Terms of Service
1. About REST Countries and these Terms
The Service is operated by ONC Inc. ("REST Countries," "we," "us"), a corporation incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the REST Countries website, dashboard, and API endpoints (collectively, the "Service"). By accessing or using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of an organization (an "Organization Customer"), you represent and warrant that you have authority to bind that organization and that "you" in these Terms refers to that organization.
2. Eligibility
You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum age of digital consent in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher) and able to form a binding contract. The Service is not directed at children. If we learn that an account has been created by a child below the applicable age, we will close it.
3. Accounts and API Keys
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and API Keys, and for all activity carried out under them. You must notify us immediately at support of any unauthorized use, loss, or compromise. REST Countries is not liable for losses caused by unauthorized access where you failed to safeguard your credentials.
API Keys are stored as one-way hashes; we cannot recover a key after issuance. If you lose a key, revoke it from your dashboard and create a new one.
4. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Reverse-engineer, scrape, crawl, or attempt to extract the underlying dataset in bulk for redistribution.
- Resell or sublicense the Service or its outputs without prior written consent from REST Countries.
- Use the Service to violate any law, regulation, or third-party right (including privacy, intellectual-property, export-control, sanctions, and consumer-protection laws).
- Circumvent rate limits, security controls, authentication, or audit logging.
- Sign up for an account, log in, or access or operate the dashboard or any other authenticated area of the Service through an AI agent, large language model, browser-automation tool, or other autonomous or semi-autonomous software acting on your behalf. Account creation, authentication, and use of authenticated areas must be performed directly by a human being. For clarity, this restriction applies only to the human-facing surfaces of the Service; programmatic access to the API endpoints using a valid API Key is unaffected.
- Use the Service to send spam, malware, or unsolicited communications.
- Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any REST Countries system, except through our coordinated disclosure program described at support.
5. Data caching and retention
You may cache responses returned by the Service for performance and reliability purposes for a maximum of three (3) days from the time the response was issued. You must not store, archive, mirror, or otherwise retain data returned by the Service (in primary, backup, derivative, or any other form) beyond that three-day window.
Aggregate, anonymized statistics about your own application's behaviour (request counts, latency, error rates, your own custom event logs) are exempt from this restriction.
Upon termination of your account, or upon written request from REST Countries in the event of a confirmed data correction (e.g. a correction to a country name, capital, leader entry, or border definition), you must purge all affected data from your systems within ten (10) business days and confirm such deletion in writing if asked.
6. Restricted uses
In addition to Section 4, you must not, directly or through a third party:
- Use the Service, or any data obtained through it, to build, operate, train, or improve any product or service that competes with REST Countries, including any offering that provides comparable reference, geographic, country, or related public-record data via API, file export, dataset, or similar means.
- Use data obtained through the Service to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or benchmark any machine-learning, large-language, or other AI model intended for redistribution, resale, embedding in another product, or use outside of your own end-user application.
- Aggregate the dataset, in whole or in substantial part, into any third-party offering, data dump, dataset license, or downstream product.
- Misrepresent the source of the data, claim ownership of it, or apply restrictive licensing terms to data redistributed under permitted attribution.
7. Attribution
If you display data sourced from the Service in a publicly accessible product, you agree to provide reasonable attribution to "REST Countries" with a link to restcountries.com in your credits, about page, footer, or equivalent. Attribution may be waived only with prior written consent from REST Countries.
8. Plans, billing, and taxes
Paid plans renew automatically each billing cycle unless canceled before the renewal date. Fees are charged in the currency shown at checkout (typically USD or CAD), are non-refundable except where required by law, and are exclusive of any applicable taxes (including Canadian GST/HST/PST/QST, EU/UK VAT, or equivalent).
The Free plan is intended for prototyping, evaluation, and non-commercial use. A paid plan is required if the Service, or any data obtained or derived from it (including cached, transformed, or aggregated responses), is used in or to support any site, application, product, project, workflow, or other context that generates revenue, whether directly (subscriptions, ads, transactions, paid features, consulting or contract work) or indirectly (lead generation, internal tools operated by a for-profit entity, or any other activity carried out in connection with a commercial business). For-profit organizations using the Service for any production-facing purpose must be on a paid plan, regardless of request volume.
