Terms of Service

Agreement to Terms

These Terms of Service govern your use of Costbase, an enterprise LLM gateway platform. By creating an account, accessing our service, or using our API, you agree to be bound by these terms. If you do not agree to these terms, you may not use Costbase.

Costbase provides intelligent routing, semantic caching, and cost optimization for your LLM infrastructure through a bring-your-own-keys (BYOK) architecture. You maintain direct relationships with LLM providers while we optimize your request routing, reduce costs through caching, and provide analytics and monitoring tools.

Service Description

Core Features

Intelligent Routing: Our system analyzes your prompts to detect task type (coding, creative writing, analysis, translation, etc.) and complexity level, then selects the optimal model from your configured providers based on your optimization preferences (cost, quality, speed, or balanced).

Semantic Caching: We cache responses to similar prompts using embedding-based similarity matching to reduce costs and improve response times. Cache entries have a configurable time-to-live with a default of one hour.

Cost Analytics: We provide real-time usage dashboards showing costs by provider and model, request volume trends, cache hit rates, token consumption tracking, and savings calculations compared to baseline models.

Budget Management: You can set organization-level budget limits, configure alert thresholds (50%, 75%, 90%, 100%), receive webhook and email notifications, and enforce automatic rate limiting when budgets are exceeded.

Multi-Provider Support: We support major LLM providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, xAI, Groq, and DeepSeek. You can connect multiple providers using your own API keys and our system routes requests based on availability and optimization goals.

Organization Features: Create organizations with multiple team members, manage role-based access control, create separate projects within organizations, track usage per project, and share API keys across the organization.

Security Features: We provide multi-factor authentication (TOTP-based), API key management with project-level scoping, rate limiting and abuse prevention, optional PII/PHI detection guardrails, and webhook notifications for security events.

BYOK Architecture

You maintain direct billing relationships with LLM providers and use your own API keys. We never resell LLM services or add markups to provider costs. Your API keys are encrypted and stored securely, used exclusively to route your requests through our optimization layer. You can add, remove, or rotate provider keys at any time.

Account Requirements and Responsibilities

Account Creation

You must provide accurate information including a valid email address and complete name during registration. You agree to keep your account information current and accurate. Accounts require authentication via Google OAuth, enterprise SSO (SAML 2.0 or OIDC), or other supported identity providers.

Account Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials including login credentials, API keys, and MFA secrets if enabled. You must notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorized access to your account or API keys. You are fully responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, whether authorized or not.

Account Usage

You must ensure all team members with access to your account comply with these terms. You should monitor your usage regularly using our dashboard and configure appropriate budget limits to avoid unexpected costs from LLM providers. You are responsible for all costs incurred with LLM providers when using your API keys through our gateway.

Enterprise SSO

If using enterprise SSO, you are responsible for maintaining your identity provider configuration and ensuring it remains accessible. We are not responsible for authentication failures caused by identity provider issues.

Acceptable Use Policy

Permitted Use

You may use Costbase only for lawful purposes, in accordance with these terms, and in compliance with all applicable LLM provider terms of service. Your use must respect intellectual property rights of others and comply with relevant data protection regulations.

Prohibited Activities

You must not engage in the following activities:

Security Violations: Do not attempt to circumvent our security measures, rate limiting, or budget controls. Do not attempt to gain unauthorized access to our systems, networks, or other users' accounts. Do not reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from our platform. Do not probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our systems without written authorization.

Abuse and Fraud: Do not use the service to transmit malicious code, viruses, or harmful software. Do not engage in fraudulent activities or misrepresent your identity. Do not create multiple accounts to circumvent rate limits or free tier restrictions. Do not attempt to manipulate our billing or usage tracking systems.

Service Integrity: Do not resell or white-label our service without explicit written authorization. Do not use the service in a manner that could damage, disable, or impair our infrastructure. Do not interfere with other users' access to or use of the service.

Content Restrictions: You must comply with all LLM provider content policies and acceptable use policies. You are solely responsible for the content of prompts you send through our gateway. Do not use our service to generate, distribute, or store illegal content.

Guardrails Compliance

If you enable our PII/PHI detection guardrails, you acknowledge that automated detection is not perfect. You remain responsible for compliance with data protection regulations. The guardrail feature is provided as a tool to assist you but does not guarantee complete protection.

Service Availability and Maintenance

Uptime and Reliability

We strive to maintain high service availability and implement automatic failover mechanisms to minimize disruptions. Our intelligent routing system automatically fails over to alternative providers if the primary provider is unavailable (unless you explicitly disable failover). However, we cannot guarantee uninterrupted access at all times.

