Terms of Service

The agreement between you and RealDex. Written to be read: short sections, plain language, and no attempt to disclaim rights your local law gives you.

These Terms govern your use of the RealDex mobile application. By downloading or using it, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the app.

Some of this document is necessarily formal. Where a section carries real consequences for you — billing, safety, liability — there is a plain-language note explaining what it actually means.

1. What RealDex is

RealDex identifies wildlife from photographs and files each encounter in a collection you build.

• Identification runs on your device using our own model, and works with no network connection.
• Cloud AI is an optional extra that sends one image to a third-party AI service when you ask for it.
• The app is free to download. Free use is supported by advertising.
• Paid subscriptions remove ads and raise Cloud AI limits.

We may change, add or remove features, and may change or replace the AI models and providers behind identification. Where a change materially reduces what you have paid for, we will give notice.

Identification results are estimates, not facts. See section 10.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 13 years old to use RealDex. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use it only with the involvement of a parent or guardian to the extent your local law requires.

You may not use RealDex if you are barred from doing so under any applicable law, or under the terms of the app store you obtained it from.

3. Your licence

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use RealDex for personal, non-commercial purposes.

All intellectual property in the app — the software, the trained models, the design, text, graphics and marks — belongs to us or our licensors. Using the app grants you no ownership of any of it.

RealDex incorporates third-party open-source components; their licences continue to apply to them.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

Against the app

• Use it for unlawful, harmful or fraudulent purposes
• Interfere with or disrupt it, or the services it depends on
• Reverse engineer, decompile or extract source code or model weights, except where law expressly permits it
• Circumvent usage limits, subscription checks, advertising, or anti-abuse controls
• Scrape, bulk-download or redistribute species data, imagery or model outputs
• Probe or test the security of our systems without written permission — see Security for how to do this properly

Against animals

• Bait, chase, corner, feed, handle or otherwise disturb wildlife in order to photograph it
• Enter closed habitats, protected areas or private land without permission
• Use the app in any way that breaches wildlife protection law where you are

Against other people

• Submit photographs of identifiable people without the rights or consent required where you are
• Use the app to follow, monitor, harass or locate any person
• Photograph people or property in circumstances where they would reasonably expect privacy

We may suspend or terminate access for breach of this section.

5. Your content

Photographs and encounter records you create remain yours. We claim no ownership.

Almost all of it never reaches us — it stays on your device. When you use Cloud AI, you grant us and our processors a limited licence to process that image solely to return an identification result and to operate and secure the feature. That licence covers nothing else: not training, not publication, not any other product.

You confirm that you hold the rights necessary to submit anything you send, and that doing so infringes nobody's copyright, privacy or publicity rights.

We may remove or refuse to process content where required by law or to protect the service. There is no public feed, so there is no public content to moderate.

Copyright complaints. If you believe material processed by RealDex infringes your copyright, email alpyalay@gmail.com with the subject "Copyright" and identify the work, the material, your contact details, and a statement that you hold the rights or act for the holder. We will investigate, remove infringing material where appropriate, and terminate repeat infringers.

6. Cloud AI

Cloud AI is optional and off unless you invoke it. When you do, the selected image is sent to our cloud function and processed by a third-party AI service — currently Google Gemini.

Results are best-effort and may be wrong. We may change model or provider; the Privacy Policy records who currently processes these requests. Availability is not guaranteed and requests are rate limited.

7. Subscriptions and billing

Full detail is on the Subscriptions and refunds page. In summary:

• Price, billing period and any trial terms are shown before you purchase.
• Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel.
• Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends to avoid the next charge.
• You cancel through the store account you subscribed with — Apple or Google — not through us. We cannot cancel it for you.
• Free trials convert to paid unless cancelled before they end.
• Refunds are issued by Apple or Google under their policies. We do not process payments and cannot issue refunds directly, though we will help you approach them.
• Statutory rights are unaffected. Where your law gives you a cancellation, withdrawal or refund right — such as the EU/UK right of withdrawal or rights under Turkish consumer protection law — this section does not limit it.

If we materially change subscription pricing or what a subscription includes, we will give notice as the applicable store rules and consumer law require.

