Terms of Service

Last updated: 17 July 2026

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern access to and use of Vellum Search at search.vellumintel.com, including its website, searchable database, application programming interface (“API”), Model Context Protocol interface (“MCP”), notifications and related services (together, the “Service”).

The Service is provided by Vellum AI Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17129362 (“Vellum”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

By creating an account, placing an order or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.

1. Eligibility

By accepting these Terms, you confirm that:

• you are at least 18 years old;
• where you act for an organisation, you have authority to bind that organisation; and
• the organisation identified in your account or order, where there is one, is the customer under these Terms.

In these Terms, “you” and “Customer” mean that organisation or, where you subscribe personally, you.

2. The Service

Vellum Search provides access to a curated and searchable collection of public regulatory, legislative, policy, judicial, enforcement and related official records.

Depending on the relevant source and its applicable terms, a record may contain:

• a title, date and source authority;
• Vellum-created metadata, classification or summary;
• a snippet or extract;
• provenance and source information;
• a link to the official source; or
• the full text of the source record where its applicable terms permit.

Regulatory records may incidentally contain names, professional roles, decisions, contact information or other information relating to identifiable individuals where that information appears in an official public record. Our handling of personal data is described in our Privacy Policy.

The scope, functions and availability of the Service may differ between plans. Your entitlements are those shown on the pricing or order page when you subscribe, as subsequently varied in accordance with these Terms.

3. Accounts and authorised users

You must have an account to access protected parts of the Service. Authentication may be provided through email verification codes or another authentication method made available by us.

You must:

• provide accurate and current account information;
• maintain control of the email address associated with your account;
• keep authentication credentials and API keys secure;
• ensure that each authorised user uses their own account where individual accounts are provided;
• prevent unauthorised access to the Service; and
• notify us promptly via the contact form if you suspect that an account or API key has been compromised.

You are responsible for activity carried out through your accounts and API keys, except to the extent that the activity results directly from our breach of these Terms or failure to use reasonable care and skill.

Accounts, authentication codes and API keys must not be sold, transferred or shared outside your organisation except with a contractor operating the Service solely on your behalf, under appropriate confidentiality and security obligations. You remain responsible for such a contractor’s use.

4. Plans and orders

The Service may include:

• a free plan;
• subscriptions covering one or more regulatory ecosystems;
• an all-access subscription;
• an API plan; and
• any other plan or enterprise arrangement that we make available.

Current plan descriptions and prices are displayed on the Service. The plan, price, billing period and entitlements accepted by you at checkout or in a written order form constitute your “Order”.

Any discount displayed at checkout forms part of the Order. Unless expressly stated otherwise, discounts cannot be exchanged for cash, transferred or combined with another discount.

A contract begins when we confirm your Order or activate the relevant paid Service, whichever happens first. A free-plan contract begins when your account is created.

If a written order form signed by both parties expressly conflicts with these Terms, the order form prevails to the extent of that conflict.

5. Fees, billing and renewal

5.1 Fees and taxes

You must pay the fees specified in your Order. Prices are exclusive of VAT and any other applicable taxes unless expressly stated otherwise.

You are responsible for providing complete and accurate billing information and for paying applicable taxes, except taxes imposed on our income.

5.2 Billing

Paid subscriptions are billed in advance through our payment processor. You authorise us and our payment processor to charge the applicable fees and taxes to your selected payment method.

Payment-card information is provided directly to the payment processor. Vellum does not receive or store full payment-card details.

5.3 Automatic renewal

Unless your Order states otherwise, a paid subscription automatically renews for successive monthly billing periods until cancelled.

You authorise the applicable subscription charge to be taken on each renewal date.

5.4 Failed payments

If a payment fails, we may retry the payment and ask you to provide a valid payment method. We may suspend access if payment remains outstanding after reasonable notice.

You remain responsible for fees incurred before suspension or termination.

5.5 Cancellation

You may cancel a paid subscription through your account page or any other cancellation method we make available.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period for which you have already paid. You retain access until then unless your account is suspended or terminated for breach, security or legal reasons.

Payments are non-refundable and we do not provide prorated refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused access or reduced usage, except:

• where required by law;
• where expressly stated in these Terms; or
• where we agree otherwise in writing.

By starting a paid subscription you request immediate access to the Service and, where a statutory cancellation right would otherwise apply, you acknowledge that it ends once supply of the Service has begun, to the extent the law allows.

Deleting an account does not entitle you to a refund and does not cancel amounts already due.

5.6 Price changes

We may change subscription prices by giving at least 30 days’ notice by email or through the Service.

A price change will not affect a billing period that has already been paid. It will apply from the first renewal occurring after the notice period expires.