Stripe Payments acts as our merchant of record for paid subscriptions and is responsible for determining, collecting, and remitting any applicable sales taxes, VAT, GST/HST, or equivalent consumption taxes based on your billing address. Tax amounts, where applicable, are calculated by Stripe at checkout and itemized on the invoice you receive.
We may change pricing on at least thirty (30) days' notice; changes do not apply retroactively to a billing period already paid. If we change pricing during your subscription you may cancel before the new pricing takes effect.
9. Service availability and SLA
We aim for high availability but, except where a written SLA is in force on a paid plan, the Service is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Scheduled maintenance and unscheduled outages may occur.
Any uptime SLA referenced on a paid plan applies only to the API endpoints (i.e.
api.restcountries.com/* and any regional API hostnames). Auxiliary surfaces,
such as the marketing site, the customer dashboard, account/billing pages, support and documentation
pages, and email delivery, are excluded from the SLA. Downtime affecting those surfaces does not
constitute an SLA breach and does not entitle you to service credits.
Uptime target by plan. The monthly uptime target depends on your subscription:
- Free: best-effort availability, no formal target and no service credits.
- Personal: 99.9% monthly uptime target with service credits per the schedule below.
- Professional: 99.95% monthly uptime target with service credits per the schedule below.
- Startup: 99.99% monthly uptime target with service credits per the schedule below.
- Business: 99.995% monthly uptime target with service credits per the schedule below.
Uptime is measured as the percentage of one-minute intervals in a calendar month during which our monitoring records a successful response from the API endpoints.
Service credits. If monthly uptime on a covered plan falls below that plan's target, you may request a service credit against a future invoice on the following schedule:
- Below your plan's target but at or above 99.0%: credit equal to 10% of your monthly fee.
- Below 99.0% but at or above 95.0%: credit equal to 25% of your monthly fee.
- Below 95.0%: credit equal to 50% of your monthly fee.
Claiming a credit. To receive a credit you must submit a written claim to support within thirty (30) days after the end of the affected calendar month, including the dates, times, and approximate duration of unavailability and any request/response evidence available to you. Credits are applied to a future invoice, have no cash value, are non-transferable, and will not, in aggregate for any month, exceed 100% of the monthly fee paid for that month.
Exclusions. The SLA does not apply to, and downtime is not counted during: (a) scheduled maintenance announced at least 48 hours in advance; (b) emergency maintenance required to address a security or stability incident; (c) circumstances outside REST Countries' reasonable control as described in Section 17 (Force majeure); (d) issues caused by your code, integrations, DNS, or local network; (e) requests denied due to rate limits, quota exhaustion, key revocation, account suspension, or violation of these Terms; (f) beta, preview, or unreleased features that are labelled as such; and (g) the Free plan or any other no-charge usage.
Sole and exclusive remedy. Service credits issued under this Section are your sole and exclusive remedy, and REST Countries' sole and exclusive liability, for any unavailability of or interruption to the Service. REST Countries does not provide cash refunds for downtime.
Support response targets. Where a paid plan advertises a priority support response time, the stated turnaround is a first-response target for tickets submitted via the support page, measured in business hours. For purposes of these Terms, business hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time, excluding statutory holidays observed in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Tickets received outside business hours begin accruing time at the start of the next business day. First-response targets by plan are: Professional: twelve (12) business hours; Startup: eight (8) business hours; Business: four (4) business hours. These targets reflect time to first human response and not time to resolution, do not apply to the Free or Personal plans, and are not eligible for service credits.
10. Data accuracy
Data returned by the Service is provided on a best-effort basis and may contain errors, omissions, or entries that are out of date. You are solely responsible for verifying any value before relying on it for legal, medical, financial, regulatory, immigration, taxation, or safety-critical decisions. REST Countries disclaims any warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for a particular purpose.
Although we use reasonable efforts to review source details, attribution, and licensing information, REST Countries does not control upstream data providers, public registries, open source projects, or other third-party sources. Those sources may change their licensing terms, attribution requirements, availability, usage restrictions, or published materials without notice, and we are not responsible for those upstream changes. You are responsible for confirming that your use of data or materials made available through the Service remains compatible with your intended use.
