Terms and conditions

Ingredient.help is run by Rasveda Labs, LLC, a New York limited liability company. By creating an account, or by using Ingredient.help in any other way, including adding to the shared catalog (the product records everyone who uses Ingredient.help sees) without an account, you agree to these terms. When you create an account, you agree by ticking the box on the sign-up form; if your account was made another way, or these terms have changed since you agreed, we'll ask you to tick it before you go on. If you don't agree, please don't use it. Extra terms we show you for a particular feature, such as a future subscription, also apply to that feature.

Ingredient.help is made for adults looking after themselves, their family and their pets. It isn't directed at children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to use it. If you're under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, you need the permission of a parent or guardian, who accepts these terms for you. If we learn that someone under 13 has an account, we'll delete it.

It is for personal, non-commercial use. It is run from the United States and designed for labels printed in English: on a list printed in another language, the checks may find nothing even when it names one of your allergens or a pet hazard.

Ingredient.help finds food, cosmetics and pet food by barcode, label photo or name, and shows our reading of what one label prints and doesn't print. It also has a household diary, the Laboratory tools, and pages about ingredients and brands.

It is an educational tool, not medical, dietary or veterinary advice. Never ignore professional advice, or delay getting it, because of something Ingredient.help shows. If you or someone you look after has a severe allergy, don't rely on Ingredient.help: read the pack every time, follow the plan your doctor gave you, and ask the maker if you're unsure, because labels don't always say what a product may have touched, and recipes change. Ingredient.help isn't intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition, in people or animals, and using it creates no doctor–patient or vet–client relationship. For decisions about your health, your family's or a pet's, talk to a doctor, a registered dietitian or a vet. Whether to buy, eat, feed, apply or avoid a product is your decision.

Ingredient.help isn't an emergency service. Nobody monitors your diary or your scans, and the app doesn't contact anyone for you. Some screens show a prompt to get help when certain signs or ingredients are logged or scanned. These prompts appear only in some cases and aren't a complete list of warning signs; when none appears, that doesn't mean nothing is wrong.

If someone may be having a severe allergic reaction, call your local emergency number now, and use an adrenaline auto-injector if one has been prescribed. If someone may have swallowed something harmful, call your local emergency number or a poison control center (in the US, 1-800-222-1222) now. If you think a pet ate something harmful, call your vet, an out-of-hours vet or a pet poison line right away. Logging can wait.

We describe what one label shows and what it doesn't, as we read it. We don't say whether a maker's claim is correct: a maker may hold evidence a label doesn't print. Nothing we show is a finding that a maker misled anyone or that its products are unsafe. The one number about a maker, shown on brand pages and in some pet food scores, rates facts we have established from public sources, not the maker.

Each product says where its ingredient list came from when we know it: our own reading of the pack, a shopper's reading, published label data, USDA FoodData Central, or an open database such as Open Food Facts. Any of these can be out of date. "Community verified" means people holding the pack confirmed that the barcode matches it, not that the ingredient list is right.

What we show can be wrong. A photo can be misread, even a single figure or decimal point, and we can't catch every misreading. The app can take a product for the wrong kind (food, pet food or cosmetic), which changes every check and the score. A barcode can lead to the wrong product, and recipes can change under the same barcode. Records from open databases, shoppers' readings and names people type aren't checked before they're shown. AI makes mistakes, and a saved report may have been written from an earlier ingredient list.

So the label on the pack in your hand comes first. Where it differs from what we show, go by the pack.

Each check looks only for what it was built to find, in the text we read:

• Allergens: food labels only, for the allergens and intolerances on our list that you choose. "May contain" is noted only where the label prints it.
• Sensitivities: food labels only, and only among the ingredients we recognise.
• Pet food: a short, fixed list of hazards for cats and dogs. For other animals we hold no hazard data.
• Cosmetics: a list of ingredients some people prefer to know about. A flag doesn't mean an ingredient is dangerous, and cosmetics aren't checked against your allergens or sensitivities.
• Household diary: for a baby, a child or a pregnancy, only the notes the diary lists for that person, such as honey under 12 months, six colours that carry an EU/UK warning, and caffeine. In a pregnancy it notes caffeine only, and doesn't check the foods the NHS advises avoiding.