You may cancel before the new price takes effect.

6. Licence and permitted use

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, Vellum grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable right during the term of your plan to access and use the Service for your internal business and professional purposes.

You may:

• search and review records within your plan entitlements;
• download or retain individual results where the Service permits;
• cite official records and their canonical source links;
• use limited excerpts and Vellum summaries in internal analysis, reports and decision-making; and
• connect the API or MCP interface to your organisation’s internal systems where your plan permits.

A law firm, consultancy or other professional-services customer may incorporate limited excerpts, citations and conclusions derived from individual results into confidential advice or work product prepared for its clients, provided that it does not:

• provide the client with direct access to the Service;
• reproduce or distribute a substantial part of the database;
• supply raw or bulk Vellum data to the client;
• create a substitute for the Service; or
• remove source attribution or provenance.

No right is granted except as expressly stated in these Terms.

7. API and MCP use

This section applies where your plan includes API or MCP access.

You may use the API and MCP interface only:

• within your plan entitlements;
• in accordance with the current technical documentation;
• through API keys issued to your organisation; and
• for the permitted uses described in these Terms.

You must:

• keep API keys confidential and store them securely;
• rotate or revoke a key promptly if compromise is suspected;
• comply with reasonable technical and fair-use safeguards designed to protect the Service;
• maintain reasonable safeguards against unauthorised use; and
• ensure that systems using the API preserve record provenance and official-source links where reasonably practicable.

You may cache individual API results for your permitted internal use. You must not use caching or repeated requests to reconstruct, mirror or systematically reproduce the corpus.

You must not, without our prior written permission:

• use the Service or corpus to train or fine-tune a machine-learning or generative AI model;
• use results to create or maintain a competing regulatory database, search engine, feed or monitoring service;
• expose the API, MCP tools or raw results to third parties as part of another product;
• allow third parties to make requests using your API key;
• benchmark the Service for public commercial comparison; or
• circumvent entitlements, metering, technical restrictions or usage limits.

You may connect the Service to third-party AI tools, agents or workspaces for your permitted internal use. You are responsible for the third-party service you select, including its security, data handling, retention and outputs. Vellum does not control or accept responsibility for a third-party AI service.

We may change an API or MCP interface to maintain security, performance, legal compliance or technical integrity. Where reasonably practicable, we will give advance notice of a material breaking change. Urgent security changes may be made without advance notice.

No service-level agreement or guaranteed API availability applies unless expressly stated in a written order form.

8. Acceptable-use restrictions

You must not, and must not allow another person to:

• redistribute, resell, sublicense, publish or commercially exploit the corpus or any substantial part of it;
• scrape, crawl, bulk-download or systematically extract content by automated means other than through an authorised API within your plan limits;
• use multiple accounts, identities or technical methods to circumvent plan limits or metering;
• share access outside your organisation except as expressly permitted by these Terms;
• copy, frame, mirror or reproduce a substantial part of the Service;
• reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive source code from the Service, except to the limited extent that applicable law prevents this restriction;
• remove copyright, trade mark, attribution, provenance or other proprietary notices;
• interfere with the operation, availability or security of the Service;
• introduce malware or other harmful code;
• test the Service for vulnerabilities without our prior written permission;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to an account, system or dataset;
• use the Service to infringe intellectual-property, confidentiality, privacy or other rights;
• submit content that is unlawful, malicious or unnecessarily contains sensitive personal data; or
• use the Service in breach of applicable law, sanctions or export-control requirements.

Reasonable interactive use described as “unlimited” remains subject to security controls, technical capacity and fair-use safeguards designed to prevent abuse or automated bulk extraction.

9. Customer Content

“Customer Content” means queries, saved searches, notification settings, API requests, configurations, instructions and other information submitted by or on behalf of the Customer to the Service. It does not include the underlying corpus, Vellum summaries, Service-generated metadata or aggregated information that no longer identifies the Customer or an individual.

You retain ownership of Customer Content.

You grant us a limited right to host, copy, transmit and otherwise process Customer Content only as reasonably necessary to:

• provide and support the Service;
• authenticate users and enforce entitlements;
• protect the Service and its users;
• investigate faults, abuse or security incidents;
• meet legal obligations; and
• generate aggregated and de-identified operational statistics.

You are responsible for ensuring that you have a lawful basis and all necessary rights to submit and process Customer Content through the Service.

We will not sell Customer Content or use it for advertising profiling.

10. Confidentiality

Each party must keep the other party’s Confidential Information confidential and use it only to perform or receive the Service.

