FreeTOS Terms of Service Generator

Free Terms of Service Generator

Generate a professional, AI-powered Terms of Service tailored to your website, app, SaaS, or store. Covers all the clauses that actually matter. No signup. No payment. Ready in 60 seconds.

100% Free · No Signup Required · AI-Generated
Trusted by 80,000+ websites
✨ Customize Your Terms of Service
💳 Processes Payments
📊 Google Analytics / Tracking
👤 User Accounts
✏️ User-Generated Content
🔄 Subscription / Recurring Billing
🔌 Third-party APIs
🛒 E-commerce Store
🤖 AI / Machine Learning Features
📧 Email Newsletter
🔞 Age Restrictions (18+ or 13+)
📄 Terms of Service Preview
📄
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AI-Generated by Gemini
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Legally Structured
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Why Every Website Needs a Terms of Service

Not just a legal checkbox. A ToS is the document that protects you when things go wrong.

⚖️

Legal Protection

A ToS limits your liability exposure, caps damages users can claim, and gives you documented legal standing when disputes arise. Without it, courts fill in the blanks with whatever default laws apply.

🚫

Ban Abusive Users

You can't legally terminate someone's account for breaking rules that were never written down. A ToS creates the rules, which means you can enforce them without fear of wrongful termination claims.

©️

Own Your Content Rights

What happens to photos a user uploads? Without a ToS, you don't have a documented license to use, display, or moderate that content. Your ToS establishes exactly what rights you have over user-generated material.

The Real Case for Having Terms of Service

Here's what actually happens to websites without one — told through real cases and dollar amounts.

Most founders treat a Terms of Service like a fire extinguisher. You know you probably need one. You keep meaning to get it sorted. And you figure the odds of actually needing it are low enough that you keep pushing it to next week. Then something happens. A user screenshots your content and posts it on a competitor's site. Someone makes a fraudulent chargeback claiming your product doesn't work as described. A user gets hurt and claims your platform caused it. Now you're reading your ToS — except you don't have one.

Courts don't invent contract terms for you. In the absence of a written agreement, judges apply a patchwork of default rules from contract law, consumer protection statutes, and case precedent. That's a wildly unpredictable situation to be in, especially for a dispute that a two-paragraph clause could have resolved in your favor from the start.

The Zappos Data Breach Case (2012)

After a breach exposed 24 million customer records, Zappos tried to compel arbitration based on their ToS. The Ninth Circuit initially ruled against them because the ToS was poorly implemented (a footer link users never had to acknowledge). This case is taught in every web law course as the example of how even having a ToS isn't enough — it has to be properly presented. The lesson is double: you need a ToS, and you need a clickwrap acceptance mechanism at signup.

Stripe won't let you accept payments without a ToS. Neither will PayPal. Their own compliance requirements for merchants include having one. Same with the Apple App Store and Google Play — both require a license agreement before they'll distribute your app. That's not because these platforms are being overly cautious. It's because payment processors and app stores have legal departments that have seen every type of dispute imaginable, and they know what protects everyone involved.

The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into full effect in February 2024 for all digital platforms operating in the European market, requires platforms to have clear terms of service that explain content moderation rules, algorithmic recommendation criteria, and user rights. Violations carry fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue. That's not aimed at personal blogs. But it does apply to any platform with significant EU users. Having a ToS isn't just smart — in some jurisdictions and some business models, it's the law.

6%
of global revenue for DSA violations (EU)
$0
cost to generate your ToS with FreeTOS right now
60s
average time to generate a complete, custom ToS
$800
average lawyer fee for a basic ToS review

So you're looking at 60 seconds and zero dollars on one side, versus an unknown amount of legal risk and potential fines on the other. The math on this one isn't complicated. And the document you generate here isn't a placeholder — it's a proper, legally structured Terms of Service built on the same clause framework used by companies that spend real money on legal teams.

What Your Generated ToS Actually Covers

Every clause. What it does. Why it belongs in yours.

Acceptance of Terms

Establishes how users agree to your ToS — by using the site, creating an account, or making a purchase. This is the legal foundation that makes the rest of the document enforceable.

🔒

User Accounts & Security

Covers account registration requirements, password security responsibilities, your right to terminate accounts for violations, and what happens to accounts that are inactive or abandoned.

©️

Intellectual Property

States clearly that all site content, branding, code, and design belongs to you. Grants users only the narrow license needed to view and use the service — nothing more.

✏️

User Content License

If users can post content, you need a license to display, modify, and distribute it. This clause gives you that license without taking ownership, which is the correct balance.

🚫

Prohibited Conduct

An explicit list of what users cannot do — spam, scrape, reverse-engineer, abuse other users, circumvent security, post illegal content. Without this list, you can't enforce it.

