Terms of Service
1. The agreement
These terms are a contract between you and FortyNote LLC, 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731, United States (“FortyNote”, “we”, “us”). They govern your use of the FortyNote website, web app, browser extension and related services (together, the “service”). By creating an account or using the service you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use FortyNote.
These terms, the Privacy Policy, and any additional terms we show you for a specific plan or feature are the whole agreement between us. If an additional agreement conflicts with these terms, the additional agreement wins for that feature.
If these terms are translated into another language, the English version controls where a conflict arises and the law permits.
2. Who can use FortyNote
You must be at least 16 years old, or the age of digital consent where you live if that is higher. If you are under 18, you may use FortyNote only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these terms on your behalf. You may not use the service if the law where you live bars you from doing so.
If you accept these terms for a company or organisation, you confirm you have authority to bind it.
3. Your account
Signing up. You need an email address and a password. The email address is your account name and how we reach you about your account, your subscription and anything we are required to tell you. We do not ask for a phone number, and there is no sign-in through Google, Apple or anyone else. We do not verify who you are beyond your credentials. Accounts created before September 2026 used a username instead of an email address; those accounts continue to work and sign in the same way.
Security. Use a strong, unique password and turn on two-factor authentication in Settings. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, including anything done by someone you have given access to. If you think someone else has your credentials, change your password immediately.
Don’t share your login. Accounts are personal. FortyNote has sharing features built for working with other people; use those instead of handing over your password. If you share credentials and lose control of the account, we have no way to establish who the rightful owner is.
Your devices. You are responsible for the devices, internet access and data plans you use to reach the service. Your plan may limit how many devices can be signed in at once.
4. Encryption, and what it means for you
Please read this section. FortyNote encrypts your notes on your own device before they ever reach us, using a key derived from your password. Your password is never sent to us and is never stored by us.
So that a forgotten password does not cost you your notes, we also keep a copy of the key that opens your account, encrypted with a key of ours and stored separately from your notes. When you ask to reset your password, our server uses it to hand your account key back to your browser, which locks it again under the password you choose. The consequence worth understanding: we are technically able to decrypt your notes, and your email account is therefore the thing that protects them. Keep it secure, and turn on two-factor authentication in Settings — with 2FA on, an emailed reset link is not enough on its own. We will never ask you for your password, and anyone who does is not us.
Export your notes from time to time if they matter to you. No hosted service, ours included, is a substitute for a backup you hold yourself.
5. Your content
Anything you put into FortyNote — text, images, files, tags and related data — is “your content”. You keep all ownership and intellectual property rights in it. We claim none.
The permission you give us. To run the service you give us permission to store, back up, transmit and sync your content, and to deliver it to people you choose to share it with. Because your content reaches us already encrypted, that permission is narrower than it would be elsewhere: we cannot and do not index, analyse, display, convert or read it. Search, previews and every other feature that touches note content run on your own device.
Your promises. You confirm that you have the rights needed to store and share what you put in FortyNote, and that it does not break section 6 or anyone else’s rights.
6. Acceptable use
You are responsible for your conduct and your content. You agree not to use the service to:
- break the law, or store or share material that is illegal or that infringes intellectual property or privacy rights;
- harass, threaten or defame others, or share material that is hateful, that sexualises minors, or that incites violence;
- send spam or unsolicited bulk messages through FortyNote’s sharing features;
- distribute malware, phishing pages or other harmful code;
- gain unauthorised access to any account, system or network, or probe or test the service’s security without our written permission;
- interfere with the service, overload our infrastructure, scrape it, or work around usage limits, rate limits or plan limits;
- resell or commercially exploit the service without a written agreement with us;
- impersonate any person or organisation; or
- use the service to build a competing product, or extract data at scale by automated means.
Because your notes are encrypted, we cannot monitor them and we do not try to. We can only act on material we are able to see — content published through a public share link, and information you send us directly. We may investigate reports about that material and remove it or suspend an account under section 14.
7. Sharing and public links
When you create a share link, FortyNote encrypts a copy of that note with a fresh key and puts the key in the link itself, after the “#”. The key in the link never reaches our servers, but anyone who has the link can read the note. Treat a share link as public: don’t post it anywhere you wouldn’t post the note.
You can revoke a link at any time from the app. Revoking stops future access; it cannot recall what someone has already seen or saved.
8. The AI assistant
FortyNote includes an AI assistant. It does nothing until you ask it to. When you do, only the text you selected for that action — the open note, a selection, or the notes matching a question — is sent from your device, through our servers, to our AI provider, which returns an answer. This is the one part of FortyNote where text you have written passes through us in readable form; our Privacy Policy explains it in full.
Its answers can be wrong. AI output may be inaccurate, incomplete or misleading, and you should not rely on it for legal, medical, financial or other professional decisions. You are responsible for checking anything you act on or pass to someone else. We provide the assistant as-is, and sections 20 and 21 apply to it fully.
