Biro terms of use

Biro, by AgentMaker LLC · Effective [DATE] · Version 2.1

1. Who we are

Biro is provided by AgentMaker LLC, a limited liability company registered in [STATE], USA (registration no. [NUMBER]), at [REGISTERED ADDRESS] ("we", "us"). You can contact us at support@birogcse.com.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By making a Biro account you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, don't use Biro.

These terms are a contract between you and AgentMaker LLC. They apply to the Biro app and to any website or service that links to them. You agree to them when you make an account ("Save your plan"), where they're linked next to the sign-up button. Our privacy policy explains how we handle your personal data. If you buy something in Biro, Apple's Media Services Terms also apply to the payment.

3. Who can use Biro

13 or over, in the UK.

• You must be 13 or over to make an account. By making one, you confirm you are. If we find out that someone under 13 has an account, we'll delete it.
• Biro is made for students taking GCSEs or IGCSEs in the United Kingdom, usually in Years 10 and 11. It's only available on the UK App Store.
• We treat everyone on Biro as under 18, so every account gets the same protective settings.
• If you're under 18, you can use Biro yourself, but we recommend a parent or carer knows you're using it, especially before buying Pro or the Exam Pass.

4. Your account

• One account per person. Don't share it, and don't use someone else's.
• You sign in with your email and a password, or with Apple or Google. Keep your sign-in safe, and tell us straight away at support@birogcse.com if you think someone else has got into your account.
• Biro starts you with a handle, and you can choose your own, then change it once every 30 days. It has to follow Biro's rules (section 10). Other students see it, so keep your real name out of it. After you change handle or delete your account, the old one can't be used by anyone for 90 days, or a year if we removed it. We keep only a simplified version of it, with no link to you. Other students never see your real name or email.
• Accounts, and anything in them, can't be sold or transferred to anyone else.

5. AI marking and chat

Biro is an AI. Its marks are estimates, and it can be wrong.

• Marks are estimates. Biro marks your answers with AI: against a mark scheme where it has one, and a photographed exam board paper by the AI's own reading of the question. Its marks, grade estimates and feedback are practice tools. They're not official marks from AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, Cambridge International or any other exam board, and a real examiner could give a different mark. Biro doesn't promise you any grade.
• If a mark looks wrong: on a practice question, use Report question and choose "My answer was marked wrong". A person reviews it to fix how Biro marks, though it doesn't change your mark. For a photo mark, or to ask about a mark, email support@birogcse.com.
• Chat is optional. Chatting with Biro (typed or by voice) and the section tutor only work once you've turned chat on, and you can turn it off any time in Settings → Privacy and AI. They may not be available to every account at first.
• Biro is not a person. Biro's chat is an AI. It's there to help you study. It isn't a counsellor, doctor or teacher, and it can't give medical, mental-health or legal advice. Check important things with your teacher.
• If you're worried about your safety or someone else's, talk to an adult you trust, call Childline on 0800 1111, or call 999 in an emergency.
• Don't use Biro to cheat. Don't hand in Biro's answers or feedback as your own work in coursework, NEA or any other assessed work. Exam boards treat that as malpractice.
• Don't try to make Biro produce harmful content, get around its safety rules, or use it for things that aren't studying.

6. Free and Pro

Free is free. Pro is a yearly or monthly plan that renews until you cancel. Each plan has monthly limits.

• Free costs nothing and doesn't end.
• Pro is a yearly or monthly subscription bought through the App Store: £9.99 a month or £59.99 a year at launch. The app shows the price before you buy.
• Free week. If Apple says your Apple Account is eligible, Pro starts with a 7-day free trial. The app shows it before you buy. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, it turns into a paid subscription for the plan you picked, at the price shown when you started. You can have only one free trial.
• Renewal. Pro renews automatically at the end of each period (a year or a month, the plan you picked), and Apple charges you, unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
• What each plan includes. AI work is limited each calendar month, so Biro stays fast and affordable for everyone:

• If you reach a limit, Biro tells you. The rest of Biro keeps working, and the limit resets at the start of the next month.
• Changing Pro's limits. We won't lower Pro's or the Exam Pass's limits during a period you've already paid for. If we plan to lower them, we'll tell you in the app at least 30 days before the change applies, so you can cancel before your next payment. We can raise limits at any time.
• Price changes. If we raise Pro's price, Apple tells you before it applies, and where Apple's rules require it, you'll need to agree before you're charged the new price. You can cancel before it starts.
• If Pro ends, you keep your progress, streaks, cards and cosmetics. You go back to Free.

7. The Exam Pass

One payment for Pro until 30 June 2027. Nothing renews.

• What you get: everything in Pro, with Pro's limits (section 6), from when you buy it until 23:59 UK time on 30 June 2027, after the 2027 GCSE exams. Then your account goes back to Free.
• One payment. The Exam Pass is a non-renewing subscription. You pay once, at the price shown in the App Store when you buy it (£59.99 at launch), and you're never charged again for it. It has no free trial.
• The end date is fixed. It's the same date whenever you buy, so a pass bought later in the year covers less time. The app shows the end date before you buy.
• Last day to buy: the Exam Pass is on sale until 23:59 UK time on 31 March 2027. After that, it isn't offered.
• If you already have Pro: buying the Exam Pass doesn't cancel your Pro subscription. Cancel it in your iPhone's Settings so you aren't charged for both. The app reminds you when you buy.

