Terms of Service

Acarta is a social field guide for architecture, monuments, public art, and landscapes. It lets you browse a map of places, check in when you visit them, track what you've seen, earn badges, follow friends, build maps, and read articles about the built world. The Service includes a website, mobile apps, a web application, and APIs.

Acarta is a guide to places, not a travel agency or navigation provider. We do not guarantee that any place is open, safe, accessible, or still standing. Always confirm with the place itself before you travel.

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. In jurisdictions where the minimum age of digital consent is higher (for example 16 in some EU countries), you must meet that higher age. By using the Service you represent that you meet the applicable age requirement and have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms.

If you are under 18, you should use Acarta only with the involvement of a parent or guardian. The Service is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.

You are responsible for anything that happens under your account. Keep your sign-in credentials secret and don't share them. If you suspect your account has been compromised, contact hello@acarta.app immediately.

You may sign in with Apple or with Google. Your relationship with those sign-in providers is governed by their own terms. Acarta stores only the minimum identifier needed to keep you signed in.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of any applicable fees, Acarta grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Service for your own personal, non-commercial exploration of the built world.

You may not, directly or indirectly: (a) resell, rent, or sublicense the Service; (b) reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code behind the Service; (c) scrape, harvest, or bulk-export data from the Service except through documented APIs and within documented limits; (d) use the Service to build a competing product; (e) circumvent any security, rate limit, or access control; or (f) use the Service in a way that would violate applicable law.

You retain all ownership and intellectual property rights in the photos, check-ins, notes, maps, comments, and other materials you create, upload, or import into the Service ("Your Content").

You grant Acarta a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, process, transmit, adapt (for resizing and format conversion), and display Your Content solely as required to operate the Service for you and for other users according to the visibility settings you choose. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for backups and logs retained for a limited period and public-guide contributions retained anonymously as described in our Privacy Policy.

For photos you attach to a place's public gallery, you additionally grant Acarta a non-exclusive licence to display them alongside the place on the map, in search results, and in place profiles visible to other Acarta users. You may delete such photos from the public gallery before deleting your account, or contact us if you need help with a specific contribution.

We do not use Your Content to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models, and we do not grant any such right to our third-party processors.

Aggregated, anonymized insights. Acarta may produce aggregated, anonymized reports drawn from Service usage - for example, counts of check-ins by audience segment, or the relative popularity of architectural styles in a city - and share those reports with city governments, tourism bodies, museums, and other cultural partners to support public architecture and public space. These reports never contain user-level rows, free text, raw coordinates, individual timestamps, or anything that could reasonably identify you. Data from users who selected an "Under 16" age bracket is never included in any external report, and data from users aged 16-17 is subject to stricter aggregation rules than adult data. This is described in detail, including the applicable safeguards and your rights, in Section 05 of our Privacy Policy.

You represent and warrant that you own Your Content, or that you have all rights, licences, consents, and permissions necessary to upload, store, modify, and display it through the Service. This includes any photos you upload, import from your camera roll, or take inside the app.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that Your Content does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, publicity, privacy, or other rights. Acarta has no obligation to police, filter, or verify the legal status of user content, but we may remove content that we reasonably believe infringes rights, violates these Terms, or otherwise poses a risk to the Service or to other users.

Reference photos of places sourced from third parties retain their original license and attribution. If you want to reuse a reference photo, check the license inside Acarta before you do.

Acarta check-ins are intended to represent real visits to real places. We verify the coordinates your device reports at the moment you tap Check in against the coordinates of the place. If they are far apart, we may reject the check-in.

You can retro-date a past visit that you remember - for example, a trip to Rome last summer - without fresh GPS verification. Retro-dated check-ins are clearly marked as such on your profile.

Do not fake check-ins. Spoofing your GPS, checking in at places you haven't visited, or otherwise manipulating the system to earn badges you have not earned may result in your check-in being removed or your account being suspended.

Acarta is a small community. Keep it that way. Be kind to other users, credit the places you share, don't spam the feed, and don't use Acarta to harass anyone.

We may remove comments, check-ins, photos, profiles, or entire accounts at our reasonable discretion if we believe they violate these Terms or the spirit of the community. For repeated or serious violations we may suspend or terminate accounts without refund.

You agree not to use the Service to create, store, upload, or publish content that:

• is unlawful, defamatory, fraudulent, or misleading;
• infringes intellectual property, publicity, privacy, or other rights;
• depicts or sexualises minors in any way;
• promotes violence, terrorism, self-harm, or hate against a protected group;
• impersonates another person or misrepresents your affiliation;
• contains malware, spyware, or phishing material;
• spams or coordinates inauthentic behaviour on the feed.

