Terms of Use

Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to use Menu Decoder on your own behalf. If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, you confirm that a parent or legal guardian is aware of and permits your use of the app, given that it deals with allergy and health-related information. Menu Decoder is not directed at, and must not be used by, children under 16; a parent or guardian may build and manage a profile on behalf of a child in their care.

Acceptance of these terms

These Terms are presented here for your review before you rely on Menu Decoder. The app's onboarding is designed to show these Terms and require you to accept them at first launch, before your profile is used for a scan. PRE-LAUNCH ACTION confirm that this acceptance step is live in the app's onboarding before public release. Continuing to use the app after that acceptance, or after any later posted update to these Terms, means you accept them as then written.

What this tool is

Menu Decoder is intended as an informational aid for dining decisions — it reads a restaurant menu and compares the text against a dietary profile you set up (allergies, health conditions, medications, religious rules, lifestyle choices, and diet-program preferences). It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. It does not replace the judgment of a doctor, dietitian, or allergist, and it does not replace a conversation with the restaurant serving your food.

License grant

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use Menu Decoder for your own dietary decision-making, or on behalf of someone in your care. This license gives you no ownership interest in the app, its knowledge base, or its underlying software, all of which remain the property of the operator or its licensors.

Your content, and the license you give us

When you submit a menu photo, pasted menu text, a menu link, or your dietary profile, you keep ownership of anything that's yours to own. You grant us a limited license to transmit, process, and display that content — including sending it to the processors named in our Privacy Policy (Google Cloud Vision, Anthropic, and, when used as a fallback, OpenRouter) — solely to generate and return your scan results, chef cards, and recipe lookups. You confirm that you have the right to submit any menu content you upload, and that it doesn't include anyone else's sensitive personal information beyond what's ordinarily printed on a restaurant menu.

The verdict vocabulary is a limitation, not a promise

Menu Decoder's verdicts are AVOID, CAUTION, UNKNOWN — ask staff, and NO FLAG. On purpose, that vocabulary contains no word claiming a dish carries zero risk or that any allergen is absent, because a menu's printed text cannot show what happens in a kitchen — shared equipment, fryer oil, substitutions, or a dish made differently than usual.

Always confirm with restaurant staff

Before ordering, you must independently confirm any dietary concern directly with the restaurant's staff or kitchen. Menu Decoder is a second set of eyes to help you ask better questions — it is not, and is not intended to be, a substitute for that conversation. The app's chef-card feature exists to make that conversation easier, not to replace it.

Acceptable use

You agree not to: use Menu Decoder to make a dietary or safety decision for someone else without their knowledge, in a way that could put them at risk; attempt to interfere with, reverse-engineer, scrape, or overload the service; submit content you don't have the right to submit; or use the app in any way that violates applicable law. We may suspend or restrict access for use that violates this section.

Assumption of risk

Dining decisions — what to order, what to ask about, and whether to eat a dish — remain entirely yours. By using Menu Decoder, you acknowledge that eating at restaurants carries inherent risk that no informational tool can eliminate, and you assume that risk when you choose to order, with or without using this app.

No warranty

Menu Decoder is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Menu reading, optical character recognition, and AI-assisted inference are all capable of error; the app's confidence gating and knowledge base are designed to reduce that risk, not eliminate it.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator of Menu Decoder will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from or related to your use of the app, your reliance on any verdict it produces, or a dining decision you made with or without it. Where a claim of this kind is not otherwise excluded, the operator's total liability to you for it is limited to the greater of $100 USD or the amount you paid the operator for the app in the 12 months before the claim arose.

This limitation does not apply, and the broader protection available under the relevant law applies instead, where you are a consumer in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or a U.S. state whose law does not permit limiting liability to this degree — including, in many places, liability for personal injury caused by negligence. Nothing here is meant to suggest that any particular harm could not occur, or that the operator is not responsible for its own conduct where the law does not allow that responsibility to be limited.

Your responsibility

You agree to hold the operator harmless from third-party claims, and the reasonable cost of defending them, arising directly out of your violation of these Terms or the Acceptable use section above — for example, submitting content you didn't have the right to submit. This section does not apply to your own dining decisions or any injury or illness arising from them, which are addressed above under Assumption of risk and Limitation of liability, not here.

Termination

You may stop using Menu Decoder at any time; because there's no account, this is as simple as deleting the app or clearing your browser's site data. We may suspend or terminate access to the service, in whole or in part, for anyone who violates these Terms, or if we discontinue the service generally. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including the verdict vocabulary explanation, Assumption of risk, No warranty, Limitation of liability, Your responsibility, and Governing law — continue to apply after termination.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions, and any dispute arising from these terms or your use of Menu Decoder will be resolved in the courts or forum designated for [JURISDICTION], subject to applicable law — except that if you are a consumer habitually resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction whose law does not permit this choice of law or forum for consumer disputes, this section does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection law of your own country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts as that law permits.

Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest of these Terms remain in effect, and the unenforceable provision is interpreted to accomplish its original intent to the fullest extent the law allows.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the app changes. We'll update the "last updated" date above when we do. Continued use of Menu Decoder after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to support@menudecoder.app, the operator of Menu Decoder.