Terms of Use & Data Statement

Please carefully review our rules of service and data handling practices before using the xRead platform.

Thank you for using xRead, including the Microsoft Word add-in and the xread.io web APIs that power it. Your continued use of the service means you accept these terms and our Privacy Policy.

Terms of Use

  1. Academic integrity: xRead is meant for lawful academic, research, and educational work. You are responsible for complying with your institution’s policies (including originality and citation rules). Do not use xRead to commit plagiarism, fraud, or other misconduct.
  2. Accuracy: Citation extraction, matching, verification, and summaries use AI and external catalogs; outputs can be wrong or incomplete. You remain responsible for verifying sources and final work product.
  3. Intellectual property: You retain ownership of your documents and ideas. You grant xRead only the rights needed to transmit and process content you submit so we can provide the service.
  4. Prohibited content: Do not submit unlawful material, trade secrets you are not authorized to share, or special-category personal data you should not put through cloud AI systems.
  5. Service availability: xRead is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We may change, limit, or suspend features for maintenance, abuse prevention, or legal reasons.
  6. Plans and payments: Paid seats and credit packs are described on the Plans page and billed through Stripe. An xRead seat is currently $12 per month or $99 per year and includes a monthly credit grant ($5, or $60 up front on annual). Credit packs ($10 / $20 / $50) add prepaid wallet balance for extra tools; they do not by themselves include Google Scholar last-resort search or custom skill creation. Subscriptions renew until you cancel via My xRead → Plan → Manage plan (Stripe customer portal). Credits are an xRead wallet, not an account with an AI provider.

Data & privacy statement

  • What leaves your device: When you run a feature, relevant text (for example a selection, a references section, or chat input) is sent over TLS to xread.io. We do not claim to “upload your whole hard drive”; we process what the client sends for the action you chose.
  • Server-side and AI processing: Our servers may call AI providers (including models we run for you and, if you save a key, a provider you configure) and scholarly or search APIs such as OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and where enabled SerpAPI (xRead seat only), to fulfill that request. Those vendors act as sub-processors for the duration of the request. We may change which models we use without updating this list.
  • Accounts: If you sign in, we store account data described in the Privacy Policy, including optional saved references and structured activity events tied to your user id.
  • Shared reference cache: We may retain aggregated public metadata and summaries about works (for example keyed by DOI) to avoid redundant external API calls. That cache is not a copy of your entire manuscript.
  • Local storage: The Word task pane caches tokens, UI state, and results locally (Office host / browser storage in the add-in) for performance. If you save an API key in System Controls (BYOK), we store it encrypted on our servers so it can be used for your complex tasks.
  • Billing records: If you pay, we store Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, invoice grant records, and your credit-wallet balance and ledger. Stripe processes card and wallet payments; we do not store full card numbers.
  • Logs: Like most hosted services, we may keep security, error, and operational logs. Avoid sending secrets in chat or support messages.

Contact & Support

For inquiries, to report misuse, or for general support regarding these terms, please contact our legal and support team at support@xread.io or visit our main homepage at xread.io.