Terms of Service

Last updated: August 10, 2026

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern access to and use of the Transcodely platform. They are a binding agreement between you and Transcodely. Please read them carefully — they include limitations on our liability and describe how billing, content storage, and account termination work.

The following documents are incorporated into these Terms by reference and apply to your use of the Service: the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy, and — where your use of the Service is subject to data protection law such as the GDPR — the Data Processing Agreement.

Contents

1. Agreement to These Terms

Transcodely is operated by Dimitar Todorov, doing business as Transcodely (“Transcodely”, “we”, “us”, “our”). By creating an account, accessing the dashboard, or calling the API, you (“you”, the “Customer”) agree to these Terms. If you use the Service on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity, and “you” refers to that entity.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

2. Definitions

  • “Service” — the Transcodely platform: the video transcoding API, the video hosting and delivery product, the embeddable player, the web dashboard at transcodely.com, the developer documentation, and related tooling.
  • “Customer Content” — video, audio, image, caption, and related files that you upload to the Service, direct the Service to fetch, or that the Service produces for you as transcoding output (including renditions, manifests, thumbnails, caption tracks, and chapter data).
  • “Job” — a single transcoding request submitted through the API or dashboard, together with its configured outputs.
  • “Hosted Video” — Customer Content stored in Transcodely-managed storage and delivered through our CDN for playback.
  • “Your Storage” — storage accounts that you own and connect to the Service as an origin or destination (for example your own S3, Google Cloud Storage, Cloudflare R2, or HTTP origin).
  • “Organization” — the account-level workspace under which apps, API keys, jobs, and billing are grouped.

3. Eligibility, Accounts & Registration

  • You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service.
  • You must provide accurate, current account information and keep it up to date.
  • Account review. New accounts are reviewed before activation. During this period you can sign in but cannot submit jobs. We aim to review new accounts within one business day. We may decline to activate an account at our reasonable discretion, in which case no fees are owed.
  • You are responsible for all activity under your account, including activity by members of your Organization and any use of your API keys. Keep your credentials and API keys confidential; notify us promptly at admin@transcodely.com if you suspect unauthorized use.
  • One account per person or entity, unless we agree otherwise in writing.

4. The Service

Transcodely provides (a) a transcoding API that converts video files between formats, codecs, resolutions, and packaging (including HLS and DASH), reading from and writing to managed storage or Your Storage; and (b) a video hosting product that stores transcoded video in managed storage and delivers it worldwide through a content delivery network, with an embeddable player.

We may improve, modify, or add to the Service at any time. If we materially reduce the core functionality of the Service, we will give you reasonable advance notice where practicable.

5. Your Content

5.1 Ownership

You retain all rights, title, and interest in Customer Content. We claim no ownership of it.

5.2 License to us

You grant Transcodely a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, cache, reproduce, transcode, transmit, and deliver Customer Content solely as necessary to provide the Service as configured by you, to secure and troubleshoot the Service, and to comply with law. This license ends when the relevant Customer Content is deleted from our systems.

5.3 Your responsibilities

You are solely responsible for Customer Content. You represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to upload and process it, and that it and your use of the Service comply with applicable law and the Acceptable Use Policy. Where Customer Content contains personal data of others (for example people appearing or speaking in videos, or viewers of your embedded videos), you are responsible for having a lawful basis to process it; the Data Processing Agreement governs our processing of that data on your behalf.

5.4 Storage & deletion of content

  • Customer Content in managed storage remains stored until you delete it or until your account is closed. Deleting a video removes its source and output files from managed storage and purges cached copies from the CDN on a best-effort basis (edge caches expire on their configured time-to-live).
  • For Hosted Video, you may optionally configure automatic deletion of original source files a set number of days after upload; we send a warning webhook before that deletion runs.
  • If a job fails or is canceled, output files already written for that job to managed storage are cleaned up automatically.
  • Content written to Your Storage is under your control; we do not delete it.

5.5 Access to content

We do not view, access, or analyze the substance of Customer Content except: (a) as needed to run the processing you request (including opt-in features such as AI captions and auto-chapters, described in the Privacy Policy); (b) to investigate suspected violations of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; (c) with your consent, for example in a support case; or (d) where required by law.