A line such as "None of your 3 allergens on this label" or "None of the ingredients on our dog hazard list is on this label" means only that our check didn't find them in the text we read, not that the product is free of them or suits you or your pet. When we can't read a label well, the app says so instead of answering these checks.

We quote guidance and labeling rules from several countries, such as the NHS, the WHO, EU and UK law, US federal rules and AAFCO, wherever you are. We don't tell you whether a product meets the rules where you live.

We show only recalls we have recorded by hand from public announcements, such as those of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Today that is a short list of pet food recalls, and the scan screen shows recalls for pet food only. We don't send recall alerts.

No recall shown means we have nothing filed, not that there was no recall. A notice about a brand's recall doesn't mean the product in front of you was part of it. To check, go to the announcement we link to, the FDA or the maker.

Product reports are written by Claude, an AI model from Anthropic. We don't send it the brand or product name we hold, though text read from a photo can include them. It rates five parts of the label against a fixed rubric and is asked to give the reason for each point it takes off. For some pet foods our server adds a sixth line, "Manufacturer": the number on the brand's page, worked out from which of five facts public sources establish about the maker, such as whether it runs AAFCO feeding trials. It rates those facts, not the maker. For some cat and dog foods whose guaranteed analysis we hold, our server also keeps the nutrition rating within a range set by those figures. Our server adds up the points; a label such as Excellent or Weak names where the sum falls on our scale.

A score and a report are our reading of one label by that method, not a laboratory test, a statement of fact about the product or a verdict on its maker. AI output can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, so check factual statements against the pack. A report's headline, and its "Who it suits" notes for broad groups such as children, pregnancy, a condition such as diabetes, or a pet's life stage, may say a product suits a group, is for now and then, or is better avoided. These are general statements written by AI about one label, not advice about you or anyone you look after, and not a recommendation to buy or avoid a product: whether a product suits someone with a health condition, or during pregnancy, is a question for their doctor, dietitian or vet. The same goes for comparisons with other kinds of product.

We check reports automatically for some kinds of mistake, but no person reviews each one before it's shown. A report is saved and shown to everyone who looks that product up. If it is written again, for example after we change our method, its score can change.

Ingredient.help's diary is a record-keeping tool that counts what was logged; it doesn't assess health. It doesn't diagnose anyone, rate anyone's risk or tell you what to remove from anyone's diet. Its patterns are "Counted, not proven", and the doctor or vet report is made only from what was logged on your device; it is not a diagnosis.

You're responsible for what you enter. Before you keep another adult's health information, check they're happy for you to keep it there. Parents and guardians are responsible for what they record about their children.

The diary is stored in your browser on your device, not in your account, so we can't see, recover or delete it for you. Browsers can clear stored data, and each person or pet keeps up to 2,500 entries and 1,500 reactions, oldest dropped first. Keep backups from Backup & export, and keep them private: they hold health notes.

• Compare puts two products side by side. It doesn't pick one for you.
• Dry matter and calorie figures are arithmetic from each pack's own figures. We don't set feeding amounts: each pack's feeding guide and your vet set the amount.
• Interactions are rule-based educational notes about food additives used together, not about medicines, and not advice about any diet. "No known interaction data" means our rules hold nothing for that combination, not that there is no interaction.
• Ingredient pages are general information we wrote, and may be incomplete or out of date.
• Brand pages list what we have established about a maker from public sources, with those sources. Where we've established at least three of five facts, they also show a number out of 10: two points for each fact established and met. A dash means we haven't established that fact, not that the answer is no, but it earns no points, so the number reflects what we know as well as what we found.

We have no affiliation with any maker and don't endorse any product.

