What applies between us.

What this is

mumble is a dictation app for macOS and Windows that I, Dorin Muntean, build and run. You hold a key, speak, and the text appears at your cursor. The speech model runs on your machine.

These terms apply between you and me for as long as you use mumble. How I handle your data is set out in the privacy policy — the short version being that your audio and your transcripts never reach me. What does reach me is a number: how many words you dictated this week, so that a plan limit can be counted. Not the words themselves.

How this agreement comes about

You tick a box for these terms and the privacy policy when you sign up — nothing is ticked for you. I record the date and the version you agreed to. The version in force is always the one on this page, and it carries its date at the top, so you can see when it last changed.

Accounts are for adults. If you are under 18, your parents or guardian have to agree before you sign up, and a paid plan needs their agreement too — a running subscription is not something pocket money settles. Because of data protection rules, mumble is not meant for anyone under 16 at all. One account per person.

We do this in English — the contract, the confirmations, the emails. You may write to me in German just as well; I read both, and I will never turn a message down because of the language you wrote it in.

The app itself

For as long as your account exists, you may install mumble on the machines you personally use and run it there, privately or at work. There is no device limit — a plan belongs to a person, not to a machine. The right is yours alone, it is not exclusive, and you cannot pass it on, rent it out or sell it. Everything else stays with me.

You may not take the app apart to build a competing product, and you may not remove or work around the licence check. What the law allows you to do anyway — making a backup, or decompiling to make other software work with mumble — you may of course do; you do not need my permission for that.

mumble is built on open-source components, the speech model among them. They come with their own licences, and for the parts they cover those licences win over this section. Write to kontakt@nirod.de and I will send you the list.

Updates

I keep the app updated — security fixes, and the updates it needs to keep working as described — for at least two years from the day you install it, and in practice for as long as I run the service. That applies on the free plan too.

The app looks for updates on its own shortly after it starts, and it tells you when one is there. It installs nothing without your say-so. If you skip an update, I am not on the hook for what that update would have fixed.

There is also a beta channel you can switch on in the settings. That is pre-release software, deliberately: it is there to be tested, and none of the promises in this section apply to it.

Free, Pro, and the trial

The free plan costs nothing and stays free. It transcribes up to a fixed number of words per calendar week — 2,000 today, counted Monday to Sunday — on the small speech model. Run out and dictation resumes the following Monday. Nothing is deleted and nothing is charged.

Pro lifts that limit, switches on the larger model, transcribes while you are still speaking and lets dictations queue up. The limit is counted for the account as a whole, across all your machines — which is also why an account is not something two people share.

Every new account starts with three months of Pro, without a card and without asking. It ends by itself, on the day it runs out, and the account continues on Free. A trial is never quietly turned into a subscription.

I can also hand out Pro or a Founder plan myself, free of charge — to testers, to early supporters, to people who helped. Those plans are a gift, not a purchase: I can withdraw them at any time, they cannot be bought, and nothing about them creates a claim to a refund.

Your plan is checked against my server. The app remembers the answer and keeps working offline, but if it cannot reach me for seven days, it falls back to Free until the next time it can. Dictation itself keeps running either way — the model is on your machine.

Paying for Pro

Pro cannot be bought yet. There is no payment provider connected, so today Pro exists only as the trial every account starts with, or as a plan I hand out. The prices on the pricing page are what I intend to charge, not a live offer; they can still change before the first payment is ever taken. The rest of this section describes what will apply once paid plans are switched on.

Pro will be billed monthly or yearly in advance, at the price shown on the pricing page when you take it out. I run as a small business under § 19 UStG, so no VAT is shown or charged; if that ever changes, the pricing page changes with it. The price on that page is the price you pay.

When your first period ends, Pro simply carries on, for an unlimited time. From then on you can cancel whenever you like, with one month's notice, and I bill you month by month at the monthly price — or, if you want another discounted year, you tell me and I set one up. Nothing rolls over into a second twelve months behind your back.

Prices can change, but never in the middle of a period you already paid for. I announce a new price by email at least six weeks before it would apply to you, and I say in that email that you can end the plan before that date — one message to kontakt@nirod.de is enough. If you do nothing, the new price applies from your next period on.

If you cancel in the middle of a period you paid for, Pro stays on until that period runs out and the account then falls back to Free — I do not refund the remainder, because you keep the service until the last day. Where the law gives you money back anyway — a withdrawal, a fault I could not fix — you get it.

Your right to withdraw

This section applies to consumers, and it applies to paid plans. A free account and a trial cost nothing, so there is nothing to withdraw from — you simply stop, or delete the account.

You have fourteen days to withdraw from a paid plan, without giving any reason. The period starts on the day the contract is concluded. To withdraw, send me a clear statement that you are withdrawing — an email to kontakt@nirod.de is enough, and so is a letter to the address in the legal notice. You do not have to use the form below, but you may.