“Confidential Information” means information that is identified as confidential or that a reasonable business person would understand to be confidential, including non-public commercial, technical or security information, Customer Content, API keys and account credentials.

A receiving party may disclose Confidential Information only:

• to its personnel, contractors and professional advisers who need it for the purposes of the contract and are subject to confidentiality duties;
• where the disclosing party has authorised disclosure; or
• where disclosure is required by law, court order or a competent authority.

Confidential Information does not include information that the receiving party can demonstrate:

• is lawfully in the public domain other than through breach;
• was already lawfully known without restriction;
• was received lawfully from a third party without a confidentiality obligation; or
• was developed independently without using the other party’s Confidential Information.

Public regulatory records and information contained in official sources are not Customer Confidential Information merely because the Customer accessed them through the Service.

11. Intellectual property and source materials

Official regulatory records and source materials may be owned by, licensed by or otherwise subject to rights belonging to their publishing authorities or third parties.

Vellum does not claim ownership of underlying official source material merely because it appears in or is linked through the Service.

Source materials may be subject to:

• copyright;
• database rights;
• Crown copyright;
• official reuse licences;
• attribution requirements;
• third-party rights; or
• other source-specific restrictions.

These Terms do not grant you any greater right in source material than Vellum is entitled to grant. You remain responsible for complying with applicable source notices when independently reproducing or reusing source material.

As between the parties, Vellum and its licensors retain all rights in the Service, including its:

• original summaries and descriptions;
• selection, verification and arrangement of records;
• taxonomies, classifications and metadata;
• indexes and database structure;
• software, APIs and MCP tools;
• visual design;
• methodology;
• trade marks; and
• branding.

These elements are protected by copyright, database rights where applicable, trade mark rights and other intellectual-property laws.

“Verified” means that Vellum has identified the provenance of a record and associated it with an identified official source. It does not constitute a warranty that the record remains legally operative, complete, current or free from error.

If you provide suggestions or feedback, we may use them without restriction or payment, provided that we do not identify you publicly without permission or disclose your Confidential Information.

12. Data protection

Each party must comply with applicable data-protection law in connection with its activities under these Terms.

Vellum generally acts as controller for account, authentication, billing, security and usage information, as described in our Privacy Policy.

Regulatory records may incidentally contain personal data taken from official public sources. Our processing of that information is also described in our Privacy Policy.

You must not submit personal data through the Service unless it is reasonably necessary for your lawful business use. You are responsible for determining whether your submission and subsequent use of that personal data is lawful.

Where we expressly agree in writing to process personal data as a processor on your behalf, the parties will enter into or incorporate appropriate data-processing terms.

13. Third-party services and external sources

The Service may depend on third-party providers for authentication, payments, hosting, communications, infrastructure or other functions.

It may also contain links to official sources and third-party websites. A link does not mean that Vellum controls or endorses the external service or accepts responsibility for its content, security, availability or continued operation.

Official source websites may change, remove or restrict access to records without notice. We are not responsible for the operation of an official source or third-party service outside our control.

Your use of a third-party service may be subject to separate terms between you and that provider.

14. Service availability and changes

We will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill.

We do not guarantee that the Service will always be available, uninterrupted or free from defects. We may perform maintenance, deploy updates, correct records, change technical infrastructure or temporarily restrict access where reasonably necessary.

We may add, remove, combine, rename or reclassify records, sources, ecosystems and features as the regulatory record and Service develop.

If we make a change that materially reduces the core paid functionality of your plan, we will, where reasonably practicable:

• give reasonable advance notice;
• allow you to cancel before the change takes effect; and
• refund prepaid fees attributable to any period after termination resulting from that change.

This does not apply to changes required urgently for security, legal compliance, source-licensing restrictions or circumstances outside our reasonable control.

15. Suspension and termination

15.1 Suspension

We may suspend all or part of your access immediately where reasonably necessary to:

• address a security incident or suspected compromise;
• prevent unlawful use, abuse or harm;
• protect the integrity or availability of the Service;
• comply with law or a binding request from a competent authority;
• prevent infringement of third-party rights; or
• address an overdue payment.

Where practicable, we will explain the reason for suspension and allow you to remedy it.

15.2 Termination by you

You may stop using a free plan or delete your account at any time.

You may cancel a paid subscription as described in section 5.5.

15.3 Termination by Vellum

We may terminate these Terms or an affected Order if:

• you materially breach these Terms and fail to remedy a remediable breach within 14 days after notice;
• a breach cannot reasonably be remedied;
• your use creates a material security, legal or reputational risk;
• you become insolvent, cease trading or are unable to pay debts when due; or
• we are legally prohibited from continuing to provide the Service.

