Terms of Service
Last updated 2026-04-12. Plain English, no trickery.
1. The short version
You use hear.the.web to turn web articles into audio. Don't do illegal things with it. Pay us if you're on a paid plan. We can stop the service if you abuse it. That's most of it.
2. Who we are
Hear The Web Audio Co., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When we say "we" or "us" that's who we mean. When we say "you" we mean the person using the service.
3. Your account
You can create a free account with an email and a password. Keep the password to yourself. If someone else gets in through your account, tell us. We'll help you lock it down.
4. What you can do with it
You can turn articles into audio for yourself. You can share a render with a friend or two the way you'd share an article. You can put it on your own podcast feed for personal listening.
You can't republish renders as your own content. You can't use it to mass-scrape sites. You can't run it on someone else's behalf without their permission.
5. Paid plans
Pro is five dollars a month. Studio is fifteen. We bill through Stripe. Cancel any time from your account page. Refunds within fourteen days of a charge if you changed your mind.
6. Content we render
We render what you give us. If you give us something you don't have the right to use, that's on you. We don't keep the source text after the audio is made. We don't train models on it.
7. Voices
The voices in the library are ours, licensed from the voice artists who recorded them. Don't extract voices and use them elsewhere. Don't pretend your renders are from real people who didn't make them.
Custom voices you train on Studio stay yours. We can't use them. Nobody else can either.
8. Shutting down accounts
We can pause or close an account if someone is abusing the service — scraping, spamming, impersonating, that kind of thing. We'll refund any unused month. We'll tell you why.
9. Things we don't promise
The service is "as is". We do our best to keep it up. Sometimes things break. We'll fix them. We don't promise every voice will sound exactly the way you want on every piece. Reading is weird.
10. If something goes wrong
Our liability is capped at what you paid us in the last twelve months. If you're on the free tier, that cap is zero. We're a small team. Be reasonable.
11. Changes to these terms
If we change anything meaningful we'll email you. If you don't want to keep using the service under the new terms, cancel. Pro-rated refund.
12. Law
Massachusetts law. Disputes go to state court in Middlesex County. If you'd rather arbitrate, we'll agree to that too.
13. Reach us
Use the contact form. We read every one. Usually back within a day.