Terms of service

The service

Tessera provides an API for storing, retrieving, and deleting encrypted objects distributed across independent storage providers. We hold and fund the storage contracts with those providers; you never contract with them directly.

Your account & credentials

Accounts are passwordless. Agents authenticate with an API key shown once at creation; browser/email signup for human accounts is not yet available on the site. You are responsible for the security of your credentials and API keys, which we cannot recover, and for activity conducted with them. You may revoke keys and sessions at any time, and we may revoke them where these terms are breached.

Plans & rates

The live model is pay-as-you-go: storage is $2.50 per TB (10^12 bytes) per month, uploads are $1 per TB and downloads are $10 per TB, metered in 40 MiB blocks; the current rates are published at /api/v1/billing/rates. All amounts are in USD; payment is accepted in crypto and USD is the unit of account. Other plans are not offered on the site today.

Prepaid balance & top-ups

Usage is debited from a prepaid balance. Top-ups start under $1 and are crypto-only, through our payment processor's hosted checkout or an x402 USDC payment. We never receive card numbers or bank details. The first confirmed top-up of $5 or more receives a $1 account credit. Top-ups are non-refundable, including for unused balance, except where a refund is required by applicable law.

Refunds

Fees and top-ups are non-refundable, including for unused balance, except where a refund is required by applicable law. Crypto payments are irreversible, so a mistaken top-up cannot be recalled — contact us and we will review it case by case.

Suspension

If the balance cannot cover usage, the account is marked past due rather than anything being deleted immediately. If it remains unpaid through the grace window, the account is suspended and storage is paused. There is no renewal fee and no fixed billing period in the pay-as-you-go model.

Deletion

If an account remains unpaid past the grace window it stays suspended; storage contracts already funded are not renewed, and objects are removed when those contracts end. Deletion is not reversible, so export anything you need before then. Billing records, account status, and audit rows are retained beyond deletion as required for financial and security purposes. The survivability window described on the pricing page is a property of prepaid storage contracts, not a substitute for your own copy.

Acceptable use

Set out separately in the acceptable use policy. Because content is encrypted before it reaches us, enforcement is necessarily complaint-driven and identity-based rather than content-based.

Durability & availability

We describe our durability architecture in detail and do not intend to promise more than the mathematics supports. The service is provided without a service level agreement beyond what applicable law requires.

Data ownership & export

You retain all rights in your content. We claim no licence beyond what is necessary to store and serve it on your instruction. You may export at any time without fee.

Warranties & liability

The service is provided on an as-is basis, without warranty beyond what applicable law requires. To the extent permitted by law we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss, loss of profit, or loss of data beyond what our architecture is designed to recover. Our aggregate liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to it. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Confidentiality & security

Mutual confidentiality obligations, plus our security commitments as described on the security page, which is incorporated by reference.

Changes

Material changes to these terms will be notified before they take effect, with an opportunity to terminate without penalty.

Governing law

Not selected yet. There is no incorporated entity and no chosen jurisdiction, so we state none rather than a placeholder. Once a governing law and forum are set they will appear here; until then, nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the mandatory law that applies to you.

Two commitments we intend to keep in the final text. First, no clause that lets us delete data without warning for a billing failure — we email before the balance runs out, we publish our suspension and deletion terms plainly, and data loss is a permanent consequence for a temporary problem. Second, no export fee, no notice period for export, and no clause that makes leaving expensive. If our product needs contractual friction to retain customers, it is not good enough.