Service Disruptions

Service availability depends on the availability of LLM providers you've configured. We are not responsible for outages, performance degradation, or service interruptions originating from LLM providers. Scheduled maintenance will be announced in advance when possible through email notifications and dashboard notices. We maintain a public status page where you can monitor current service health and review historical uptime data.

Emergency Maintenance

In cases of security threats or critical infrastructure issues, we may perform emergency maintenance without advance notice. We will notify you as soon as reasonably possible and work to restore service quickly.

Subscription Plans and Pricing

Plan Tiers

We offer multiple subscription tiers with different feature limits:

Free Plan: Basic features including limited monthly requests, basic analytics, and community support. Suitable for individuals and small teams getting started.

Pro Plan: Includes more monthly requests, advanced analytics, priority support, custom webhooks, and enhanced features.

Team Plan: Designed for growing teams with significantly higher request limits, multi-project support, organization collaboration features, and advanced guardrail capabilities.

Enterprise Plan: Unlimited requests, unlimited projects and team members, dedicated support, custom SLAs, SSO integration (SAML/OIDC), and custom enterprise features.

Pricing Model

Our pricing is based on request volume according to your selected plan tier. Each plan includes a monthly request limit. Your usage is measured by the number of requests made through our gateway, regardless of whether they are served from cache or routed to providers.

Billing Cycles

Monthly Plans: Billing occurs monthly on the anniversary of your subscription date. Payment is due immediately upon subscription and at each monthly renewal.

Annual Plans: Billing occurs annually with a discounted rate compared to monthly billing. Payment is due immediately for the full annual period. Annual subscribers receive advance notice before renewal if pricing has changed.

Trial Periods

New accounts may receive a trial period to evaluate the service. Trial limitations are specified on the subscription page. At the end of your trial, you must subscribe to a paid plan to continue using the service beyond free tier limits.

Payment Terms and No Refunds Policy

Payment Processing

We use Polar.sh as our payment processor. When you purchase a subscription, you authorize Polar.sh to charge your payment method. You must provide valid and current payment information. Payment is processed immediately when you subscribe or upgrade.

No Refunds Policy

All fees paid are non-refundable under any circumstances. This includes but is not limited to monthly subscriptions, annual subscriptions, overage charges, and any other fees. Once payment is processed, you have access to the service for your paid period, but no refunds will be issued for unused time, dissatisfaction with the service, lack of expected cost savings with LLM providers, technical issues or outages, cancellation before the end of your billing period, or any other reason.

Cancellation

You may cancel your subscription at any time through the billing portal. Cancellation will take effect at the end of your current paid billing period. Your service will remain active until the end of the period you've paid for, but will not renew. No refunds will be provided for the unused portion of your current billing period.

Evaluation Recommendation

We strongly recommend starting with our lowest tier plan or using any available trial period to thoroughly evaluate whether our service meets your needs before committing to higher-tier or annual plans. Once you pay for a subscription, all sales are final.

LLM Provider Costs

Costbase subscription fees are separate from costs charged by LLM providers. You are responsible for all costs incurred with LLM providers when using your own API keys. We do not control, markup, or have visibility into LLM provider billing. Cost savings realized through our optimization are not guaranteed and depend on your usage patterns, provider pricing, and configuration.

Usage Limits and Enforcement

Plan Limits

Each plan tier includes defined limits for monthly requests (requests per billing period), maximum projects you can create, maximum webhooks you can configure, maximum team members per organization, and access to specific features (guardrails, advanced analytics, etc.). Current usage and limits are visible in your subscription dashboard.

Overage Handling

If you exceed your plan's monthly request limit, additional requests may be rejected with a 429 rate limit error, or you may be charged overage fees as specified in your plan documentation. Overages are calculated at the end of each billing period and billed separately. We provide budget alerts to help you monitor usage before reaching limits.

Fair Use

Even for unlimited plans, we reserve the right to enforce fair use policies to prevent abuse. Extreme usage that impacts service availability for other users may result in rate limiting or service suspension.

Budget Controls

You can set organization-level budget limits to prevent unexpected LLM provider costs. When enabled, requests will be blocked once your budget is reached. Budget limits are based on your LLM provider costs, not Costbase subscription fees.

Suspension and Restoration

If you consistently exceed your plan limits or engage in abusive behavior, we reserve the right to suspend service until the issue is resolved. Suspension will be preceded by email notification when possible, except in cases of severe abuse, security threats, or fraudulent activity. To restore suspended service, you must upgrade to an appropriate plan tier or resolve the policy violation. Suspended accounts remain subject to the no-refund policy.