5.6 Playback visibility

Hosted Videos are unlisted by default: they are served from unguessable identifiers and are not listed publicly, but anyone who has the link can play them unless you configure signed (private) playback. You are responsible for choosing the visibility setting appropriate to your content.

6. Acceptable Use

Your use of the Service must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy, which is part of these Terms. In short: no unlawful content or content you lack rights to, no abuse of the platform or other users, and no attempts to probe or circumvent our infrastructure or billing. We may remove content or suspend accounts as described in the Acceptable Use Policy and Section 13.

7. Fees, Billing & Payment

7.1 Usage-based pricing

The Service is billed on usage, in euros (EUR), at the rates published on the pricing page at the time the usage occurs. Transcoding is priced per minute of output video, adjusted by codec, resolution, frame rate, quality tier, and optional feature multipliers. Video hosting is priced per GB-month of storage (metered daily and prorated) and per GB of CDN egress (metered hourly; egress applies to public, unlisted, and signed playback alike). Certain optional features add their own metered charge on top of the outputs a job produces — AI captions, for example, are priced per minute of source video, not per job. Separately, every job an encoder starts carries one flat processing fee, scaled to the job’s size class, at the rate published on the pricing page. The processing fee is added to what your outputs bill; it does not replace or clamp them. Because that fee reflects work already under way, canceling a job after an encoder has picked it up still bills the processing fee, plus any outputs that completed before you canceled.

Jobs created before the August 2026 pricing change may include a minimum-charge adjustment under the terms in effect when they ran; completed jobs always keep the pricing they were created under.

7.2 What is never billed

  • Failed jobs are never billed. A failed job does not appear on your invoice — no outputs, no processing fee.
  • Canceling a job that is still queued costs nothing at all. Nothing has run, so there is nothing to bill. (Cancellation after an encoder has already picked the job up is billed, as described in Section 7.1.)
  • AI captions are billed only if a caption artifact was actually delivered. If none was produced, the captions charge does not appear.

7.3 Billing periods and invoices

Usage is accumulated over a monthly billing period and invoiced when the period closes. The dashboard shows a running total for the current period; amounts shown before the period closes are estimates, computed from the same ledger your final invoice is generated from. Finalized invoices, with line-item detail, are available in the dashboard to Organization owners.

7.4 Payment processing (merchant of record)

Payments are processed by our payments partner Polar (Polar Software Inc.), acting as merchant of record. Your payment is made to Polar, which handles payment collection, payment methods, receipts, and the calculation, collection, and remittance of applicable VAT and sales taxes. Polar’s own terms and privacy policy apply to the payment transaction itself.

Prices shown to consumers include applicable VAT. If you are a VAT-registered business in the EU and provide a valid VAT ID, VAT is not charged on your invoice under the reverse-charge mechanism, and you are responsible for accounting for it in your own jurisdiction.

7.5 Spend limits

You may set an optional monthly spend limit per app. When recorded spend reaches the limit, new job submissions are rejected for the rest of the period. Spend limits are a best-effort safeguard, not a billing guarantee: jobs already running are not interrupted, and because a job’s cost is recorded shortly after admission, a burst of submissions near the limit can overshoot it. You remain responsible for usage actually incurred.

7.6 Non-payment

If an invoice remains unpaid after the payment retries operated by our payments partner, we may suspend the Service for your account after notice, and ultimately terminate it under Section 14. We do not automatically suspend accounts the moment a payment fails.

7.7 Price changes

We may change prices with at least 30 days’ notice by email or dashboard notice. Price changes apply to usage incurred after the change takes effect.

7.8 Refunds

Fees for usage actually delivered are non-refundable except where required by law. If you believe an invoice contains an error, contact us within 30 days of the invoice date at admin@transcodely.com and we will investigate and correct genuine billing errors.

Because Polar is our merchant of record, approved refunds are issued by Polar to your original payment method, and payment disputes or chargebacks are handled directly between you, Polar, and your card issuer.

8. Service Availability

We work hard to keep the Service available, but it is provided on a best-effort basis and we do not currently offer a formal service level agreement (SLA) or uptime guarantee. We will announce planned maintenance in advance where practicable. The health endpoint documented in our API reference reports live operational status.