You also agree not to (a) probe or attempt to bypass security or rate limits, (b) use the Service to generate training data for AI models, (c) run large-scale automation that degrades the Service for other users, or (d) resell raw access to the Service.

Acarta is free to download, browse, and use. Some features - including the full story behind every place and architect, offline city maps, unlimited maps, and advanced stats - require an Acarta Pro subscription.

Plans and length of each subscription period.

• Acarta Pro Weekly - billed every 1 week. You retain Pro features for each paid week.
• Acarta Pro Annual - billed every 12 months. Includes a 7-day free trial for users who have not previously redeemed it. You retain Pro features for each paid year.

Price. The price of each plan in your local currency is shown on the purchase screen before you confirm the purchase. Prices may vary by country and are subject to local taxes. The price per billing period shown at the time of purchase is the price you will be charged at each renewal unless the platform or checkout provider notifies you of a change in advance.

Payment and auto-renewal. Payment is handled by the platform or checkout shown at purchase: Apple App Store on iOS, Google Play on Android, or a web checkout provider where web subscriptions are available. Your subscription automatically renews at the same price and for the same period unless auto-renew is turned off before the deadline shown by that platform or checkout. No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during the active subscription period.

Free trial. If your plan includes a free trial, any unused portion of the trial period is forfeited when you purchase a subscription. If you do not cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, the subscription will automatically convert to a paid subscription at the price shown at the time of purchase.

Managing and cancelling. You can manage and cancel your subscription, or turn off auto-renewal, through the same platform or checkout used for purchase: Apple ID account settings (iOS), Google Play account settings (Android), or the web checkout/customer portal if web subscriptions are offered. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period; Pro features remain active until then.

Refunds. Refund requests are handled by the platform or checkout provider that processed the payment under its own policies. If you believe you are entitled to a refund under EU consumer protection law, email us at hello@acarta.app and we will help.

EU right of withdrawal. If you are a consumer in the EU/EEA, you have a 14-day right of withdrawal from the date of purchase of digital content. By starting to use the paid features during that period you expressly consent to the immediate provision of digital content and acknowledge that your right of withdrawal ends once access begins, to the extent permitted by Swedish law.

Price changes. We may change plan prices. The relevant platform or checkout provider will notify you before any renewal at a new price where required, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

Where you pay. Paid subscriptions are purchased and billed through the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or a web checkout provider, depending on where you buy. The checkout screen identifies the seller, price, billing period, renewal terms, and cancellation path before purchase. Subscription state is managed for us by RevenueCat.

By purchasing an Acarta Pro subscription you also agree to our Privacy Policy.

Acarta compiles its place catalogue from openly licensed third-party sources, our own research, and user contributions. We preserve the original attribution and license for every image and fact. If you see a place page where the attribution is missing, wrong, or a photo is miscategorised, tell us at hello@acarta.app and we will fix it.

Nothing in these Terms grants you a licence to the underlying third-party data beyond what its original license permits.

Acarta respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. If you believe content on Acarta (for example, a photo attached to a place page) infringes your copyright, send a takedown notice to hello@acarta.app with:

• identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
• a direct URL or the Acarta asset identifier of the allegedly infringing material;
• your contact details (name, email, postal address);
• a statement made in good faith that use of the material is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are, or are authorised to act on behalf of, the rights holder;
• your physical or electronic signature.

On receipt of a valid notice we will remove or disable access to the material, notify the affected user, and record the takedown. The affected user may submit a counter-notice using the same email address. Acarta may suspend or terminate accounts of users who are subject to repeat infringement notices. The same process applies, with local adaptation, to take-down requests under the EU Digital Services Act and comparable laws in other jurisdictions.

Acarta enforces these Terms through a mix of user reports, automated safety scanning, and human review by Acarta administrators. This Section explains how to report content, how we decide, and how to appeal a decision. The Privacy Policy describes the data handling that powers this Section (see Privacy Policy Section 07 "Automated safety moderation").

Reporting content or accounts. Inside the app, you can report a place, a check-in, a comment, a photo, a profile, or another user from the relevant menu. You can also email hello@acarta.app from any account, including non-users, with a link or screenshot, a category (for example: spam, harassment, illegal content, intellectual property, sexual content, minor safety, impersonation), and any context that helps. For copyright in particular, use the path described in Section 12.

Notices of illegal content (EU DSA). If you are notifying Acarta of content you believe is illegal under EU or member-state law, send the notice to hello@acarta.app with: (a) a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why the content is illegal; (b) a clear indication of the exact location of the content (URL or in-app identifier); (c) your name and contact details, unless the notice concerns content involving the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, missing-child, or other offences referred to in Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU, in which case you may submit anonymously; and (d) a statement that you believe in good faith that the information and allegations are accurate and complete. We acknowledge receipt of such notices and process them with priority.