Intellectual Property Rights

Your Content

You retain full ownership of all data you send through our gateway including your prompts, the responses generated by LLM providers, configuration settings, project data, and webhook configurations. Your API keys for LLM providers remain your property. We claim no intellectual property rights to your content or to the outputs generated by LLM providers you use.

Our Platform

We own all intellectual property rights in the Costbase platform including our technology, routing algorithms, caching implementations, source code, user interface, dashboard designs, trademarks and branding, and documentation. These rights are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

License to Use

Subject to your compliance with these terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Costbase service. This license does not permit you to resell, sublicense, or white-label our service, redistribute or republish our technology or documentation, remove or obscure any proprietary notices, or use our intellectual property for competitive purposes.

Feedback

If you provide feedback, suggestions, or ideas about our service, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use and incorporate such feedback into our service without compensation or attribution to you.

Warranties and Disclaimers

Service "As-Is"

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We disclaim all warranties including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

No Performance Guarantees

We do not guarantee that our service will meet your specific requirements or expectations. We do not guarantee that cost optimization will achieve particular savings percentages as actual savings depend on your usage patterns, provider pricing changes, and routing configuration. We do not guarantee specific uptime percentages or service availability. We do not guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free.

No Provider Guarantees

We are not responsible for the performance, availability, accuracy, or quality of LLM provider responses. We do not guarantee that any particular LLM provider will remain available or that provider pricing will remain stable. Provider outages, rate limits, and policy changes are beyond our control.

Guardrails Limitations

If you use our PII/PHI detection guardrails, we do not guarantee absolute security or complete detection of all sensitive information. Automated detection has limitations and false positives/negatives may occur. You remain solely responsible for compliance with data protection regulations.

Security Disclaimer

While we implement industry-standard security measures, we cannot guarantee absolute security against all possible threats. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your own systems, properly securing your API keys, and monitoring for unauthorized access.

Third-Party Services

We are not responsible for the policies, practices, or availability of third-party services including LLM providers, authentication providers (Google, enterprise SSO), and our payment processor (Polar.sh). Your use of these services is governed by their respective terms and privacy policies.

Limitation of Liability

Damages Cap

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE FEES YOU HAVE PAID TO US OVER THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM. If you have not paid us any fees, our total liability is limited to $100 USD.

Excluded Damages

WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES including but not limited to loss of profits, loss of revenue, loss of data, loss of goodwill, business interruption, cost of procurement of substitute services, costs incurred with LLM providers, or savings not realized. This limitation applies regardless of the form of action, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, or otherwise, and whether or not we were advised of the possibility of such damages.

Provider-Related Losses

We are not liable for issues originating from LLM provider outages, performance problems, degraded service quality, policy changes or terms violations, pricing changes, rate limiting, or content filtering. You accept that LLM provider availability and performance may vary and that such variations are beyond our control.

Routing and Optimization

Our intelligent routing and optimization features are provided on a best-effort basis. We are not liable if our routing decisions do not produce expected cost savings, if cached responses are not appropriate for your use case, or if automated task detection misclassifies your prompts.

Data Loss

We are not liable for loss of cached data (which expires according to configured TTL), loss of data due to account deletion or service suspension, or loss of data due to failures by third-party infrastructure providers.

Indemnification

The limitation of liability does not affect any indemnification obligations you have under these terms.

Termination

Your Right to Terminate

You may cancel your subscription at any time through the billing portal or by contacting support. Cancellation will take effect at the end of your current paid billing period. No refunds will be provided for unused time. Your access to the service will continue until the end of your paid period, after which it will not renew.

Our Right to Terminate

We may terminate or suspend your access immediately, without prior notice, if you materially breach these terms, violate our acceptable use policy, engage in fraudulent activity or payment disputes, use the service in ways that threaten our infrastructure or other customers' access, fail to pay fees when due (for enterprise customers with invoicing), or as required by law or legal process.

Effect of Termination

Upon termination for any reason, your right to access and use the service immediately ceases. You will have 30 days after termination to export your data including usage logs, request history, configuration settings, and analytics reports. After 30 days, we may delete your data according to our retention policies and backups.

No refunds will be provided if we terminate your account for cause. If we terminate your account without cause (which we may do at our sole discretion), we will provide a pro-rated refund for unused portions of annual subscriptions only. Monthly subscriptions are not eligible for refunds under any termination scenario.