We may discontinue the Service or a paid plan by giving reasonable notice. If we discontinue a paid Service before the end of a prepaid period for reasons unrelated to your breach, we will refund the portion of prepaid fees attributable to the period after discontinuation.

15.4 Consequences

When access ends:

• your right to use the Service ends;
• API keys and authentication access may be revoked;
• unpaid fees remain due;
• Customer Content will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy and legal-retention obligations; and
• provisions intended by their nature to survive will remain in effect, including those concerning payment, confidentiality, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability and governing law.

Termination does not require Vellum to remove a regulatory record from the corpus merely because that record was viewed, cited or searched by the Customer.

16. Disclaimers

16.1 Not legal advice

The Service provides access to regulatory information. It does not provide legal, financial, compliance or other professional advice and does not create a lawyer-client, adviser-client, fiduciary or other professional relationship.

You must obtain appropriate professional advice before taking or refraining from action based on the Service.

16.2 Official sources remain authoritative

Vellum summaries, snippets, classifications, metadata and search results are aids to research. The official source remains authoritative.

You are responsible for checking:

• the full official text;
• legal status and commencement;
• subsequent amendments or corrections;
• applicable jurisdiction;
• current guidance; and
• relevance to your circumstances.

16.3 Completeness and accuracy

We take care in curating and verifying the corpus, but the regulatory record is continuously changing.

We do not warrant that:

• every potentially relevant record is included;
• a record is still current or legally operative;
• a summary captures every qualification or exception;
• a search will return every relevant result;
• external links will remain available; or
• the Service will be error-free or uninterrupted.

Subject to the express commitment to use reasonable care and skill and to the fullest extent permitted by law, all other warranties, representations, conditions and terms are excluded.

17. Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or
• any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Subject to that:

1. Vellum is not liable for any indirect or consequential loss.
2. Vellum is not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, anticipated savings, opportunity or goodwill, whether direct or indirect.
3. Vellum is not liable for a decision made or action taken in reliance on the Service without appropriate verification against the official source and, where appropriate, professional advice.
4. Vellum is not liable for the content, availability or acts of an official source or third-party service outside its reasonable control.
5. Vellum’s total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service, whether in contract, tort including negligence, misrepresentation, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the greater of:
   • £100; and
   • the fees paid or payable by you for the affected Service during the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

The exclusions and limitations in this section apply to the fullest extent permitted by law and reflect the fees payable for the Service.

Nothing in these Terms limits your obligation to pay fees properly due.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect:

• changes to the Service or our business;
• legal or regulatory requirements;
• security or technical developments;
• source-licensing requirements; or
• reasonable changes to our commercial arrangements.

For a material change that adversely affects an existing paid subscription, we will normally give at least 30 days’ notice by email or through the Service.

A change required urgently for legal, regulatory or security reasons may take effect sooner. Where practicable, we will notify you in advance.

The updated Terms will not retrospectively alter rights or liabilities that accrued before their effective date.

If you do not agree to a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

19. General provisions

19.1 Entire agreement

These Terms, your Order and any documents expressly incorporated into them constitute the entire agreement concerning the Service.

Each party acknowledges that it has not relied on a statement or assurance not contained in the agreement. Nothing in this section excludes liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

19.2 Assignment and subcontracting

You may not assign, transfer or sublicense your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent.

We may assign these Terms to an affiliate or to a successor in connection with a reorganisation, financing, sale of business or transfer of the Service. We may use subcontractors to provide parts of the Service, but remain responsible for our obligations under these Terms.

19.3 Force majeure

Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including failures of telecommunications, hosting or official-source systems, cyber incidents not caused by its breach, industrial disputes, governmental action, natural disasters, war or widespread internet disruption.

This section does not excuse your obligation to pay fees already due.

19.4 No partnership or agency

These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, employment, fiduciary or agency relationship between the parties.

19.5 No third-party rights

A person who is not a party to these Terms has no right to enforce them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

19.6 Severability

If a provision is found invalid or unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary or, if that is not possible, removed. The remaining provisions will continue in effect.

19.7 Waiver

A delay or failure to exercise a right is not a waiver of that right. A waiver is effective only if given in writing.

19.8 Notices

We may send operational and contractual notices to the email address associated with your account or display them prominently through the Service.

Notices to Vellum must be sent via the contact form. Formal legal notices may also be sent to our registered office.

You are responsible for keeping your contact information current.

19.9 Language

These Terms are made in English. If they are translated, the English version prevails to the extent permitted by law.

20. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms, each Order and any non-contractual dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the law of England and Wales.

The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction to determine any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with the Service, these Terms or an Order.

Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent through the contact form.