Allowances. Each plan includes a number of AI requests per calendar month, shown on our pricing page and in Settings. When you reach the limit the assistant pauses until the allowance resets at the start of the next month, or until you upgrade. You may instead connect your own AI provider account in Settings, in which case your requests go directly from your device to that provider under their terms, no allowance applies, and we are not involved.
You may not use the assistant to generate material that breaks section 6, or to work around its limits by automated means.
9. The free tools on our website
Our website offers tools you can use without an account — a word counter, a citation generator, an online notepad, PDF tools, a document scanner, an AI detector, text to speech, transcription, diagrams and a meeting note taker, among others. These terms apply when you use them, even though you have not signed up for anything.
They run on your own device. The work happens in your browser. We do not receive, store or see what you put into them, which also means there is nothing for us to recover if you close the tab. Save anything you want to keep.
What you put in stays yours. We claim no rights over it, and we grant you no rights over anyone else’s material — you are responsible for having permission to use whatever you paste or upload.
The output is a starting point, not a verdict. These tools are free, automated and imperfect. The AI detector in particular produces an estimate from writing patterns; it cannot know who wrote something, and it should never be used on its own to accuse anyone of anything or to make a decision that affects them. The same goes for the rest: check the output before you rely on it. To the maximum extent permitted by law the tools are provided “as is”, with the disclaimers and limits in sections 21 and 22 applying in full.
Fair use. They are offered free for ordinary personal and business use. Don’t automate them, scrape them, resell access to them, or put load on them that interferes with other people. We may rate-limit, change or withdraw any of them at any time.
10. Plans, payment and cancellation
Free and paid plans. Some features are free; others need a paid subscription. Plan features, limits and prices are described on our pricing page and may change. If we raise the price of your plan, we will tell you at least 30 days before it takes effect at your next renewal.
Free trials. A paid plan may start with a free trial. You give us a payment method when you start the trial, but nothing is charged until the trial ends. Cancel any time before the last day of the trial in Settings and you will not be charged. If you do not cancel, the subscription begins automatically at the price shown when you signed up and renews as described below. Trials are one per person; we may refuse or shorten a trial where it has already been used.
Automatic renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless you cancel first. By subscribing you authorise us and our payment processor to charge your payment method at each renewal.
Cancellation. Cancel any time in Settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, and you keep paid features until then.
Refunds. If you are unhappy within 14 days of starting a new paid subscription, contact support and we will refund it in full. After that, charges are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise, and we do not pro-rate partial periods.
Taxes. Prices may exclude tax. You are responsible for any sales tax, VAT, GST or similar charge, which we add where we are required to collect it.
Payments. Payments are handled by Stripe on Stripe’s own pages. We never see or store your card details.
If a paid plan ends. Your account reverts to the free plan. Your content stays where it is, but you may be over the free plan’s limits and unable to add more until you upgrade again or reduce what you are storing. We do not delete your notes because a subscription lapsed.
11. Team plans
If you use FortyNote through a team, the person or organisation that created it (the “account owner”) controls that team: they can invite and remove members, manage shared notebooks, set the number of seats and handle billing. Shared notebooks are encrypted to the team, so members of a notebook can read what is in it — that is the point of sharing — and the account owner decides who those members are.
The account owner is responsible for its members’ use of the service and for telling them what rules apply. If you are a member, your personal notes remain yours and are not readable by the account owner; only content in shared notebooks is shared.
12. Changes to the service
We are always improving FortyNote. We may add, change or remove features, and adjust plan limits such as storage, upload size, device count or AI allowance. We will give reasonable notice of changes that materially reduce what your plan provides.
If we discontinue a paid feature or the service as a whole, we will give you advance notice, time to export everything, and — where you have prepaid — a pro-rata refund for the unused part of your subscription, unless we are ending your account because you broke these terms.
13. Export and deletion
You can export all of your notes at any time from File → Export…, in a plain, readable format. You can delete individual notes, or your whole account, yourself.
When you delete your account, your notes and account record are removed from our systems. Encrypted copies may remain in our backups for up to 30 days before they are overwritten; they are unreadable without your password, which we never had. After that, everything is gone and cannot be restored.
14. Termination
By you. Close your account at any time in Settings. Export your content first — once it is deleted, neither you nor we can recover it. Cancel any paid subscription before closing the account.
By us. We may limit, suspend or close your account if we reasonably believe you have broken these terms, if fees go unpaid, if we are required to by law, or if we are discontinuing the service. Except where the law prevents us or where we must act immediately to prevent harm, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice through the app so that you can export your content.
We will not close your account merely for being inactive.
15. Death or incapacity
We will not hand your account or its contents to anyone after your death or incapacity, including your family, except where a court orders us to. If you want someone to have access, leave your credentials — or an exported copy of your notes — with your will or estate plan.
