These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the material.codes platform, the website at material.codes, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint, the REST API, and any related services (collectively, the "Service"). By creating an account, joining the waitlist, or using the Service you agree to be bound by these Terms.
1. The Service
material.codes is a scientific research platform with an initial focus on materials science. It provides supported workflows without requiring you to write code, together with literature search, structured materials data, scientific calculations, and AI assistance. Available workflows, features, and usage limits depend on the access granted to your account.
The current research preview covers only the workflows and capabilities made available in the Service. Descriptions of future research domains, connections to customer compute resources, or private deployments do not mean those capabilities are available in the current preview.
2. Accounts
You must provide accurate registration information and keep it current. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials and API keys, and for all activity that occurs under your account. Please notify us promptly at info@material.codes should you suspect unauthorised use.
Accounts are provisioned for an individual researcher. Sharing a single account between multiple people is not permitted; site licences and team plans, where available, are negotiated separately.
3. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Use the Service to violate any applicable law, export control, or third-party right;
- Attempt to bypass rate limits, access controls, or per-plan feature gates, including by creating multiple accounts to evade usage caps;
- Resell, sublicense, or otherwise commercialise raw output from the Service in a way that substitutes for the underlying data providers we redistribute from (e.g. bulk re-export of Materials Project records);
- Use automated scraping or load-generating tooling beyond the public API and documented MCP surface;
- Submit content that is unlawful, defamatory, infringing, malicious, or that you do not have the right to upload;
- Probe, scan, or attempt to compromise the security or integrity of the Service.
4. Free preview and future subscriptions
The Service currently offers a free research preview, subject to usage limits. No paid subscriptions are available, and no credit card is required.
If paid subscriptions are introduced, prices, billing terms, and cancellation instructions will be shown before you subscribe. Our intended model is that cancelling renewal stops the next subscription charge while your paid plan remains active, with its features and usage limits, until the end of the period you have already paid for. Unused allowances will not extend that period.
5. Refunds
There are no subscription charges to refund during the free preview. For future paid subscriptions, our intended policy is that payments are non-refundable except where required by applicable law, as described in our Refund Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
6. Your content and data
You retain all rights in documents, datasets, prompts, and other material you upload ("Your Content"). You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, process, index, embed, and display Your Content solely as needed to operate the Service for you and the users you authorise.
We do not use Your Content to train foundation models. We do use anonymised, aggregated usage signals (e.g. query latencies, error rates) to operate and improve the Service.
To provide the requested features, we may send relevant prompts, document text, and other inputs to external AI and infrastructure providers. Our Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data, use service providers, and handle data rights requests.
7. Third-party data, AI and scientific results
The Service retrieves and synthesises information from third-party sources including Materials Project, OQMD, JARVIS-DFT, Alexandria, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and large language model providers. AI-generated summaries can be incomplete, out of date, or wrong; you are responsible for validating any result before relying on it for research, publication, safety-critical, or commercial purposes. Citations are provided so you can verify against primary sources.
Scientific calculations depend on their inputs, methods, settings, and assumptions. Results must be interpreted within those limits and together with the available provenance and caveats. Successful execution does not by itself establish scientific validity. Computational predictions are not experimental verification or a guarantee that a material can be synthesised or will perform as predicted in a real application.
8. Intellectual property
The Service, including its software, design, and documentation, is owned by material.codes and its licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Service in accordance with these Terms and the access granted to your account.
9. Termination
You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, abuse the Service, or create undue risk for other users or for our infrastructure.
Suspension or termination of access is separate from deletion of your account and stored data. If you need a copy of Your Content, download available files while you have access, or contact info@material.codes to request an export of content we still hold, including if your access has been suspended or terminated. Request any export you need before requesting account deletion.
Account deletion permanently removes your personal library and conversations. Once those records have been deleted, they cannot be included in an export. This does not limit any rights of access, portability, or erasure you have under applicable law; see our Privacy Policy for how to exercise them.
10. Disclaimers
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any specific result will be obtained.
11. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred euros (€100). We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill.
12. Changes to the Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be announced on this page and, for active accounts, via email at least 14 days before they take effect. The "Effective date" at the top of the page reflects the current version.
13. Contact
Questions about these Terms: info@material.codes.