Terms of Service

VINvalid — operated by You're it OÜ Effective date: 7 October 2026

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between You're it OÜ, registry code 17146966, Sinirebase 8-4, 11217 Tallinn, Estonia ("VINvalid", "we", "us"), and you, the person or company that creates an account or uses our services ("you").

They cover the VINvalid website at vinvalid.org, your account dashboard, and our VIN decoding API (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, ticking the acceptance box or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you use the Service on behalf of a company, you confirm that you have authority to bind that company, and "you" means the company.

2. The Service

VINvalid decodes Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) and returns structured data such as manufacturer, model, model year, plant, body type and engine information ("Vehicle Data"). You access the Service by sending requests to the API with your API key, or through the website.

We may improve, change or remove features at any time. If we make a change that materially reduces what a paid plan includes, we will give you notice under section 17.

3. Who may use the Service

The Service is intended for business and professional use. You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract. You may not use the Service as a consumer, meaning for purposes outside your trade, business or profession.

You may not use the Service if you are located in, or ordinarily resident in, a country or territory subject to EU, UN or US comprehensive sanctions, or if you appear on a sanctions or restricted-party list.

4. Your account and API keys

• You must give an accurate email address and keep your account details up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your password and API keys confidential and for everything done with them. Tell us immediately if you think they have been compromised.
• An account belongs to one person or one company. You may let your own employees and contractors use your API key in your applications, but you may not sell, rent or give access to your account or key to unrelated third parties.
• We will never ask you for your password.

5. Plans, quotas and rate limits

• Free plan. The free plan includes 20 decodes per month. Once the quota is used, requests are refused until the next month; overage is not available on the free plan. We may change or end the free plan at any time. It comes with no support commitment.
• Paid plans. Each paid plan includes a fixed number of decodes per month (the "quota"), at the price shown on vinvalid.org when you subscribe.
• What counts as a decode. Each request that returns an HTTP 200 response counts against your quota. Requests that fail (invalid VIN, vehicle not found, authentication or rate-limit errors, server errors) are not counted and not charged. Repeated requests for the same VIN each count as a separate decode.
• Overage. If you exceed your quota, further successful decodes are billed at the per-decode overage price shown for your plan, up to the overage limit shown on the website (equal to 100% of your quota, so a 100-decode plan can be used up to 200 decodes in a month). After that limit, requests may be refused until the next billing period or until you move to a higher plan.
• Rate limits. Requests are limited per minute per account according to your plan: 10 on the free plan, 50 on the 100-decode plan, 100 on the 500- and 1,000-decode plans, and 300 on the 5,000-decode plan. You must not try to avoid rate limits, for example by creating multiple accounts.

6. Fees, billing and taxes

• Paid plans are monthly subscriptions, billed in advance, and renew automatically each month until cancelled.
• Overage is billed in arrears with your next invoice.
• Payments are handled by Stripe. By subscribing, you also agree to Stripe's terms. We do not see or store your full card details.
• Prices are shown excluding VAT. VAT and other taxes are added where they apply. If you are a business in the EU, give us your valid VAT number so that reverse-charge rules can be applied where they are available.
• If a payment fails, we may retry it, notify you, and suspend your access to paid features until the balance is paid.
• We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice. The new price applies from your next billing period, and you may cancel before then.
• Invoices are available in your account dashboard.

7. Cancellation and refunds

• You may cancel your subscription at any time in your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep access until then.
• Fees already paid are not refundable, including for unused decodes or part-months, except where the law requires a refund or where we end your paid plan for reasons other than your breach (section 14), in which case we will refund the unused part of the prepaid period.
• If we bill you in error, tell us within 60 days and we will correct it.

8. Acceptable use

You must not:

• break the law or use the Service to help anyone else do so;
• scrape, mirror or bulk-copy the Service or the Vehicle Data other than through normal API use within your quota, or use automated means to build a rival VIN database;
• circumvent or interfere with quotas, rate limits, authentication or security;
• probe, scan or test the Service for vulnerabilities without our written permission;
• send traffic designed to overload or disrupt the Service;
• reverse engineer the Service, except where the law allows it despite this restriction;
• resell, sublicense or provide raw access to the API or its output as a competing decoding service;
• use the Service in a way that infringes anyone's rights or misleads people about its origin.

9. Your use of the Vehicle Data

Subject to these Terms and payment of applicable fees, we give you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide licence to use the Vehicle Data returned to you for your own business purposes, including showing it to your customers and storing it in your own systems and products.