16. Copyright and other complaints
We respond to valid notices under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and comparable laws. Because we cannot see encrypted notes, this applies in practice to material published through a public share link.
Send notices to legal@fortynote.com, or by mail to the address in section 25, including: what work you say is infringed, the link in question, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised, a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for them, and your signature. We will disable links that are the subject of a valid notice and may close accounts of repeat infringers.
17. Feedback
If you send us suggestions or ideas, we may use them freely and without obligation to you, and they are not confidential. We may already be working on something similar.
18. Beta features
Features labelled beta, preview or early access are experimental. They may change, break or be withdrawn at any time, and may not be supported. Use them at your own risk; sections 20 and 21 apply to them in full.
19. Third parties and links
The service may link to third-party websites. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content or practices. FortyNote’s business is subscriptions, not advertising: we do not show third-party ads, and we do not sell your data to anyone.
20. Our rights in the service
We and our licensors own the service, the FortyNote software, and everything about it except your content — the design, the code, the trademarks and the logos. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the software for the purpose of using the service under these terms. You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer or redistribute it except where the law says you may.
Some parts of FortyNote include open-source components used under their own licences, credited at fortynote.com/opensource.
21. Disclaimers
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT AI OUTPUT WILL BE ACCURATE.
Keep your own backups. Export your notes regularly. No online service should be your only copy of something you cannot afford to lose.
22. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, FORTYNOTE AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, SERVICE PROVIDERS AND LICENSORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL OR USE, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS.
OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) WHAT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) USD $100.
Some places do not allow these exclusions, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, and consumers in the EU, the UK and elsewhere keep every right their local law gives them.
23. Indemnity
To the extent the law permits, you agree to defend and indemnify FortyNote and its affiliates, officers, employees and agents against third-party claims, damages, losses and reasonable legal fees arising out of your content, your use of the service, or your breach of these terms or of anyone else’s rights.
24. Disputes, arbitration and governing law
Talk to us first. Before starting anything formal, email a notice of the dispute to legal@fortynote.com describing the problem and what you want. We will do the same. Both sides will try in good faith to sort it out for 30 days.
Governing law. These terms and any dispute between us are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK or another place whose mandatory consumer law gives you more protection or the right to sue at home, that law applies and nothing here takes it away.
Arbitration (United States). IF YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES, YOU AND FORTYNOTE AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL BE RESOLVED BY BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION, NOT IN COURT AND NOT BEFORE A JURY — except for claims that qualify for small-claims court, and claims to protect intellectual property.
Arbitration will be run by the American Arbitration Association under its consumer rules then in effect. A single arbitrator decides, in English. Claims of USD $10,000 or less are decided on written submissions unless the arbitrator wants a hearing; any hearing is held by video or phone unless the arbitrator finds an in-person hearing necessary, in which case it will be in Travis County, Texas, or somewhere convenient to you.
No class actions. YOU AND FORTYNOTE MAY BRING CLAIMS ONLY INDIVIDUALLY, NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. If 25 or more similar claims are filed by coordinated counsel, they will be handled in batches of up to 100 with one arbitrator and one award per batch.
If any part of this section is unenforceable the rest stands — except that if the class-action waiver is unenforceable, this whole arbitration section is void and disputes go to court.
How to opt out. You may opt out of arbitration by emailing legal@fortynote.com with your account email address and a statement that you opt out, within 30 days of first accepting these terms. Opting out changes nothing else.
Courts. For any dispute not covered by arbitration, you and FortyNote agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts in Travis County, Texas — except that consumers may also bring claims at home where local law requires.
EU consumers. You may also use the European Commission’s Online Dispute Resolution platform.
Time limit. To the extent the law permits, any claim must be brought within one year of arising, or it is barred.
25. Notices and contact
We give notice by email to the address on your account, or by posting in the app and on this page. Notices to us go to legal@fortynote.com, or by mail to:
FortyNote LLC, Attn: Legal
5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100
Austin, TX 78731, United States
Support: support@fortynote.com · Privacy: privacy@fortynote.com
26. Export controls
You may not use or export the service except as U.S. law and the law where you live permit. You confirm you are not in a country under comprehensive U.S. sanctions and not on a U.S. government restricted-party list.
27. Where your data is stored
FortyNote is available worldwide; your encrypted data is stored and processed in the United States, as described in our Privacy Policy. By using the service you consent to that transfer.
28. California users
Under California Civil Code §1789.3, California residents may contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N-112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or by phone at (800) 952-5210.
29. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms as the service, technology or the law changes. For material changes we will post the new version here and show a notice in the app at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you don’t agree, close your account before that date; continuing to use FortyNote afterwards means you accept the new terms.
30. General
These terms, with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and FortyNote about the service and replace anything earlier. If a provision is found unenforceable it will be narrowed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not transfer these terms without our consent; we may transfer them to an affiliate or to a successor in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.