DRAFT — under solicitor review. Several enforcement clauses (§§ 5.6, 5.7, 9.4, 10.4) including liquidated-damages amounts and the post-termination ban are pending legal sign-off. They are published here for visibility but TrueCost will not rely on them in any specific dispute until that sign-off is complete.

Terms and Conditions

Last updated: May 2026

1. Introduction and acceptance

These Terms and Conditions (the "Terms") govern your use of the TrueCost service operated by ESPC Group Ltd (trading as TrueCost) (the "Company", "we", "us", or "our"), a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 17148581, registered office at 22a Ongar Road, London, SW6 1SJ. The service is available at truecost.live and any associated subdomains, mobile applications, and APIs (collectively, the "Service").

By accessing or using the Service, by creating an account, by purchasing a subscription, or by purchasing a one-off Property Report, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree with any part of these Terms, do not use the Service.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email to account holders and posted on the website at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. Your right to cancel any subscription remains as set out below.

2. Definitions

In these Terms, unless the context indicates otherwise:

  • "Account" means the user account created when you sign up to the Service.
  • "AVM" means Automated Valuation Model: an estimated property value produced by our algorithms using public and third-party data sources.
  • "Content" means any data, text, valuations, comparable sales, area statistics, AI-generated assessments, charts, PDF reports, and other material made available through the Service.
  • "Property Report" means a single-property cost intelligence report produced by the Service, including the AVM, comparable sales, council tax, EPC data, planning history, and other property-specific information.
  • "PDF Report" means a downloadable PDF version of a Property Report, available to Pro+ subscribers and to one-off purchasers.
  • "Subscription" means any of the recurring monthly tiers offered by the Service: Free, Essential, Pro, or Pro+, as updated from time to time.
  • "One-off Property Report" means the £99 single-property purchase that grants Pro+ tier features for one specified property without an ongoing subscription.
  • "You" or "User" means any natural or legal person accessing or using the Service, whether signed in or not.

3. Account terms

3.1 Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding contract under the laws of England and Wales to create an Account or purchase a Subscription.

3.2 Account creation and verification

When you create an Account, you must provide accurate, complete, and current information. You must verify your email address using the verification link sent to you. We may suspend or terminate Accounts where the email cannot be verified within 30 days of signup, where you provide false or misleading information, or where we have reason to believe the Account is being used in breach of these Terms.

3.3 Account security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Account credentials. You must not share your password or allow anyone else to use your Account. You are responsible for all activities that occur under your Account. Notify us immediately at hello@truecost.live if you suspect unauthorised access.

3.4 One Account per person

Accounts are personal and non-transferable. You may not share your password, your Account credentials, or your Account access with any other person, household member, or business contact, regardless of relationship. You may not create multiple Accounts to circumvent search caps, save limits, or other usage caps applied to your Subscription tier. We monitor for indicators of credential sharing and multiple-Account abuse including concurrent sessions from materially distinct IP ranges or devices, geographic anomalies, and credential reuse patterns. Confirmed sharing or multiple-Account abuse is a material breach of these Terms and triggers the liquidated damages set out in section 5.6, in addition to immediate termination of all linked Accounts.

4. Subscriptions and billing

4.1 Tiers

We offer four monthly Subscription tiers (Free, Essential, Pro, Pro+) with different feature sets and usage limits, plus a £99 one-off Property Report option. Current pricing and feature lists are published at truecost.live/pricing. We reserve the right to change pricing on at least 30 days notice to existing subscribers; changes will not affect already-paid billing periods.

4.2 Billing and payment

Paid Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance, charged on the day you sign up and on the same day each subsequent month. Payments are processed by Stripe under their terms. We do not store your full payment card details. The £99 one-off Property Report is charged once at the point of purchase.

4.3 Renewals and cancellations

Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period unless cancelled before that period ends. You may cancel at any time through your Account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you retain access to paid features until then. We do not provide pro-rated refunds for partial months.

4.4 Refunds

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, you have a 14-day right to cancel a digital service contract from the date of purchase, provided you have not consumed the service. Once you have used a paid feature (e.g. exported a PDF Report, performed a search, or used the AI chat), the digital service is treated as fulfilled and the cancellation right does not apply to the consumed portion. Refunds outside the 14-day period are at our discretion and only granted where the Service has been materially unavailable or has otherwise failed to meet the description published on the Service.

4.5 The £99 one-off Property Report

The one-off Property Report grants Pro+ tier access for ONE specified property only, identified by the address you select at purchase. Access is permanent and does not require a subscription, but is limited to that one property. The right of cancellation under section 4.4 applies for 14 days from purchase, provided the PDF has not been downloaded. Once the PDF Report has been generated and downloaded, the digital service is treated as fulfilled.