You don't need an account to scan. You can create one with an email address and password, or with Continue with Google, where Google's terms also apply. Give accurate information and keep your password secret, and tell us if you think someone else has used your account. An account is for one person, and each person may have one: don't open another to confirm your own discoveries, earn extra Ingredient Plus days or get round limits. You're responsible for what is done with your account, as far as the law allows.

Signing out ends the session on that device only. If you can't change something in the app, such as your email address, write to us. You can download your data from Account & data and delete your account at any time in Delete your account. Deletion is permanent and immediate; the Privacy policy says what it removes.

Your contributions are what you add to Ingredient.help:

• Text read from a label photo you take, saved automatically under the product's barcode when we don't hold its ingredients, and, if you're signed in, a reading that replaces a list another shopper, published label data, USDA FoodData Central or an open database supplied.
• Names and brands you type for a product's barcode (not entries you type into the diary, which stay on your device), and a name, brand, pack size, nutrition panel or guaranteed analysis read from your photos or confirmed by you.
• Your yes or no when you confirm a product is the one you're holding.
• Proposed corrections, score complaints, reports about content, and their comments.

Product information you contribute is shown, with its source, to everyone who looks the product up, including on its public page, which search engines can index. Confirmation counts are public. Corrections, complaints and reports come to us and aren't shown on the product, though a correction we accept changes the product's record.

When you add product information, you promise that it comes from the actual pack you're holding and that you've added it under that pack's barcode. Nothing you add, including a comment, may hold anyone's personal information or anything about anyone's health, and you must have the right to share it. Photograph only the label: anything else in the frame, such as a face or a pharmacy sticker with a name on it, is sent to be read too, and words printed on it can end up in the text we save and show to everyone.

You keep whatever rights you have in your contributions. Reading a label gives neither you nor us any ownership of a maker's label or trademarks.

If you delete your account, products you were the first to read and your confirmations stay in the shared catalog, no longer linked to you. Your confirmations then no longer count towards a product's confirmation count or its Community verified status. Everything else you add, such as corrections, complaints, names you type, and names, pack sizes or panels read from your photos, isn't linked to your account, so we can't find it to delete it for you.

You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual and irrevocable license to host, store, copy, adapt, combine, publish and display your contributions, with or without credit to you, to run, improve and provide Ingredient.help. Adapting includes correcting them, combining them with other records and using them to write scores and reports. Our service providers may do these things for us. Where an open-data license that applies to the catalog requires it, you also allow us to make a contribution available under that license.

The license continues after you delete your account, because the catalog keeps what people have added. It transfers no ownership to us, and it doesn't limit what you say about Ingredient.help anywhere. Your display name isn't covered: it's yours to change or hide, and it is deleted with your account.

Most readings, names and panels are shown as soon as they're saved, without anyone checking them first. A reading that would replace a list we've read and checked ourselves (shown as "From our catalog"), or one sent while signed out to replace a list we hold, doesn't change the catalog. From the scan screen it may be kept as a proposed correction: Claude compares it with the current list; unless it reads as the same list or a bad read, it waits for a person to review it. If no report is saved for that product yet, the report written from your reading may still be saved and shown.

We may, but don't have to, review, correct, merge or remove any contribution, turn down any correction, and replace a shopper's reading with our own. A complaint or correction changes nothing by itself.

A display name is optional. Until you set one, a product you were the first to read says "a community member". If you set a name and keep it visible, the product's public page shows it with the month you read it, and search engines can index that page. You can change or hide it in Contributor identity at any time, though others may already have copied earlier versions. A name must not pretend to be someone else, use a brand that isn't yours, include contact details or be offensive; we may remove or reset one that does.