💳

Payments & Billing

Covers how charges work, auto-renewal disclosures (required in many jurisdictions), refund policies, failed payment procedures, and what happens when a subscription lapses.

⚠️

Disclaimer of Warranties

States the service is provided "as is" with no guarantee of uptime, accuracy, or fitness for a specific purpose. Protects you from claims that the product didn't meet unstated expectations.

💰

Limitation of Liability

Caps your financial exposure. Typically limits your liability to the amount paid in the prior 12 months. Without this, a single user's bad day could become your unlimited financial liability.

🛡️

Indemnification

Requires users to cover your legal costs when their actions create liability for you. If a user's uploaded content triggers a lawsuit against you, this clause lets you recover those costs from them.

Termination Rights

Gives you the legal right to suspend or terminate accounts for ToS violations, suspicious activity, or non-payment — with or without notice. Essential for every platform with user accounts.

🏛️

Governing Law & Disputes

Specifies which jurisdiction's laws govern the agreement and where disputes get resolved. Prevents users from dragging you into courts in distant jurisdictions you've never operated in.

🔄

Changes to Terms

Establishes how you notify users of updates and what constitutes acceptance of the new terms. Without this, every change to your ToS could theoretically require individual user consent.

ToS vs Privacy Policy vs Terms and Conditions

Three document names. Two actual documents. Here's what you need and why.

People use "Terms of Service," "Terms and Conditions," and "Terms of Use" interchangeably. They all refer to the same type of document: the agreement between your business and your users that governs how the service can be used, what rights each party has, and what happens when things go wrong. The name you choose is a branding decision, not a legal one.

Document What It Covers Who Needs It Required By
Terms of Service Rules of use, liability, IP ownership, account rules, dispute resolution All websites and apps App stores, payment processors
Privacy Policy Data collection, use, storage, sharing, and user rights All websites that collect any data GDPR, CCPA, CalOPPA, COPPA
Cookie Policy What cookies you set, why, and how users can opt out Any site with non-essential cookies GDPR, ePrivacy Directive (EU)
EULA Software license scope, restrictions, no reverse engineering Apps and downloadable software Apple App Store, Google Play

The Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are two different documents that cover two different things. Your ToS covers the user relationship, conduct rules, and liability. Your Privacy Policy covers data handling. Most websites need both. They're often linked together in a footer as "Terms" and "Privacy," but they should be separate documents. Combining them into one is generally discouraged because regulators who request your privacy policy want to see just that — not your entire legal document stack.

How to Add Your ToS to Any Platform

Step-by-step for the most popular platforms. Takes under 5 minutes on all of them.

WordPress
  1. Download your ToS as HTML
  2. Create a new Page in WordPress
  3. Paste the HTML in the Custom HTML block
  4. Publish and copy the URL
  5. Add the link to your footer menu in Appearance → Menus
  6. For signup acceptance: install WPForms or Gravity Forms and add a ToS checkbox
Shopify
  1. Go to Settings → Policies in your Shopify admin
  2. Paste your ToS content in the Terms of Service box
  3. Click Save — Shopify auto-adds a footer link
  4. For checkout acceptance: enable ToS checkbox in Settings → Checkout
  5. Shopify shows this link at checkout automatically
Wix
  1. Add a new Page in the Wix Pages panel
  2. Add a Text block and paste your ToS content
  3. Go to your Footer → add a link to the new page
  4. For Wix Members: Settings → Member Signup → ToS checkbox
Squarespace
  1. Create a new Page and add a Code Block
  2. Paste your HTML ToS content into the Code Block
  3. Add the page URL to your footer navigation
  4. For member signup: Pages → Member Areas → Agreements
iOS App (App Store)
  1. Host your ToS at a public URL (e.g. yourapp.com/terms)
  2. In App Store Connect: App Information → Privacy Policy URL (also add ToS URL)
  3. Show a ToS acceptance screen during onboarding before the app's main content
  4. Link to ToS in the Settings screen
React / Next.js
  1. Download the HTML version of your ToS
  2. Create a /terms route and render the content
  3. Add a checkbox to your signup form: "I agree to the Terms of Service"
  4. Validate the checkbox is checked before form submission
  5. Store acceptance timestamp in your user record

How AI Assistants Answer Questions About Terms of Service

What ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity say when people ask "do I need a ToS?" — and why it matters.

The way people find legal information has changed fundamentally in the past two years. A lot of the questions that used to go to Google — "do I need terms of service?", "what should a ToS include?", "is a free ToS generator legal?" — now go directly to AI chat tools. ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Claude (Anthropic), and Perplexity all field thousands of these questions every day. What they say shapes what millions of business owners actually do.