How decisions are made. Reported content and content flagged by automated scanning is reviewed by Acarta administrators in non-obvious cases. Cheap pattern rules and the Claude classifier described in our Privacy Policy may quarantine or hide manifestly unsafe content automatically (for example, credible threats or apparent CSAM), pending or in addition to human review. Decisions take into account the severity of the violation, the user's history, the rights and safety of other users, and our legal obligations.

Actions we may take. Depending on the case, we may: leave content untouched; warn the author privately; require an edit; hide content from public view; remove content; restrict an account's ability to post or check in; suspend an account temporarily; or terminate an account permanently. We may also report content to competent authorities where required by law (for example, suspected CSAM).

Notifying you. When we take action against your content or account on the basis of these Terms or applicable law, we will notify you by email or in-app message where reasonably possible, with enough information for you to understand the decision and to exercise your right to appeal. Exceptions may apply where notification would jeopardize a legal investigation, the safety of another user, or the integrity of our moderation systems.

Appeals. If you believe a decision was wrong, you can appeal by replying to the notification email or by sending a new email to hello@acarta.app from the address on the affected account. State the action you are appealing, the reason you believe it was wrong, and any additional context. A human administrator who was not the original decision-maker, where practicable, will review the appeal and respond with a decision. If we agree your appeal is well founded, we will restore content or access. If you remain dissatisfied, you also have the right to use any out-of-court dispute settlement body certified under the EU Digital Services Act and to bring the matter before the competent court.

Repeat misuse. Accounts that file manifestly unfounded notices or appeals in bad faith, or that repeatedly violate these Terms after warnings, may have their reporting privileges or accounts suspended.

Response times. We aim to acknowledge reports and appeals promptly. Acarta is a small team, so response time depends on volume and complexity. We prioritize safety-critical reports (credible threats, minor safety, sexual content involving minors) over all others.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, if your use creates legal, security, or reputational risk for Acarta or other users, if required by law, or if your payment method fails and is not resolved after a reasonable grace period.

You may stop using the Service at any time by deleting the app and, if you wish to erase your data, requesting account deletion from your settings, by email, or via acarta.app/privacy/data-deletion. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including Your Content, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law) will continue to apply.

The Service depends on third-party infrastructure and providers, including but not limited to Cloudflare (Workers, Pages, R2, CDN, email, queues, and rate limiting), Neon (Postgres), Mapbox (maps), Apple and Google (sign-in, billing, push, and platform services), RevenueCat (subscriptions), PostHog EU (product analytics), Sentry (crash and error diagnostics), Anthropic (translation and editing support, automated text moderation), Cloudflare Workers AI (automated image moderation), and Expo (mobile app runtime services and updates). We select providers we trust, but outages or errors in those services may affect the Service. We are not responsible for downtime, data loss, or damages caused by third parties, and our liability for such events is subject to the limitations below.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE, OR THAT ANY PLACE DATA WILL BE ACCURATE, UP TO DATE, OR COMPLETE. YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

This disclaimer does not affect any statutory rights that cannot be waived or limited under applicable consumer protection laws, including those of the EU/EEA.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, VÄDER AB SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST DATA, GOODWILL, REPUTATIONAL HARM, OR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM PHYSICAL INJURY OR TRAVEL DECISIONS MADE BASED ON INFORMATION IN THE SERVICE, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

IN NO EVENT SHALL OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU EXCEED THE GREATER OF ONE HUNDRED EUROS (€100) OR THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID TO ACARTA IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages; in those jurisdictions, our liability will be limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Väder AB and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) Your Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your violation of these Terms; or (d) your violation of any law or of the rights of any third party.

These Terms are governed by the laws of Sweden, without regard to conflict of laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved by the competent courts of Sweden. If you are a consumer resident in the EU/EEA, nothing in this section affects mandatory consumer protection rules of your country of residence.

If you downloaded Acarta from the Apple App Store, you acknowledge that these Terms are between you and Väder AB only, and not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for Acarta or its content. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support services with respect to the Service. In the event of any failure of the Service to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any); to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple will have no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the Service. Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms as they relate to your license to the iOS app.

If you downloaded Acarta from the Google Play Store, your use is also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email or by a notice in the Service, and by updating the date at the top of this page. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to a change, your sole remedy is to stop using the Service and cancel your subscription.

If you have any questions about these Terms, contact us at hello@acarta.app.