Don't:

• Add product information you know is wrong, or attach it to a barcode it doesn't belong to.
• Contribute anything defamatory, hateful, harassing, sexual or threatening, anything that breaks the law or someone's rights, or anyone's personal or health information.
• Pretend to be another person, a maker or a brand, or post spam, advertising or links.
• Use scripts or bots to send automated requests to our servers, or crawl our pages beyond what our robots.txt file allows. If you want catalog data in bulk, write to us: data that came from an open database stays available to you under its license.
• Get round rate limits, plan limits or other restrictions, for example by changing IP addresses or opening extra accounts.
• Try to get into accounts, staff tools or systems you aren't allowed into, test their security, or interfere with Ingredient.help, including by overloading it.
• Reverse engineer our software, except where the law allows it despite this term.
• Use Ingredient.help, or anything it shows, to harm people or animals or to harass anyone.
• Present our readings, scores or reports as a laboratory test, a certification or a statement by us about a maker.
• Use the features that rely on Claude for anything Anthropic's Usage Policy (anthropic.com/legal/aup) prohibits.

If you find a security problem, please tell us at support@ingredient.help rather than testing it further.

If a score, a product's ingredients or the product itself look wrong, open the product on the scan screen and tap "This score doesn't look right" under its score's breakdown (products with a barcode only). If there's no score yet, email us. It doesn't change the score; it goes to a review queue we read, where several people disagreeing about the same kind of product is how we find a rule that's wrong.

To report anything else, such as an offensive name or display name, someone's personal information, or content you think breaks the law or infringes your rights, tap "Report something on this page" on the product's page or under its scan result, or email support@ingredient.help with the barcode or page address and what is wrong. We look at reports and decide whether to remove or correct the content, or leave it.

Makers and sellers can ask for a correction by email too. Send what the pack prints, with a photo if you can. Where the pack shows we've read it wrongly, we correct our record. We don't change a score on request. We rewrite a score when we update the label we hold for that product or change our method; until then it may still reflect an earlier list.

If you believe something on Ingredient.help infringes your copyright, send a notice to our copyright agent: Copyright Agent, Rasveda Labs, LLC, at support@ingredient.help, with "Copyright notice" in the subject line. Include:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• The work you say is infringed, and where the material is on Ingredient.help, in enough detail for us to find it.
• Your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
• A statement that your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner.

If we remove something you contributed because of a notice and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can send our agent a counter-notice with your physical or electronic signature; what was removed and where it appeared; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your name, address and telephone number; and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if you live outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found) and will accept service from the person who sent the notice. We may then restore the material unless the person who sent the notice tells us they have filed a court action.

Someone who knowingly misrepresents that material infringes, or that it was removed by mistake, can be liable for damages. We will, in appropriate circumstances, end the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe other people's copyrights, and stop accepting contributions from them.

Ingredient.help is free to use today, as a guest or with a free Basic account. Ingredient Plus will be an optional subscription. Plans & features shows what each includes. Checkout isn't live yet, so for now nobody pays anything. Plan limits aren't switched on yet: until Ingredient Plus launches, everyone, guests included, gets full reports, and the allowances on that page are what each plan will include.

The recall, allergen, sensitivity and pet-hazard checks are never locked behind a plan, and the household diary is free on every plan. These checks are still our reading of a label: they can miss things, and like the rest of Ingredient.help they may sometimes be unavailable.

Hourly limits that control cost and misuse apply to everyone, Ingredient Plus included; "Unlimited" means no allowance is counted. Apart from the safety checks and the household diary named above, and scanning without an account, we may change what Guest and Basic include, with a notice in the app before the change takes effect. Once full-report limits are on, a product you've unlocked stays open on your account while your account and that product remain on Ingredient.help.

Before anyone can pay for anything, whether Ingredient Plus or a pack of reports, we'll add the terms for it here and show them before you pay: the price, what you get, the billing period, how it renews, how to cancel, and how refunds work. They will follow the automatic renewal and consumer laws that apply where you live, and purchases made through Google Play will also be under Google Play's terms and refund policies. If we end a paid plan for any reason other than your serious breach of these terms, we'll refund the unused part of the period you paid for. We may give Ingredient Plus at no charge. If it ends for your account, the account goes back to Basic, and what you've saved isn't deleted because of that.

