Terms of Use

Last updated: August 25, 2026

1. Who you are agreeing with

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and the individual independent developer who publishes the Plant Doctor app and the plantdoctorapp.com website ("Plant Doctor", "we", "us", or "the developer"). The developer is identified as the seller of record on the app's App Store listing, and can be reached at support@plantdoctorapp.com, which is the address for all questions, complaints, and claims. This agreement is concluded between you and the developer only — not with Apple Inc. ("Apple").

By downloading, installing, or using the app or website (together, the "Service"), you accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Who may use the Service

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service, and old enough to form a binding contract where you live (or have a parent or legal guardian's permission — in which case the parent or guardian accepts these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use). The Service is not directed at children. If you use the Service on behalf of someone else, you represent that you are authorized to bind them to these Terms.

3. What the Service is — and what it is not

Plant Doctor uses artificial intelligence to analyze photos you submit, suggest the most likely species, suggest the most likely cause of visible symptoms, and propose a care plan; with Pro, it can also answer follow-up questions in a conversation grounded in that plant's chart. Results are probabilistic, best-effort guidance, presented with a confidence indication and the evidence considered.

The Service is not:

• professional horticultural, agricultural, botanical, medical, veterinary, food-safety, or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for any of those;
• a diagnostic device or safety tool of any kind;
• a guarantee that any plant will recover, survive, or thrive;
• a way to determine whether any plant, mushroom, fungus, berry, seed, or other organism is safe to eat, drink, brew, forage, feed to any person or animal, or otherwise consume — the app refuses such questions by design, and no output may ever be interpreted as edibility or consumption guidance;
• a reliable way to establish that a plant is safe for pets or children. Pet-safety flags are educational pointers about commonly known toxic species; they may be incomplete or wrong, and the absence of a flag is never an assurance of safety.

4. Safety rules you agree to follow

• Never eat, drink, feed, or apply anything based on the Service. Edibility and consumption decisions require qualified human experts. This is an absolute rule.
• If a person or animal may have ingested or been exposed to a plant or any substance, contact a doctor, veterinarian, or poison control immediately — do not consult the app, and do not delay care because of anything the app said or failed to say.
• Keep plants away from children and pets regardless of what the Service says about them.
• If you use any treatment product (fertilizer, insecticide, fungicide, or similar), read and follow the product's label and your local law. The label controls — not the app.
• For valuable plants, severe or spreading problems, or anything you are unsure about, get an in-person opinion from a nursery, garden center, arborist, or agricultural extension service.

5. AI outputs, accuracy, and assumption of risk

AI systems make mistakes: they can misidentify species, miss or invent problems, and give care steps that are wrong for your specific plant or conditions. Confidence scores are estimates, not guarantees. You agree that:

• you use the Service's outputs at your own discretion and your own risk;
• you will apply your own judgment (and where appropriate, professional advice) before acting on any output;
• you bear all consequences of acting or not acting on outputs, including harm to plants, property, animals, or people, to the maximum extent permitted by law;
• outputs are generated for you individually and may differ between requests; they are provided for your personal, non-commercial information only.

6. Your license to use the app

We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to install and use the app on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, for your personal, non-commercial use, as permitted by the App Store Terms of Service (including the Usage Rules, which allow Family Sharing where enabled). All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

7. Your content (photos and text)

• You keep all rights to the photos and text you submit. You grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free license to process them solely to operate the Service — producing your diagnoses and follow-up replies, and transmitting them (with relevant conversation context) to our AI provider for those purposes — after which they are not retained, as described in the Privacy Policy. We never use your content to train AI models.
• You represent and warrant that you own or have the necessary rights to everything you submit; that it does not violate any law or anyone's rights (including privacy and intellectual-property rights); and that it contains no personal data of other people — please keep faces, documents, and other people's information out of frame.
• You must not submit content that is unlawful, harmful, or malicious (including attempts at prompt injection or submitting content designed to make the AI produce harmful output).

8. Free allowance, Plant Doctor Pro, and billing

• Free tier: currently 7 photo check-ups plus one more each month; your garden, treatment plans, watering reminders, and plant histories are free. Anti-abuse rate limits apply. We may adjust the free check-up allowance prospectively; changes do not remove data saved on your device.
• Plant Doctor Pro is an auto-renewing subscription — $29.99/year or $4.99/month after a 3-day free trial — covering check-ups beyond the free allowance and follow-up chat. Prices are in USD; local prices and taxes are set and shown by the App Store before you subscribe.
• Billing is by Apple, not by us. Payment is charged to your Apple ID. The trial converts to a paid subscription unless cancelled at least 24 hours before it ends; subscriptions renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your App Store subscription settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period. Restore Purchases is available in the app.
• Refunds are handled exclusively by Apple under App Store policy (and any mandatory local consumer law); we have no ability to process payments or issue refunds ourselves. To request one, use Apple's report a problem page.
• If subscription prices change, the change applies no earlier than your next renewal, and Apple notifies you in advance as required; where consent is legally required for a price change, renewal at the new price requires it.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Service to seek edibility, foraging, or consumption judgments, or attempt to trick it into providing them;
• circumvent, probe, or overload rate limits or other technical protections, or access the Service by any automated means (bots, scrapers, bulk API calls);
• reverse engineer, decompile, or extract the source code, models, or prompts of the Service, except where law expressly permits despite this term;
• resell, redistribute, frame, or commercially exploit the Service or its outputs, or use them to build or train a competing product or model;
• use the Service in violation of any law, or to harm any person, animal, or system;
• misrepresent the Service's outputs as professional advice — including when sharing them.