8. Payments, cancelling and refunds

Apple takes the payments and decides refunds. Cancel in your iPhone's Settings.

• Apple handles all payments. We never see or store your card details.
• To cancel Pro: open Settings → your name → Subscriptions on your iPhone, choose Biro, and tap Cancel Subscription. You keep Pro until the end of the period you've paid for. Deleting the app or your Biro account doesn't cancel a subscription.
• Refunds are handled by Apple, not by us. Ask for one at reportaproblem.apple.com. Apple decides refunds under its own terms. We can't issue or block App Store refunds ourselves.
• Your legal rights. Nothing in these terms affects your rights under UK consumer law. If Biro isn't as described or doesn't work properly, contact us and we'll try to put it right.
• If we close your account when you haven't broken these terms, or we stop running Biro, we'll make sure you get back what you paid for the time you can't use. [Evan: confirm, see FACTS-NEEDED]

9. Cards, XP and cosmetics

You earn them by studying. They aren't money, and they can't be bought, sold or swapped.

• Earned, never bought. Cards, XP, streaks, streak freezes and cosmetics are earned by using Biro. You can't buy them with real money, and Pro and the Exam Pass don't sell them. Biro has no in-app currency.
• No cash value. They have no value outside the app. They can't be exchanged for money, gift cards or anything else, and we'll never buy them back.
• No selling or swapping. Don't sell, buy or swap accounts, cards or anything else from Biro for real money or anything outside Biro, on any website or app, or in person. We may remove items, or close accounts, involved in this.
• You have a licence to use them, not ownership. We may change how they work, fix anything that came from a bug or cheating, or retire items. Cards you've earned aren't taken away for no reason. If you delete your account, or it's closed under section 13, they're gone.

10. Biro's rules

Be kind, keep it clean, keep your details private, keep people safe.

These rules apply to everything you send or show other students on Biro: messages, your handle, class names, and how you use friends, leagues and classes. They're the same rules as on our safety page, and we use their numbers when we tell you about a decision.

1. Be kind. No bullying, threats, hate or ganging up on someone, including in leagues and classes. No abuse about anyone's race, religion, sex, sexuality, gender identity, disability or anything else about who they are.
2. Nothing sexual. No sexual messages, jokes or requests, and never ask anyone for pictures.
3. Keep personal details off Biro. No phone numbers, addresses, schools, social media accounts or plans to meet, yours or anyone else's, even with friends. Don't try to move someone onto another app.
4. Keep people safe. Nothing that encourages or explains self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, violence, dangerous challenges, drugs or weapons. Pornography is never allowed. If you're struggling yourself, saying so is never against the rules. Childline is there on 0800 1111, and Biro's chat can point you to people who can help.
5. Be real. No scams, spam, adverts, pretending to be someone else (including Biro staff), or cheating with bugs, bots, scripts or extra accounts.
6. Clean handles and class names. Nothing rude, and no real names of schools.
7. Don't break the law, and don't try to break, overload, copy or get into parts of Biro or data that aren't yours.

Using Biro's AI to try to produce anything these rules ban is also against the rules (section 5).

11. Reporting and how we keep Biro safe

Report or block anyone, any time. Serious reports alert an adult straight away, and a person looks at others within 48 hours. You can appeal any decision.

This section is how we meet our duties under the UK's Online Safety Act 2023. Our safety page has the full details in plain words.