You can earn Ingredient Plus days, shown in the app as days of subscription, in two ways, while signed in. A discovery, a product whose label you were the first to read, earns days once it is Community verified: once at least two other signed-in people holding the pack have confirmed it. Answering whether a product someone else read is the one you're holding earns a day too, up to 10 a month. The amounts are shown in the app. Contributing is voluntary; it isn't work for us and creates no employment relationship. Ingredient Plus days:

• Have no cash value. They aren't money, wages, property, a currency, a token or an investment, give no right to money, revenue or a share in anything, and nothing in these terms promises they will become anything else.
• Can't be sold, transferred or moved between accounts.
• Can be used only as Ingredient Plus time. Nothing can be spent yet: when Ingredient Plus goes on sale, your balance will come off what you pay, as the Ingredient Plus terms will set out before anyone pays.
• Follow earning rules we may change, but a change applies only to days earned after it.
• May be reversed if credited by mistake, or earned through deceit, extra or automated accounts, confirming products you weren't holding, or confirmations arranged with other people who weren't each holding the pack.
• Are deleted with your account, and can't be restored.
• End if we stop running Ingredient.help, and nothing is paid for them.

The app promises: "Reach 20 confirmed discoveries and the app stays free for good, for the first 1000 people who do." To each person who gets there, it says: "Ingredient.help is free for you, for good."

We will keep that promise. A founding place goes to each account that reaches 20 Community verified discoveries, as the app counts them, while fewer than 1,000 places are held. For as long as your account exists and we run Ingredient.help, you get Ingredient Plus, or any plan that replaces it, at no charge. The place is personal, can't be transferred and ends if you delete your account. We may withdraw it only if it was gained through deceit or extra or automated accounts, or if you seriously break these terms. Later changes to these terms won't take it away.

We don't run advertising of any kind: no ads, no ad trackers, no third-party analytics, nothing promoted. No one can pay for a place in search results, or anywhere else in the app. No brand pays us, sponsors a page or has a deal with us, and no brand can pay to change a score. No link in the app earns us anything. The only money we take comes from the people who use Ingredient.help.

Some product information comes from sources we don't control, each under its own terms:

• Open Food Facts (openfoodfacts.org), Open Beauty Facts (openbeautyfacts.org) and Open Pet Food Facts (openpetfoodfacts.org): the databases are under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0 and their contents under the Database Contents License (DbCL) 1.0. Their product photos are by Open Food Facts contributors, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0).
• USDA FoodData Central, in the public domain: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2026. fdc.nal.usda.gov.
• Published label data: what makers and retailers publish online, taken as published.
• Recall notices and the veterinary, scientific and regulatory sources we cite, which we name and, where we can, link to.

These terms don't restrict what those licenses let you do with data you get from its source. The sources don't promise their records are accurate, and neither do we. No maker, database, agency or service provider named in Ingredient.help endorses it or is affiliated with us; names, brands and trademarks belong to their owners. Our service providers are named in the Privacy policy. We don't control the sites our links lead to.

Ingredient.help's software, design and the text we write, including ingredient pages, our own readings and the reports and scores it produces, belong to us or our licensors, as far as the law gives rights in them. We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use Ingredient.help for your own non-commercial purposes under these terms, and you may share links to its pages. The catalog's third-party data stays under its own licenses, which our license doesn't cover.

We may add, change or remove features, or stop running Ingredient.help, and the Android app changes whenever the website does. Some features need an internet connection. Offline, once its reader has been downloaded during an earlier scan, the app can read labels on your device, in English only. It shows some pages you've already opened, and its recall information may be older.