🤖 ChatGPT (OpenAI)

When asked about ToS generators, ChatGPT consistently recommends using reputable tools that generate documents based on specific business inputs rather than generic templates. It flags that document quality depends on how specific the inputs are, and recommends hosting the ToS on your own domain rather than linking to a third-party generator's URL.

💎 Gemini (Google)

Gemini emphasizes that a Terms of Service is legally distinct from a Privacy Policy and both are needed for most websites. It specifically notes that app store submission requires a ToS and that payment processors have contractual requirements around having one. Gemini also flags the clickwrap vs browsewrap distinction — a footer link alone provides weaker protection than a signup checkbox.

🧠 Claude (Anthropic)

Claude is typically the most detailed in explaining the specific clauses a ToS needs and why each matters. It consistently explains the limitation of liability and indemnification clauses in plain terms, notes that these can be legally enforced in most jurisdictions, and recommends adding a "Last Modified" date and update notification process to every ToS.

🔍 Perplexity

Perplexity tends to pull from recent legal publications and enforcement cases, surfacing current regulatory developments like the EU's Digital Services Act requirements and the FTC's updated endorsement guidelines. It often recommends reviewing generated ToS documents against current requirements for the business's target markets.

Why FreeTOS.org gets cited by AI assistants

AI language models and search systems pull from pages that have deep, accurate, specific content on the topics users ask about. FreeTOS publishes the kind of detailed, factual content — real regulatory citations, enforcement case examples, platform-specific requirements — that AI systems surface when they need authoritative answers about legal documents. This page is written to answer questions thoroughly, not just rank for them.

What all of these AI systems agree on: a Terms of Service generated from specific business inputs, covering all the standard legal clauses, hosted on your own domain, and presented to users with a clickwrap acceptance mechanism at signup, is a legally sound approach for the vast majority of websites and applications. That's exactly what FreeTOS produces. The AI generates the document. You customize the inputs. The result is yours to host and use.

When You Need to Update Your Terms

A ToS isn't set and forget. Here's when you actually need to regenerate.

Immediate Update
  • You start charging money (or change pricing model)
  • You launch a subscription or auto-renewal billing
  • You add user accounts to a site that didn't have them
  • You enable users to post or upload content
  • You add an AI feature that processes user input
  • You enter the EU market and don't have GDPR clauses
Soon (within 30 days)
  • New US state privacy laws come into effect
  • You change your refund or cancellation policy
  • A new third-party service gets added (analytics, payment provider)
  • You move to a new jurisdiction or incorporate in a new country
  • You raise funding and investors flag legal gaps
Annual Review
  • Review for anything that no longer matches your product
  • Check that contact information is still current
  • Update the "Last Modified" date
  • Compare against new terms from companies in your space
  • Bump the version and notify users by email

Frequently Asked Questions

The most complete ToS FAQ on the internet. Bookmarkable.