• Who can contact you. Only students you've both accepted as friends can message you, and chat is text only: no photos, files or links. You can turn chat off in Settings. Every account gets these settings, because we treat everyone on Biro as under 18.
• Report or block from a message (press and hold), a chat, a profile, a league row, a class or a friend request. Blocking is silent and hides you from each other everywhere. They aren't told who reported them. A sender can't take a message away from you: after a block you can still read what they sent you for 30 days, so you can report it, and if you're no longer friends or they're paused, you can read and report what they sent you in the last 30 days. If they delete their account, what they sent you stays for 30 days so you can read and report it, shown as "Deleted account". Your replies stay with it, unseen, in case a moderator needs them. The same applies to what you send if you delete yours.
• How fast. If you pick "Sexual or creepy" or "Asked to meet or for personal info", you can't contact each other from then on. Those, anything else our checks read as someone being hurt or at risk, and anything we're not sure about alert an adult safeguarding lead, who looks at them and decides them within 24 hours. For other reports, a person looks and decides within 48 hours, every day. See our safety page.
• If someone is in danger now, call 999. For help and advice, call Childline on 0800 1111. To report someone who's asking you for sexual pictures or making you feel unsafe online, you can also use CEOP.
• Automatic checks. Biro checks messages to friends, handles and class names with an automated word and pattern filter before they're sent. It stops most messages with personal details, links, sexual content or abuse, and hides swearing. If it recognises you saying you're being hurt, bullied or thinking of hurting yourself, that goes through and Biro shows you where to get help. If a message has words the filter stops and it can't tell what you mean, it isn't sent: an adult safeguarding lead can read it, and you're shown where to get help. You can also tell an adult you trust, call Childline on 0800 1111, or email us. If it's about the person you're messaging, report them. Chats with Biro and written answers are also checked by AI for signs that someone may be at risk, as our privacy policy explains. Automated checks never ban anyone on their own. If the filter stopped something it shouldn't have, you can complain (below).
• What we do. Depending on what happened, we may remove a message, reset a handle, reset a class name, pause your friends, chat, leagues and classes for 7 days or until we've checked a report, or remove them for good. If three different people connected to you on Biro (a friend, a class, a league or a recent chat) report you within 30 days, or two pick "Sexual or creepy" or "Asked to meet or for personal info", they pause automatically for 48 hours while a person checks. A later report doesn't restart it. Studying, and anything you've paid for, keeps working. Where the law requires it, we report child sexual exploitation and abuse to the UK's National Crime Agency, and we tell the police when a child may be at risk of serious harm.
• We'll tell you in the app if we act on your account, and which rule it was about, unless that would put someone at risk. We'll tell you when we've dealt with your report, unless you tick "Don't send me updates".
• Appeals. If you think a decision was wrong, or that we didn't deal with your report properly, tap Appeal in the app or email support@birogcse.com with "Appeal" in the subject. A person looks at it again. We have one safety lead for now, so if they made the decision, they review it themselves. We reply within 48 hours and decide within 7 days.
• Complaints. Anyone, including parents and people without an account, can complain about content on Biro, about our filter, or that we aren't doing what these terms say, at support@birogcse.com with "Complaint" in the subject. We reply within 48 hours and answer within 14 days. If a complaint is abusive or the same as one we've already answered, we may not reply again. You can also tell Ofcom, the UK's online safety regulator.

12. Your content and ours

• Your answers and messages are yours. You give us permission to store and process them to run Biro for you: marking, showing your messages to the friends you sent them to, and keeping Biro safe. If you report a mark and we agree it was wrong, we may keep that answer, without your account details, to improve how Biro marks.
• Our content is ours. Biro's questions, explanations, cards, artwork, the Biro name and the app itself belong to AgentMaker LLC or the people we license them from. We give you a personal, non-transferable licence to use Biro for your own studying. Don't copy, sell or republish Biro's content.
• Exam boards. Biro's questions are for practice, in the style of each exam board. Biro isn't made, approved or endorsed by AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, Cambridge International or any other exam board. Their names are their trademarks, and we use them only to say which course a question is for. Links to past papers go to the exam boards' own websites.
• If you think something in Biro infringes your rights, email support@birogcse.com.

13. Ending your account

• You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Delete account. This deletes your data as our privacy policy describes. It doesn't cancel an Apple subscription; cancel that separately.
• We can suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, if the law requires it, or to protect other students. Unless it would put someone at risk, we'll tell you why and how to appeal.
• Deleting doesn't undo a ban or a pause. If your account is banned or paused, we keep a scrambled code of your email, never the address, for as long as the sanction lasts and at most 12 months. It stays if you delete your account, and the sanction comes back if that email signs up again.

14. Changes to Biro and these terms

• Biro is a growing app, and features will change. We won't take away a main feature of a plan during the time you've paid for.
• If we change these terms in a way that matters, we'll tell you in the app at least 14 days before the change applies (or 30 days for a lower Pro limit, section 6; sooner only if the law or safety requires it). If you don't agree, you can stop using Biro and cancel your plan before the change applies.
• If we ever close Biro, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice in the app.

15. Our responsibility to you

• We'll provide Biro with reasonable care and skill. We can't promise it will always be available or error-free, and AI marks can be wrong (see section 5).
• We aren't responsible for your exam results, or for losses we couldn't reasonably have foreseen.
• Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't let us limit, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

16. Apple

If you got Biro from Apple's App Store:

• These terms are between you and AgentMaker LLC, not Apple. AgentMaker LLC, not Apple, is responsible for Biro and its content.
• Your licence to use Biro is limited to Apple devices you own or control, as the App Store's Usage Rules allow.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for Biro. Support is our job: support@birogcse.com.
• If Biro fails to meet a warranty that applies to it, you can tell Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any). As far as the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for Biro.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for handling any claims about Biro, including product liability claims, claims that Biro doesn't meet legal or regulatory requirements, and consumer protection, privacy or similar claims.
• If anyone claims that Biro or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for dealing with that claim.
• You confirm you're not in a country under a US government embargo, and you're not on a US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and can enforce them against you.

17. Governing law and disputes

• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.
• If you want to bring a claim, you can do so in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring it in your local courts.
• Please tell us first at support@birogcse.com. Most problems can be sorted out quickly.
• If a court decides part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.

18. Contact

AgentMaker LLC · [REGISTERED ADDRESS], USA
Support: support@birogcse.com · Privacy: support@birogcse.com