When we change these terms, we'll post the new version here with a new date. If a change materially affects your rights, we'll tell you before it takes effect, by email if you have an account and with a notice in the app, and give you reasonable time to read it; for a paid subscription, we'll give notice at the time the law requires. Changes needed for legal reasons, or that only concern new features, can take effect sooner. A change doesn't apply to a dispute that arose before it took effect. If you keep using Ingredient.help after the change takes effect, the new terms apply; if you don't agree, stop using it and delete your account. A change won't take away Ingredient Plus days already credited, a founding place you already hold, or products you've already unlocked.

We may suspend or end your access, remove your contributions, stop accepting contributions from your device or network, or delete your account if you break these terms, misuse Ingredient.help or put others at risk, or if the law requires it. We won't delete an account that holds a founding place, or take away Ingredient Plus days already credited, except for the reasons given in Ingredient Plus days and Founding contributors, or where the law requires it (including an account held by someone under 13). Where it's reasonable to, we'll tell you why. You can stop at any time and delete your account in Delete your account.

When an account ends, the products it was the first to read and its confirmations stay in the shared catalog, no longer linked to it, and its display name is deleted. The sections "Your contributions", "The license you give us", "Disclaimers", "Limitation of liability", "Claims about your contributions", "Governing law and disputes" and "General terms" continue to apply.

To the extent the law allows, Ingredient.help is provided "as is" and "as available". We make no promises about it beyond those in these terms, and no implied promise that it is merchantable, fit for a particular purpose or free of errors.

We don't promise that any reading, check, score, report, recall record, page or third-party record is complete, current or correct, that Ingredient.help will be available without interruption, or that it will find every allergen, hazard or recall. We don't tell you whether a product is suitable for you, your family or your pet to eat or use. Nothing in these terms takes away consumer rights the law doesn't allow to be excluded.

Decisions about buying, eating, feeding or applying a product, or changing a diet, are yours. To the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses or for punitive damages, and our total liability to you for all claims about Ingredient.help is limited to the greater of what you paid us for it in the 12 months before the claim arose and US$100.

These limits don't apply to our gross negligence or willful misconduct, to death or personal injury caused by our negligence, to deliberate deceit, or to anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit. Where the law where you live doesn't allow some of these limits, they apply to you only as far as it allows.

If you use Ingredient.help for a business, such as a maker or a seller, and someone brings a claim against us because of what that business contributed or because it used Ingredient.help in breach of these terms or the law, the business will cover the reasonable costs, losses and legal fees that result, to the extent it caused them. This doesn't apply to the extent the claim results from our own fault. We'll tell you about the claim promptly.

If you have a problem with Ingredient.help, please write to support@ingredient.help first, so we can try to sort it out.

These terms, and any dispute about them or Ingredient.help, are governed by the laws of the State of New York and applicable US federal law, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes must be brought only in the state or federal courts located in New York County, New York, and you and we agree to their personal jurisdiction and venue, except as the next paragraph says. Either of us may instead use a small claims court that has jurisdiction.

If you're a consumer living outside New York, these choices don't take away protections that the law where you live gives you and that can't be changed by agreement. If you're a consumer in the EU or the UK, you can bring a claim in the courts where you live, and we can bring a claim against you only there.

Our Android app opens the Ingredient.help website, so these terms cover it. If you got the app from Google Play, Google Play's terms also apply to your download and use of it. Google isn't a party to these terms and isn't responsible for Ingredient.help. Uninstalling the app doesn't delete your account; use Delete your account for that.

• These terms, the Privacy policy and any terms we show you for a particular feature are the whole agreement between you and us about Ingredient.help.
• If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• We may transfer these terms to a company that takes over Ingredient.help, which would then be bound by them. You may not transfer them without our written agreement.
• These terms give rights only to you and us. We aren't responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.
• We may send you notices by email or in the app. You can send notices to us at support@ingredient.help.
• If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.
• These terms are written in English; a translation is for convenience only.

Rasveda Labs, LLC, New York, United States. Email support@ingredient.help with questions about these terms, to report content or to ask for a correction. To delete your account yourself, use Delete your account.