We may throttle, suspend, or terminate access that breaches these Terms or threatens the Service's integrity, with or without notice, and — where abuse is involved — without refund obligations of our own (Apple's refund policies remain unaffected).

10. Intellectual property; feedback

The Service — including the app, website, design, text, graphics, logos, and the "Plant Doctor" name — is owned by the developer or licensed to us, and is protected by intellectual-property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of it to you. Apple's trademarks belong to Apple. If you send us feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use them without obligation to you. If you believe content in the Service infringes your intellectual-property rights, email support@plantdoctorapp.com with details and we will investigate.

11. Third-party services and links

The Service depends on third-party providers (including Apple, our AI provider, RevenueCat, analytics and crash-reporting providers, and our hosting provider) and links to third-party resources (such as horticultural institutions). We are not responsible for third-party services, their content, or their availability, and your use of them is governed by their own terms. You agree to comply with applicable third-party terms (for example your wireless carrier's data agreement) when using the Service.

12. Availability and changes to the Service

We work on the Service continuously and may add, change, or remove features, or discontinue the Service in whole or in part, at any time. We do not promise that the Service will be available, uninterrupted, error-free, or that any specific feature will remain available. A check-up requires an internet connection and depends on third-party infrastructure we do not control. Data stored on your device (your garden, history, and conversations) remains yours regardless, and the export tool exists precisely so you are never locked in.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service and all outputs are provided "as is" and "as available", with all faults and without warranty of any kind. We expressly disclaim all warranties and conditions, express, implied, or statutory — including merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, reliability, availability, and non-infringement — and any warranty that outputs will be correct, complete, or suitable for your plant, your animals, or your circumstances. No advice or information obtained from the Service or from us creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions; where that is the case, the above applies to the fullest extent permitted, and any non-excludable warranty is limited in duration and scope to the legal minimum.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, loss of goodwill, or the cost of substitute services, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility;
• we will not be liable for damage to or loss of plants, gardens, crops, property, or for harm to animals or persons, resulting from use of or reliance on the Service or its outputs, or from inability to use the Service;
• our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the amounts you paid for Plant Doctor Pro through the App Store in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or fifty US dollars (USD 50) if you have paid nothing.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law — for example liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or willful misconduct, or your mandatory statutory rights as a consumer, which remain unaffected. The limitations above are fundamental elements of the bargain: the Service could not be offered at its price (largely free) without them.

15. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold the developer harmless from claims, damages, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of your content, your breach of these Terms, your violation of law or third-party rights, or your misuse of the Service — including any use of outputs for consumption, medical, or veterinary decisions in breach of Sections 3–5. This does not apply to the extent a claim results from our own breach, and does not limit any non-waivable consumer rights.

16. Apple App Store terms

The following terms are required because the app is distributed through Apple's App Store, and they apply notwithstanding anything else in these Terms:

• Acknowledgement. These Terms are between you and the developer only, not with Apple. The developer — not Apple — is solely responsible for the app and its content.
• Scope of license. Your license is limited to use on Apple-branded products you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the App Store Terms of Service (with Family Sharing access where applicable).
• Maintenance and support. The developer is solely responsible for any maintenance and support of the app. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support services for it.
• Warranty. The developer is solely responsible for any product warranties, whether express or implied by law, to the extent not effectively disclaimed. If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app to you; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app, and any other warranty claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses are the developer's sole responsibility.
• Product claims. The developer, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or a third party relating to the app or your possession or use of it, including product-liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to legal or regulatory requirements, and claims under consumer-protection, privacy, or similar law.
• Intellectual-property claims. In the event of a third-party claim that the app or your possession and use of it infringes intellectual-property rights, the developer — not Apple — is solely responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of the claim.
• Legal compliance. You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as "terrorist supporting", and that you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Developer contact. Questions, complaints, or claims regarding the app should be directed to the developer — the seller of record on the App Store listing — at support@plantdoctorapp.com.
• Third-party terms. You must comply with applicable third-party terms of agreement when using the app.
• Third-party beneficiary. Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance, Apple has the right (and is deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce these Terms against you as a third-party beneficiary.

17. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time; deleting the app removes your on-device data. We may suspend or terminate your access (including revoking the license in Section 6) if you materially breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Service. Sections that by their nature should survive — including 3–5, 7 (your warranties), 10, and 13–19 — survive termination. Termination does not affect Apple-billed subscription rights, which are governed by Apple's terms and Section 8.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of them or the Service, are governed by the laws of the country in which the developer (the App Store seller of record) is domiciled, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules — except that if you are a consumer, you keep the protection of any mandatory law of the country where you live, and nothing in this section deprives you of the right to bring proceedings in your local courts where consumer law grants it. Both sides agree to try to resolve any dispute informally first by contacting support@plantdoctorapp.com before filing anything. To the extent permitted by law, claims may only be brought in an individual capacity, and must be brought within one (1) year of the events giving rise to them.

19. General

• Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms; the current version always lives at this address with its date above. Material changes will be flagged in the app or on the site, and apply from their effective date. Continued use after that date is acceptance; if you do not agree, stop using the Service.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the rest remains in effect.
• No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them — for example to a company formed to operate the Service — provided your rights are not reduced.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, superseding prior discussions. Marketing copy is a description of the Service, not a warranty.
• Contact. support@plantdoctorapp.com