To keep the period, it is enough that you send the statement before it runs out. If you withdraw, I refund every payment I received from you without undue delay, and at the latest within fourteen days of your statement reaching me, using the same means of payment you used.

If you ask me to switch Pro on straight away, before those fourteen days are over, two things follow. You keep your right to withdraw, but I may charge you a proportionate amount for the part of the period you actually used before you withdrew — nothing more. And where I hand something over as a one-off download rather than as a running service, your right to withdraw for that part ends once delivery has begun with your express consent and your acknowledgement that it does. Both are asked for separately at checkout, with nothing pre-ticked, and both say what they mean before you tick them.

Model withdrawal form — if you want to use it, fill it in and send it back:

• To Dorin Muntean, kontakt@nirod.de — the postal address is in the legal notice.
• I hereby give notice that I withdraw from my contract for the provision of the following service: mumble Pro.
• Ordered on / received on: …
• Name of the consumer: …
• Address of the consumer: …
• Signature of the consumer (only if this form is sent on paper): …
• Date: …

What you can expect — and what you cannot

So that you know what you are getting: the account, the download and the licence check run on ordinary servers, with outages and maintenance windows, some of them unannounced. Recognition quality depends on your microphone, your surroundings and the language you speak. Features may change, appear, or disappear again as mumble grows.

That is a description of the service, not a disclaimer. Your statutory rights when something is genuinely not as agreed stay exactly as the law writes them. If a fault keeps you from using a paid plan, write to kontakt@nirod.de: I will fix it, and if I cannot, you can reduce what you pay or end the plan.

What you dictate is yours

I acquire no rights to anything you dictate — and I could not, because the words never reach me. Audio and transcripts stay on your machine; the history is a file on your disk. What my server sees is a count of words, not a line of text.

What follows from that is also yours: keep anything that truly matters somewhere else as well. A disk fails, a file gets deleted, an app is uninstalled. None of that is something I can undo for you.

Nothing you dictate is analysed for advertising or used to train models.

What is not allowed

A few things I have to rule out:

• No use that breaks the law where you are — including recording people who have not agreed to it, where the law requires their agreement.
• No attacks on the service, no attempts to reach other people's accounts, no automated bulk access.
• No reselling of access, no sharing of one account between several people, and no working around the plan limits. Your own machines are another matter — install it on as many of them as you like.

If one of those is broken I may suspend the account — straight away where there is real danger, otherwise after a warning and a chance to explain yourself. I will always tell you why, and I will lift a suspension as soon as the reason for it is gone.

Stopping

You can stop at any time and without giving reasons. There is a cancellation button in your account and in the footer of every page, next to the legal notice — it works whether you are signed in or not. You enter your address, confirm through the link I email you, and you get a second mail straight afterwards saying what you cancelled, when you sent it and when the plan actually ends. Keep that mail; it is your proof.

When Pro ends depends on what it was. A period you paid for runs to its last day. A trial runs to the day it would have ended anyway. A plan I gave you free of charge ends there and then — there is nothing paid for to run out.

Deleting the account entirely takes three steps, on purpose: you confirm with your current password, then on a confirmation page, and then through a link I email you. Once you click that link the account is gone immediately and for good — devices, passkeys, subscription rows and all. Up to that click you can still call it off; after it, I cannot.

Nothing of yours is lost when you go, because nothing of yours was here. The app on your machine keeps its history and its settings until you remove them yourself.

I may end this agreement too: on a paid plan with three months' notice to the end of a period, or straight away where there is serious cause — repeated misuse, or an account used to harm someone. If I stop running mumble altogether, I will say so at least three months beforehand. Whatever you paid for a period I no longer serve, you get back.

Liability

I am fully liable for intent and gross negligence, as well as for injury to life, body or health.

For ordinary negligence I am liable only where a duty was breached that you were entitled to rely on and that is essential to this agreement — and then limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of agreement. Liability under the German Product Liability Act remains unaffected.

The same limits apply to anyone acting for me. They do not apply where I have expressly guaranteed something, and they do not apply to claims under data protection law — those stand as the law writes them.

Changes to these terms

I may change these terms when the law changes, when a court or an authority requires it, or when something about mumble itself changes — a new feature, a new payment provider, a new limit. What I will not change this way is what you pay or what you get for it. That needs your agreement, or a new plan you choose.

I announce a change by email at least six weeks ahead, saying what changes and why. If you do not object by the date given, the new version applies to you from that day on — and I will say that plainly in the same email. If you do object, you may end this agreement free of charge as of that date, and I may do the same; until then the old version stands. An informal message to kontakt@nirod.de is enough to object.

Disputes and applicable law

If we ever disagree, write to kontakt@nirod.de first — that has settled everything so far. Beyond that: I am neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. You can of course still go to court.

German law applies. If you are a consumer, whatever your own country's law protects you with more strongly stays in force, and you can sue me where you live. If you are not a consumer — a business, a public body — the place of jurisdiction for anything arising out of this agreement is my registered place of business.

Legal notice