All provisions that by their nature should survive termination will survive including intellectual property rights, warranty disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification obligations, and dispute resolution procedures.

Data After Termination

We will retain certain data as required by law including billing records for tax and financial compliance (typically 7 years), and aggregated, anonymized analytics data. Your API keys and other sensitive data will be securely deleted after the 30-day grace period.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Costbase, its officers, directors, employees, agents, and affiliates from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your use of the service, content you send through our gateway, violation of these terms, violation of any rights of another person or entity, violation of LLM provider terms of service, violation of applicable laws or regulations, or unauthorized use of your account by others due to your failure to maintain security.

Indemnification Process

We will notify you promptly of any claim subject to indemnification. You agree to cooperate with us in defending such claims. We reserve the right to assume exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate in asserting any available defenses.

No Obligation to Third Parties

This indemnification obligation does not obligate you to indemnify third parties or LLM providers for claims they may have. Your indemnification runs only to Costbase and its affiliates.

Dispute Resolution

Governing Law

These terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Arbitration Agreement

You and Costbase agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these terms or your use of the service will be resolved through binding arbitration rather than in court, except as described below. Arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The arbitration will take place in Delaware unless both parties agree to another location. Each party will bear its own arbitration costs and attorney fees unless the arbitrator decides otherwise based on the outcome.

Exceptions to Arbitration

Either party may seek injunctive relief in court for violations of intellectual property rights (trademark, copyright, trade secret) or breaches of confidentiality obligations. Either party may bring an action in small claims court if the claim qualifies and remains in small claims court.

Class Action Waiver

YOU WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS OR CLASS-WIDE ARBITRATION. All disputes must be brought in an individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate multiple parties' claims or preside over any form of representative or class proceeding.

Opt-Out Right

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice to us within 30 days of first accepting these terms. If you opt out, disputes will be resolved through individual litigation in courts located in Delaware, and you agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of those courts.

Statute of Limitations

Any claim or cause of action arising out of these terms or the service must be filed within one year after the claim arose; otherwise, it is permanently barred.

Modifications to Terms

Right to Modify

We may modify these terms from time to time as our service evolves, legal requirements change, new features are added or removed, or business practices are updated. Material changes will be communicated at least 30 days before taking effect through email notification to your registered email address and prominent notice on our website and dashboard.

Notice and Acceptance

We will update the "Last Updated" date at the top of these terms when changes are made. Continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the modified terms. If you disagree with changes, you must stop using the service and may cancel your subscription, but you will not receive a refund for any remaining subscription period.

Enterprise Customers

Enterprise customers with custom contract terms will be contacted directly to negotiate amendments if changes materially affect negotiated terms.

General Provisions

Entire Agreement

These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any additional terms you agree to when purchasing services, constitute the entire agreement between you and Costbase regarding the service. These terms supersede any prior agreements, proposals, or representations, whether written or oral.

Severability

If any provision of these terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect. The unenforceable provision will be replaced with an enforceable provision that most closely matches the intent of the original provision.

Waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these terms does not constitute a waiver of that right or provision. No waiver of any provision will be effective unless made in writing and signed by our authorized representative. No waiver of any breach of these terms will be deemed a waiver of any subsequent breach.

Assignment

You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these terms without our prior written consent. Any attempted assignment without consent is void. We may assign these terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, corporate reorganization, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. These terms bind and inure to the benefit of the parties and their respective successors and permitted assigns.

Force Majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance due to circumstances beyond our reasonable control including acts of God, natural disasters, war or terrorism, labor disputes, government actions, internet or telecommunications failures, or failures of third-party services including LLM providers.

No Partnership

These terms do not create any partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship between you and Costbase. You do not have authority to bind Costbase or create obligations on our behalf.

Notices

Legal notices to you may be delivered via email to your registered email address, through notifications in the service dashboard, or by posting on our website. Notices to us should be sent to contact@costbase.ai and are deemed received when we acknowledge receipt.

Export Compliance

You agree to comply with all applicable export control laws and regulations. You represent that you are not located in a country subject to U.S. government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Language

These terms are written in English. Any translated versions are provided for convenience only. In the event of any conflict between the English version and a translated version, the English version controls.

Headings

Section headings in these terms are for convenience only and do not affect the interpretation of any provision.

Contact Information

For questions about these terms, legal notices, technical support, security issues, privacy concerns, or to exercise rights under these terms, please contact us at:

Email: contact@costbase.ai

We will respond to all inquiries within a reasonable timeframe, typically within 5-7 business days.