11. Privacy and data protection
Your privacy matters to us. Our handling of personal data is governed by our Privacy Policy, our Data Processing Agreement (where applicable), and our Cookie Policy. EU/UK and Swiss residents have additional rights described on the GDPR Rights page. Canadian residents have rights under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy legislation, also described there.
12. Termination and account deletion
We may suspend or terminate your account for breach of these Terms, suspected abuse, non-payment, or for prolonged inactivity (defined as no successful API request and no dashboard log-in for twelve (12) consecutive months). Where reasonably possible we will give you notice and an opportunity to cure non-material breaches.
You may delete your account at any time from your account settings. On closure, paid-plan refunds are not provided for the unused portion of a current billing cycle except where required by law.
Account deletion details. When you delete your account from your account settings, the following take effect immediately or at the end of the current billing period as noted.
What gets deleted:
-
API Keys: every active API key on the account is revoked the moment your
deletion is confirmed; subsequent requests authenticated with those keys return
401. - Account profile: name, email address, password hash, and plan history are removed.
- Request logs: per-account API request logs and per-key analytics are removed.
- Active subscription: any active paid subscription is canceled at the end of the current billing period; no further charges are made.
What we keep:
- Billing records: invoices and payment records are retained for seven (7) years to meet tax and accounting obligations.
- Anonymized aggregate metrics: individual rows tied to your account are removed, but aggregate statistics already rolled up at the dataset level remain and do not identify you.
For the exhaustive data-handling picture, see the Privacy Policy and the GDPR Rights page.
Sections 5 (data deletion obligations), 6, 10, 13, 14, 15, and 16 survive termination.
13. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless REST Countries, its parents, subsidiaries, operators, employees, and contractors from and against any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to (a) your use of the Service in breach of these Terms, (b) your violation of any law or third-party right, or (c) any product, decision, or content you build, derive, or publish using the Service.
14. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including (without limitation) warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, REST Countries' total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service is limited to the fees you actually paid to REST Countries in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. In no event will REST Countries be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or for any lost profits, lost revenue, lost goodwill, or loss of data, even if REST Countries has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on implied warranties or on certain damages; in those jurisdictions, the limitations above apply only to the maximum extent permitted by law.
15. Governing law and jurisdiction
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Subject to Section 16, the courts located in Toronto, Ontario shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, and you and REST Countries each consent to personal jurisdiction and venue there.
Nothing in this Section 15 limits any non-waivable rights you have as a consumer under the mandatory laws of your country of habitual residence (including, where applicable, EU member-state consumer-protection laws and the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015), or your right to bring a complaint before a competent supervisory authority.
16. Dispute resolution
Before filing a claim, you agree to first attempt to resolve the dispute informally by contacting support. We commit to engage in good faith for at least thirty (30) days. If the matter is not resolved, either party may pursue the claim in the courts identified in Section 15 or, where mutually agreed in writing, by binding arbitration under the rules of the ADR Institute of Canada.
Where applicable law (e.g. EU or UK consumer law) provides a mandatory alternative-dispute-resolution mechanism, that mechanism remains available to you.
17. Force majeure
Neither party will be liable for any failure or delay in performance to the extent caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, labour disputes affecting third parties, internet or telecommunications failures, or upstream cloud-provider outages. The affected party will use reasonable efforts to mitigate the effect of the event and resume performance as soon as practicable.
18. Assignment
You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights or obligations under them without our prior written consent, except that an Organization Customer may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of its assets, on written notice to REST Countries. REST Countries may assign these Terms to an affiliate or in connection with a corporate reorganization, merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of its assets, on written notice to you.
19. Notices
Notices to you may be sent to the email address associated with your account, posted to the dashboard, or published to the marketing site, and are deemed received on the day sent or posted. Notices to REST Countries must be sent to legal at restcountries.com via the support page, and are deemed received when acknowledged by REST Countries.
20. Severability, entire agreement, no waiver
If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the unenforceable provision will be replaced with one that most closely reflects the intent of the original. These Terms (together with any documents they reference) constitute the entire agreement between you and REST Countries on the subject matter and supersede prior agreements. A failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of any future enforcement of that or any other provision.
21. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be announced by email or in-app notice at least fourteen (14) days before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree, you may delete your account before the changes take effect.
22. Contact
Questions or requests? Contact support. For privacy-specific matters see our Privacy Policy.