This licence does not allow you to redistribute the Vehicle Data in bulk, publish it as a database, or offer it as a stand-alone data product or API that competes with the Service.

Vehicle Data comes from manufacturers, public sources and third-party partners, and may be subject to their rights. You must not remove any attribution or notices we include.

10. Our intellectual property

We and our licensors own the Service, the website, the API, the database and compilation of Vehicle Data, and the VINvalid name and logo. These Terms give you no ownership of any of them. If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them freely without obligation to you.

11. Accuracy of the data

Vehicle Data is decoded from the VIN and reference data. It may be incomplete, outdated or wrong, particularly for older, rare, modified or non-standard vehicles and for VINs from some markets. A decode is not a vehicle history report, a valuation, or proof of identity, ownership, safety, condition or legal status.

You are responsible for checking the data before relying on it for any decision, including purchases, insurance, safety, legal or regulatory purposes.

12. Availability and support

We aim to keep the Service available, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. We may suspend the Service for maintenance, security or reasons outside our control. We will try to give notice of planned downtime where practical. We do not offer a service level agreement unless we agree one with you in writing.

Support is provided by email at vinvalid.decoder@gmail.com on a reasonable-efforts basis.

Request history is separate from support. Your account dashboard keeps a log of the decode requests you made through the API and website, with the full response to each, and shows the last 60 days. Support is handled by email only; the dashboard has no ticket system.

13. Privacy

We process personal data as described in our Privacy Policy at vinvalid.org/privacy. If your use of the Service involves personal data of other people, you are responsible for having a lawful basis to do so.

14. Suspension and termination

• You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time.
• We may suspend or end your access immediately, without notice, if you breach sections 3, 4 or 8, if we reasonably suspect fraud or abuse, if you do not pay, or if we are legally required to.
• For any other reason, we will give you at least 30 days' notice before ending your access.
• On termination, your right to use the Service and the Vehicle Data ends, except that you may keep Vehicle Data you already lawfully received and stored in your own systems, subject to section 9. We will delete or anonymise your account data as set out in our Privacy Policy, subject to legal retention duties.
• Sections that by their nature should survive termination continue to apply, including sections 9 to 11 and 15 to 19.

15. Disclaimer

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we give no warranties, express or implied, including about merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy or availability, and we do not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements.

Nothing in these Terms limits any rights you have under mandatory law that cannot be excluded.

16. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited under applicable law.

Subject to that, and to the extent the law allows:

• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any loss or damage arising from your use of, or reliance on, the Vehicle Data (including any inaccuracy, omission or delay in it) or from anything you or your customers do with it; and
• our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of
  • (a) the fees you paid us in the 1 month before the event giving rise to the claim and
  • (b) EUR 10.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will email the address on your account at least 30 days before they take effect. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the date they take effect. If you continue to use the Service after that date, you accept the updated Terms. Other changes, such as corrections and clarifications, take effect when we post them. The current version is always at vinvalid.org/terms with its effective date at the top.

18. Indemnity

You will defend and compensate us against third-party claims, and related losses and reasonable costs, arising from your breach of section 8 or from your use of the Service or the Vehicle Data in breach of these Terms or applicable law.

19. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the Service and replace earlier understandings.
• Assignment. We may transfer these Terms to a successor or affiliate, for example in a sale or reorganisation. You may not transfer yours without our written consent.
• Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for failure caused by events beyond reasonable control, such as natural disasters, war, terrorism, strikes, government action, or failure of power, internet or hosting infrastructure. This does not excuse payment obligations.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
• Severability. If a provision is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest of the Terms stay in force and the provision is applied to the extent permitted.
• Notices. We will send notices to the email address on your account. You can send notices to vinvalid.decoder@gmail.com. Notices by email are treated as received when sent, unless the sender is notified of a delivery failure.
• Language. These Terms are in English. Translations are for convenience only.
• Governing law and courts. These Terms and any dispute about them are governed by the laws of Estonia. The courts of Estonia, with Harju County Court in Tallinn as first instance, have exclusive jurisdiction, unless mandatory law gives you the right to bring proceedings elsewhere.

20. Contact

You're it OÜ (VINvalid) Sinirebase 8-4, 11217 Tallinn, Estonia Registry code: 17146966 Email: vinvalid.decoder@gmail.com