9. Beta & Preview Features

Features identified as beta, preview, early access, or not-yet-generally-available (in the product, documentation, or changelog) are provided as-is, may change or be withdrawn at any time, may be subject to additional terms, and are excluded from any availability commitments. Where a beta feature would introduce a new subprocessor or change how Customer Content is processed, we disclose that in the Privacy Policy and Subprocessors list before or at launch.

10. API Use & Integrations

  • API keys identify your app and must be kept secret. Anything done with a valid key is attributed to your account. Keys can be revoked and rotated in the dashboard at any time.
  • We may apply rate limits and technical protections to keep the platform stable. Do not attempt to circumvent them.
  • Webhooks you configure are delivered to endpoints you control; you are responsible for the security of those endpoints. Webhook payloads are signed so you can verify authenticity, as described in the documentation.
  • When you connect Your Storage, you instruct us to read from and/or write to it using the credentials you provide. Scope those credentials to the minimum access necessary. You are responsible for the costs and terms of your own storage providers.

11. Intellectual Property

The Service — including its software, APIs, documentation, design, and branding — is owned by Transcodely or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property law. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. You may not copy, modify, resell, or create derivative works of the Service except as permitted in writing. If you send us feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without restriction or obligation to you.

12. Privacy & Data Protection

Our Privacy Policy describes what personal data we collect, why, how long we keep it, and the subprocessors we use. Where we process personal data contained in Customer Content on your behalf (for example the faces and voices of people in your videos, or playback telemetry from your viewers), we do so as your processor under the Data Processing Agreement, which forms part of these Terms for customers subject to the GDPR or similar laws.

13. Suspension

We may suspend your access to all or part of the Service, immediately where the circumstances reasonably require it, if: (a) you materially breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) your use poses a security risk to the Service or others; (c) suspension is required by law or a competent authority; or (d) invoices remain unpaid as described in Section 7.6. Where practicable we will give you notice and an opportunity to remedy the issue before or promptly after suspending, and we will lift the suspension once the cause is resolved.

14. Termination

14.1 By you

You may stop using the Service at any time. To close your account and have your data deleted, contact admin@transcodely.com (or use the account closure option in the dashboard where available). Deletion follows the timelines in the Privacy Policy.

14.2 By us

We may terminate your account: (a) for convenience with at least 30 days’ notice; (b) immediately for a material breach that is not cured within a reasonable period after notice (or is incurable); or (c) immediately where required by law.

14.3 Effect of termination

Upon termination: outstanding fees for usage already incurred become due; your access ends; and Customer Content and personal data are deleted in accordance with the Privacy Policy retention schedule. Download any outputs you need before your account closes. Sections that by their nature should survive (including Sections 7, 11, and 15–20) survive termination.

15. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE, OR THAT ANY PARTICULAR OUTPUT QUALITY WILL BE ACHIEVED FOR ANY PARTICULAR SOURCE FILE. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS EXCLUDES WARRANTIES OR RIGHTS THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (A) NEITHER PARTY IS LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, OR DATA; AND (B) OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE FEES YOU PAID TO US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. THESE LIMITS DO NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR INTENT OR GROSS NEGLIGENCE, OR FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY.

17. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Transcodely against third-party claims, and resulting damages and reasonable costs, arising from (a) Customer Content, (b) your breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or (c) your violation of law or third-party rights — provided we notify you promptly of the claim and reasonably cooperate with you. This clause does not apply to the extent you use the Service as a consumer.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email or prominent dashboard notice before the changes take effect. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, stop using the Service and close your account before the effective date; continued use after that date constitutes acceptance. The “Last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

19. Governing Law & Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts of Sofia, Bulgaria have exclusive jurisdiction — except that if you use the Service as a consumer in the EU/EEA, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of, and the right to bring proceedings in, your country of residence. Before starting formal proceedings, the parties will attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute informally via admin@transcodely.com.

20. General Provisions

  • Entire agreement. These Terms (with the documents incorporated by reference) are the entire agreement between you and Transcodely regarding the Service.
  • Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect and the provision is enforced to the maximum extent permitted.
  • No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
  • Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, incorporation of the business into a legal entity, or sale of assets, with notice to you.
  • Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

21. Contact

Questions about these Terms: admin@transcodely.com.