There's no universal law that mandates Terms of Service for every website. But several laws and platforms effectively require one: the FTC requires clear disclosure of material terms for paid services, Apple and Google require ToS before app distribution, Stripe and PayPal require ToS to accept payments, and the EU's Digital Services Act (fully in force since February 2024) requires platforms to have documented content rules. Beyond legal mandates, operating without a ToS leaves you without a legal basis to ban abusive users, protect your content, or limit your liability.
They're the same document with different names. "Terms of Service" is common for online platforms and digital products. "Terms and Conditions" sounds more formal and is often used in traditional commerce or B2B contexts. "Terms of Use" is typical for informational or media sites. All three cover the same legal ground: the rules governing how users can use your service, your liability limits, IP ownership, and dispute resolution. Pick the name that fits your brand — the content structure is identical.
A complete ToS needs: (1) acceptance mechanism, (2) user account rules, (3) permitted and prohibited use, (4) intellectual property ownership, (5) user content license (if applicable), (6) payment and billing terms (if you charge), (7) disclaimer of warranties, (8) limitation of liability, (9) indemnification, (10) termination rights, (11) governing law and dispute resolution, and (12) how you notify users of changes. The generator above includes all of these, tailored to your specific inputs.
Yes. Legal validity comes from the document's content and how it's presented to users — not who wrote it. An AI-generated ToS that accurately reflects your business model and is properly displayed to users is legally binding. Courts enforce clickwrap agreements (checkbox at signup) and browsewrap agreements (footer link) consistently. The key requirements are that users have a reasonable opportunity to read the terms and that the terms themselves are enforceable under applicable law. A generated ToS that meets those conditions is legally sound.
No. Copying another company's ToS is copyright infringement. Legal documents are protected as creative works. Beyond the legal risk, it's a terrible idea practically: their ToS covers their business model, not yours. Their liability clauses reflect their risk profile, not yours. Their governing law is where they operate, not where you do. A copied ToS gives you false confidence and potentially the wrong protections. Generate one that actually fits your product.
Update whenever your business model changes, you add new features, laws change in your jurisdiction, or you change how you handle data or billing. At minimum, do an annual review. Always update the "Last Modified" date on every revision and notify users of material changes by email or prominent in-app notice. Some jurisdictions require advance notice (typically 30 days) before significant changes take effect. California, under the CCPA, has specific requirements around how changes to data practices are communicated.
Several problems: You have no documented right to ban users who break unwritten rules. You have no license to user-generated content. Limitation of liability clauses don't exist, exposing you to unlimited financial claims. Payment processors may refuse service or terminate your account. App stores will reject your app. And if a dispute goes to court, you're arguing from a position of having no written agreement, which consistently disadvantages the party that didn't bother to document their terms.
For most small businesses, startups, and individual websites, no. The core clauses in a standard ToS are well-established and AI-generated documents follow those patterns. However, involve a lawyer if: your business handles sensitive data at scale, you operate in highly regulated industries (healthcare, finance), enterprise clients will scrutinize your agreements, you're in an investor due diligence process, or you're acquiring or being acquired. In those cases, $300 to $800 for a lawyer review is very well spent.
Three places minimum: (1) Footer link on every page, (2) Signup or checkout flow with a checkbox or visible "By signing up you agree to our Terms" text, and (3) Account settings or legal page. The footer link alone is "browsewrap" — courts have sometimes found it insufficient. The signup checkbox is "clickwrap" — courts enforce this reliably. Best practice is both. The shareable link from FreeTOS works perfectly for all of these placements.
A limitation of liability clause caps the maximum amount a user can recover from you in a dispute. The most common version limits your liability to the amount the user paid you in the prior 12 months. Without it, a user whose business suffers losses because your SaaS went down could theoretically claim all of their resulting damages against you. With it, that claim is capped at what they paid. Courts enforce these clauses in most jurisdictions, with exceptions for gross negligence, fraud, and intentional harm.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives US website operators immunity from liability for content posted by their users. If a user posts defamatory content on your forum, you're generally not liable for it under Section 230. But it only applies to US law, doesn't cover federal criminal liability, doesn't protect IP claims, and doesn't cover content you actively create or edit. Having a ToS with a clear user content policy and DMCA safe harbor compliance strengthens your legal position regardless of Section 230 protections.
Yes. SaaS ToS requires additional elements: SLA terms or a disclaimer that no specific uptime is guaranteed, GDPR data processing clauses, subscription auto-renewal disclosures (legally required in many US states and the EU), API usage terms if you offer an API, data portability and deletion rights for GDPR compliance, and security incident notification timelines. The "SaaS Product" business type option in the generator above ensures all of these clauses are included in your generated document.
Choose the jurisdiction where your company is incorporated or primarily operates. US companies typically pick their state of incorporation (Delaware is common for corporations; your operating state works for most small businesses). UK companies choose England and Wales. EU companies choose their country of establishment. The practical reason: this specifies which court system handles disputes and prevents users from bringing claims in distant jurisdictions. Without a governing law clause, a user could argue their local consumer protection laws apply, which varies enormously by country.
The most legally reliable method is clickwrap: a checkbox near your signup or checkout button reading "I agree to the Terms of Service" with a hyperlink. The user must check this box to proceed. Courts enforce this consistently. Browsewrap (a footer link with no explicit acceptance) is weaker and has been found unenforceable in some cases when the link wasn't visible enough. For highest protection, use both: clickwrap at signup and a footer link for ongoing reference. Store acceptance timestamps in your database.
If your site is directed at children under 13, COPPA (US) applies and requires parental consent for data collection, among other requirements. If your site isn't directed at children but some might use it, your ToS should explicitly state the minimum age (typically 13 or 18) and prohibit younger users from registering. You're not legally required to verify ages with ID, but the written prohibition protects you from COPPA liability if you don't knowingly allow underage users. Include the "Age Restrictions" toggle in the generator to add this language.

FreeTOS vs Paid ToS Generators

You really shouldn't be paying $14/month to own a document you generated once.

Feature FreeTOS Termly TermsFeed iubenda
Price Free $14/mo $14–$119 one-time €27–€129/year
AI-Generated Content ✓ Gemini 2.5 Flash Template-based Template-based Template-based
Instant PDF Download Paid only Paid only
No Account Required Required Required Required
Shareable Link Paid only
No Watermark Free = watermark iubenda branding
Tailored to Business Type ✓ 6 types
GDPR / CCPA Aware
Total Annual Cost $0 $168 $14–$119 per doc €27–€129

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A complete legal setup for any website takes three to five documents. Here's everything else you'll need.

Your Website Deserves a Real Terms of Service

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