieve any availability, latency, accuracy or throughput figure. There is no SLA, no service credit and no uptime guarantee. admin@doc.cheap receives legal notices and data-protection requests, which we answer because the law requires it — not general support requests.

10. Suspension, termination and discontinuation

You may stop and delete your account at any time from the cabinet. We may suspend or terminate immediately and without notice on a serious ground: a breach of clause 6, unlawful use, non-payment, a security or abuse incident, or a legal obligation. For any other reason we terminate on 30 days' notice to your account address — ending an agreement of indeterminate duration without reasonable notice and without serious grounds is an indicatively unfair term (Directive 93/13/EEC Annex 1(g)) — and the unused balance is refunded under clause 4. We may change or discontinue the service at any time, giving reasonable notice where the change is significant and not forced on us by law, security or a supplier.

11. Complaints

We do not operate a commercial claims, warranty-claim, escalation or dispute process, and we give no service credits; we are not obliged to investigate, answer or compensate a complaint about the service. What survives: no mandatory right is removed — a consumer may go to their own country's consumer-protection authority and to any national alternative dispute resolution body, anyone may complain to a data protection supervisory authority (GDPR Art. 77), and either of us may go to court. Statutory notices go to admin@doc.cheap.

12. Changes to these terms

We may publish a new version. The valid reasons are, and are limited to: a change in law or supervisory-authority guidance; a change in the service, its pricing model or its suppliers; the correction of an error or ambiguity — naming them is what Directive 93/13/EEC Annex 1(j) requires of a unilateral variation clause. A new version binds a consumer 30 days after we notify you (email to the account address, or a cabinet notice), and you may terminate free of charge before then, unused balance refunded. Every significant change is notified to every account holder (EU 2022/2065 Art. 14(2)); for a business customer, continued use after publication is acceptance.

13. Governing law, forum, age, severability

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, whose courts have jurisdiction — exclusive as against you, non-exclusive as against us. Consumers: under EC 593/2008 (Rome I) Art. 6(2) that choice of law cannot deprive you of the mandatory rules of your country of habitual residence, and under EU 1215/2012 Arts. 18-19 you may sue in the courts of your own domicile whatever our domicile, we may sue you only there, and no jurisdiction clause changes that before a dispute arises.

The service is for people aged 18 or over; an account we find to be a minor's is closed and the balance refunded. A clause that is void, unenforceable or abusive is read down to the maximum extent the law permits, or struck, and the rest stands; a right we do not enforce is not waived.