4.6 Anonymous use

You may use limited features of the Service without creating an Account, subject to a 1-search-per-24-hour preview limit. Anonymous use does not create a contractual relationship between you and TrueCost beyond your acceptance of these Terms by virtue of your continued use.

5. Acceptable use

You agree to use the Service lawfully and in accordance with these Terms. The following uses are expressly prohibited.

5.1 No automated access

You must not access the Service via automated means including but not limited to robots, web scrapers, screen scrapers, headless browsers, scripts, parsers, or any technology that mimics human interaction without human oversight. Automated access bypasses the user interface, evades rate limits, and degrades the Service for other users. We monitor for automated access and reserve the right to block IP addresses, terminate Accounts, and pursue civil remedies against those engaged in automated access.

Programmatic access to TrueCost data is available only under a separate API licensing agreement. Contact hello@truecost.live to enquire.

5.2 No redistribution or resale of Content

All Content produced or made available by the Service, including but not limited to Property Reports, PDF Reports, AVMs, comparable sales data, confidence ranges, AI-generated planning assessments, area statistics, market activity figures, and rental yield estimates, is licensed to you for your personal, non-commercial use only.

You must NOT, without our prior written consent:

  • Resell, redistribute, sublicense, publish, broadcast, or commercially exploit any Content.
  • Provide Content to third parties in exchange for payment, kickback, referral fee, or any other consideration.
  • Incorporate Content into estate-agent valuations, listing materials, mortgage broker advice memos, surveyor reports, or any commercial product or service for which a fee is charged.
  • Host PDF Reports publicly, post them on social media for commercial promotion, or upload them to file-sharing platforms.
  • Use Content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any machine learning model, language model, or other artificial intelligence system.
  • Reverse-engineer the algorithms, models, or data pipelines used to produce Content.

PDF Reports may include unique identifiers, watermarks, or tracking pixels to enable detection of unauthorised redistribution. By generating a PDF Report you consent to this monitoring.

5.3 No bypassing of access controls

You must not circumvent the Subscription tier system, search caps, save limits, PDF quotas, or any other technical access control. Specifically:

  • You must not create multiple Accounts to obtain additional Free-tier searches.
  • You must not share Subscription Account credentials.
  • You must not modify the Service code, browser environment, or network requests to bypass plan gates.
  • You must not impersonate another User or claim Subscription privileges that have not been granted to you.

5.4 Personal use only

Subscriptions and One-off Property Reports are licensed for personal use of the named Account holder only. Companies, professional services firms, estate agencies, mortgage brokers, surveyors, conveyancers, and any other entity using the Service in the course of business or providing services to clients require a separate B2B licence. Use of the Service for any commercial purpose without a B2B licence is a material breach of these Terms.

A B2B licence is available on request. Contact hello@truecost.live to discuss terms.

5.5 No misuse of AI features

Where the Service includes AI-generated assessments (e.g. planning intelligence, AI chat), you must not:

  • Use AI features to generate misleading or fraudulent property advice for resale.
  • Submit prompts designed to extract Confidential Information about the underlying models.
  • Attempt to prompt-inject the Service to produce content that breaches these Terms or applicable law.

5.6 Remedies for breach of acceptable use

In addition to our right to suspend or terminate your Account under section 10, you agree that breaches of this section 5 cause us substantial harm that is difficult to quantify in advance. The amounts below are a genuine pre-estimate of our loss and not a penalty. They are payable on demand within 14 days of written notice and are in addition to, not in place of, any other remedy available to us at law or in equity.

  • Sharing of Account credentials, in whole or in part (sections 3.4 and 5.3): £500 per detected sharing event. A sharing event is use of one Account from materially distinct devices, IP ranges, or geographic regions in the same calendar month, where you have not notified us in advance of legitimate travel or device replacement.
  • Creation of multiple Accounts to circumvent caps (sections 3.4 and 5.3): £500 per additional Account, plus the equivalent paid-tier value of any free-tier or preview searches consumed by those Accounts.
  • Unauthorised redistribution, resale, or republication of Content (section 5.2): £1,000 per Property Report, AVM, comparable set, or other Content unit redistributed in breach, plus the higher of (a) twice the original purchase price of the redistributed Content or (b) the documented commercial value extracted from the breach.
  • Automated, scripted, or scraped access (section 5.1): £5,000 per detected campaign of automated access, plus all reasonable investigation, technical mitigation, and legal costs incurred in identifying, blocking, and pursuing the breach.
  • Commercial or business use without a B2B licence (section 5.4): £2,500 per calendar month or part-month in which the Service is used commercially without a B2B licence in place. This applies whether or not the breaching User is paid by their client for work that incorporated Content from the Service.
  • Bypassing of access controls or tier gates (section 5.3): £1,000 per detected bypass event, plus reasonable investigation costs.
  • Use of Content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any AI or machine learning model (section 5.2): £10,000 per dataset constructed from Content, plus immediate destruction of any derived model weights and training corpora, plus our legal and forensic costs.