8. Advertising

Free users see ads served by Google AdMob. Ads are non-personalised by default on both platforms; personalisation on iOS depends on your App Tracking Transparency response. How this works is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Advertisers are not our partners in any editorial sense and we do not endorse advertised products.

9. Safety in the field

This section is the one to actually read.

RealDex is a recreational app about looking at animals outdoors. Using it does not make an animal safe to approach.

• Do not approach, chase, feed, handle or corner wildlife.
• Do not rely on RealDex to judge whether an animal is venomous, dangerous, or safe. A confident identification can still be wrong.
• Do not use it while driving, cycling, or moving in traffic.
• Do not use it in an emergency. Call your local emergency number.
• Do not trespass, and obey posted rules and wildlife protection law.
• Take care near water, cliffs, roads and in poor light.

You are responsible for your own conduct and safety, and for anyone in your care.

10. Identification accuracy

Species identification is machine learning and is wrong sometimes — both on-device and in the cloud. Confidence scores are estimates.

RealDex must not be relied on for professional, emergency, legal, veterinary, medical, conservation-enforcement or regulatory decisions. Conservation-status information is drawn from third-party sources and may be out of date.

Verify anything that matters against an authoritative source.

11. Third-party services

RealDex depends on Google Firebase, Google Gemini, RevenueCat, Google AdMob, iNaturalist, and the Apple and Google app stores. Your use of those services is subject to their terms.

Their involvement does not displace this agreement: these Terms still govern RealDex itself.

12. Availability

We aim to keep RealDex working but do not guarantee uninterrupted availability. Cloud features depend on third parties and may be interrupted, limited or withdrawn.

Because identification runs on your device, the core of the app keeps working during an outage — which is much of the point of building it that way.

13. Disclaimers

RealDex is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

This does not override rights you cannot waive. Consumers in the EEA, UK, Türkiye and other jurisdictions have statutory guarantees that cannot be excluded by contract. Nothing here attempts to exclude them, and where local law says a disclaimer is unenforceable, it does not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent the law permits, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data or profits, arising from your use of RealDex.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or ten euros.

We do not limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that applicable law does not permit to be limited.

15. Indemnity

If you use RealDex unlawfully or in breach of section 4 and a third party brings a claim as a result, you agree to cover our reasonable costs in defending it.

This applies to misuse — not to ordinary use of the app, and not to claims arising from our own acts or omissions. If you are a consumer, this section applies only to the extent your local law permits.

16. Export controls and sanctions

You may not use RealDex in breach of applicable export control or sanctions laws, and you may not use it if you are located in, ordinarily resident in, or acting on behalf of a party subject to comprehensive restrictions, to the extent that is prohibited.

17. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these Terms, or where required for legal or operational reasons. You can end this agreement at any time by uninstalling.

Termination does not by itself cancel a subscription bought through an app store — cancel that through the store — and does not affect the data on your device, which remains yours and stays where it is.

18. Accessibility

We want RealDex to be usable by as many people as possible, and we treat accessibility barriers as defects. See the Accessibility statement for current status, known gaps and how to report a problem.

19. Apple and Google

Apple. These Terms are between you and us, not Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide support for RealDex. Apple is not responsible for any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, for product liability claims, or for third-party intellectual property claims. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.

Google. Distribution through Google Play is subject to Google Play's terms. Google is not a party to these Terms and is not responsible for RealDex.

20. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by events beyond reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, civil unrest, industrial action, and failures of network infrastructure or third-party providers.

21. Notices and changes

We may give notice through the app, through the app store listing, or on this website. We may update these Terms; we will revise the "last updated" date and give notice in the app for changes that materially affect you. Continuing to use RealDex after a change means you accept it — and if you do not, you can stop using the app and cancel any subscription.

22. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye, without regard to conflict of law principles. Disputes will be heard in the courts of Türkiye.

If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts where your law gives you that right. Consumers in Türkiye may also apply to the Consumer Arbitration Committees.

There is no mandatory arbitration clause and no class-action waiver in this agreement.

23. General

If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us about RealDex. You may not assign them; we may assign them to a successor.

This document is written in English, which is the controlling version. Translations are provided for convenience.

24. Contact

Alp Yalay — alpyalay@gmail.com

Related pages: Privacy Policy · Subscriptions and refunds · Accessibility · Security · Support