You also agree to indemnify us against the costs we reasonably incur in investigating, evidencing, and pursuing your breach, including legal fees on a solicitor-and-client basis, technical investigation fees, third-party data forensics, and the cost of issuing takedown demands.

Liquidated damages under this clause are cumulative. Paying liquidated damages does not authorise continued breach. We may seek injunctive relief without proof of actual damage in addition to any sum payable under this clause. We may set off any liquidated damages owed by you against any refund, credit, or other amount otherwise payable by us to you.

5.7 Reporting and prosecution

We may report breaches of these Terms to relevant regulators, professional bodies, and law enforcement, including the Information Commissioner's Office, Trading Standards, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the National Trading Standards eCrime team, the Police, and any professional indemnity insurer of the breaching party. We may share evidence of breach with these bodies, with our partners, with our solicitors, and with forensic investigators. We may also publish anonymised case summaries on truecost.live, in court filings, or in submissions to regulators for deterrence purposes.

You will not bring any claim against us for breach of confidence, defamation, or breach of these Terms in respect of any disclosure made under this clause that is reasonable, accurate, and made in good faith.

6. Intellectual property

6.1 Our intellectual property

All intellectual property rights in the Service, including the website, software, design, brand, AVM algorithms, AI models, content templates, PDF Report formats, and any aggregated data outputs, are owned by ESPC Group Ltd or licensed to us. Your use of the Service does not transfer any ownership rights to you.

6.2 Licence to you

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and your active Subscription or One-off purchase, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Service and the Content it produces for your personal, non-commercial use only. This licence terminates automatically when your Subscription ends or when these Terms are terminated.

6.3 Underlying data sources

Some Content is derived from public data sources including HM Land Registry, the Energy Performance Certificate Register, the Office for National Statistics, planning.data.gov.uk, Police.uk, the Environment Agency, and Ofsted. The licensing of those underlying data sources is governed by their own terms (typically the Open Government Licence v3.0 for HMLR Price Paid data, the EPC Register data licence, etc.). We assemble, curate, and add value to those sources; the value-add is our intellectual property.

6.4 Your content

You retain ownership of any content you submit to the Service (e.g. saved properties, refinement inputs, AI chat queries). You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to process such content to provide the Service to you, for as long as your Account exists and for a reasonable archival period thereafter.

7. Lead sharing and partner referrals

At your explicit, opt-in election, we may share limited information about you (typically your name, email address, and the property or postcode you have researched) with selected mortgage brokers, letting agents, or related professionals (each a "Partner") for the purpose of receiving services from those Partners.

You will only be shared with a Partner if you have ticked an explicit opt-in box. You may withdraw consent at any time through your Account settings. Withdrawing consent does not affect any introductions already made. We may receive a referral fee from Partners; this fee is paid by the Partner, not by you, and does not affect the price of any service quoted to you by the Partner.

We do not warrant or endorse any Partner. Any contract between you and a Partner is between you and the Partner; we are not a party to that contract.

8. Disclaimers

8.1 The Service is informational only

The Service provides cost intelligence, automated valuations, and other property-related information. It is not, and must not be relied upon as:

  • Regulated financial advice. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The Service is not a substitute for advice from a regulated mortgage adviser or financial planner.
  • A property survey. The Service does not inspect properties physically. A buyer should always commission a RICS or equivalent professional survey before completing a purchase.
  • A formal valuation. The AVM is an estimate produced by an algorithm based on imperfect data. Mortgage lenders require their own surveyor valuation; the Service does not produce mortgage-grade valuations.
  • Legal advice. Conveyancing, lease analysis, and any contractual interpretation must be carried out by a qualified solicitor or licensed conveyancer.
  • Tax advice. Council tax bands, stamp duty estimates, and other tax-related figures are illustrative; consult HMRC or a tax adviser for definitive figures.

8.2 Accuracy of data

We make reasonable efforts to ensure the data we surface is accurate, complete, and current. However, much of the data is sourced from third parties and is updated on schedules outside our control. We do not warrant that any specific data point is accurate, complete, or fit for any specific purpose. You should verify any figure that you intend to rely on for a financial decision.

8.3 AVM accuracy

The AVM is a statistical estimate. It is presented with a confidence range to reflect the uncertainty inherent in algorithmic valuation. It is not a property valuation in the regulated sense. We accept no liability for any reliance placed on an AVM figure for any commercial transaction.

8.4 Service availability

We aim to make the Service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but we do not warrant uninterrupted availability. The Service may be unavailable for scheduled maintenance, unscheduled outages, third-party service disruptions, or events outside our reasonable control.

9. Limitation of liability

9.1 Nothing excluded

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for:

  • Death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
  • Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
  • Any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under English law.

9.2 Excluded losses

Subject to clause 9.1, we will not be liable to you for any:

  • Loss of profits, revenue, business, or anticipated savings.
  • Loss of goodwill or reputation.
  • Loss of data or content.
  • Indirect, special, consequential, or punitive damages.
  • Loss arising from your reliance on AVM, comparable sales, planning assessments, or any other data or estimate provided by the Service for a financial transaction.

9.3 Capped losses

Subject to clauses 9.1 and 9.2, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with these Terms, the Service, or your use of the Service, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, is limited to the greater of (a) £100, or (b) the total amount paid by you to us in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the liability.

9.4 Indemnity from User

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless ESPC Group Ltd, its directors, employees, and agents against all losses, damages, claims, liabilities, costs (including legal fees on a solicitor-and-client basis), expenses, fines, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage arising out of or in connection with:

  • Your breach of these Terms, including any breach of the acceptable use provisions in section 5.
  • Your unauthorised redistribution, resale, sublicensing, or commercial exploitation of Content.
  • Your use of the Service for any commercial or business purpose without a B2B licence in place.
  • Any third-party claim against us arising from your reliance on, or use of, Content provided by the Service in a transaction with that third party.
  • Any regulatory action, investigation, or enforcement step taken against us as a consequence of your breach of any applicable law in your use of the Service.

The indemnity in this clause is in addition to the liquidated damages set out in section 5.6 and survives termination of these Terms.

10. Termination

10.1 Termination by you

You may terminate your Subscription at any time through your Account settings. Termination takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

10.2 Termination by us

We may suspend or terminate your Account immediately, with or without notice, if:

  • You materially breach these Terms (including any breach of the acceptable use provisions in section 5).
  • We have reason to believe your use of the Service is fraudulent, illegal, or harmful to other Users or to the Service.
  • We are required to do so by law or by a court order.
  • We discontinue the Service entirely.

10.3 Effect of termination

On termination of these Terms or of your Account: (a) your right to access the Service ends immediately; (b) any unused portion of a paid Subscription is forfeit (subject to applicable consumer protection laws); (c) any One-off Property Report you have purchased remains accessible to the extent we are able to provide it; (d) clauses that by their nature should survive termination (including but not limited to sections 5.2, 5.6, 5.7, 6, 9.4, and 12) survive.

10.4 Permanent ban after termination for material breach

Following termination of your Account for material breach of section 5, you may not create a new Account, register under a different email address or persona, or otherwise use the Service for a period of two years from the date of termination. Any new Account identified as belonging to a previously terminated User may be terminated immediately on detection and any Subscription fees paid by such an Account are forfeit. We may share the email address, IP range, payment instrument, and device fingerprints associated with the terminated Account with our payment processor and identity providers to support enforcement of this clause.

11. Privacy and data protection

Our processing of personal data is governed by our Privacy Policy, available at truecost.live/privacy, which forms part of these Terms by reference. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number ZC120594) and process personal data in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

12. General

12.1 Entire agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any other documents incorporated by reference, constitute the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements or representations.

12.2 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable by a competent court, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

12.3 No waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that right or provision.

12.4 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations to any successor entity (for example, in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets) without your consent, provided your rights as a User are not materially diminished.

12.5 Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events outside our reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, fire, flood, epidemic, pandemic, government action, telecommunications failure, or third-party service outage.

12.6 Notices

Notices to us must be sent to legal@truecost.live (and copied to hello@truecost.live where appropriate). We will give notices to you by email to the address registered with your Account, or where no Account exists, by posting on the Service.

12.7 Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, except that consumers retain the right to bring proceedings in their country of residence under the Brussels I Regulation (recast) where applicable.

13. Contact

ESPC Group Ltd (trading as TrueCost)

Registered office: 22a Ongar Road, London, SW6 1SJ

Company number: 17148581

General enquiries: hello@truecost.live

Legal notices: legal@truecost.live

Data protection: dataprotection@truecost.live

Last updated: May 2026