Beta Briefing — Terms of Use

Version: v2.0 Last updated: 2026-08-01

The short version

Beta Briefing is a personalized news briefing service. We deliver briefings, and you're free to use what you read — personally or for your work, including feeding it into your own AI tools. What you can't do is repackage our briefings into a competing newsletter, podcast, or news product for outside audiences.

Plans are paid monthly subscriptions that auto-renew until you cancel. You can cancel any time from the Billing page in your dashboard; cancelling stops your plan renewing, and — unless a payment has already failed — you keep your briefings through the end of your current trial or paid period. Section 4 is the whole money agreement, in plain terms.

We treat your data with care. The companion Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and the third-party services that help operate the Service — including Stripe, which handles payments. We never see or store your card number.

If you want to do something not covered here, just ask — we can grant additional permissions in writing.

The rest of this document is the formal version.

1. Who we are

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Beta Briefing LLC, a California limited liability company ("Beta Briefing," "we," "us," or "our"). Beta Briefing operates the website, email briefings, audio briefings, podcast feeds, web archives, and related services (together, the "Service").

By using the Service or subscribing to a briefing, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.

2. The Service

Beta Briefing provides AI-generated daily news briefings, along with periodic recaps, audio versions, web archives, and podcast feeds. Briefings can be personalized to you individually or published as public channels with their own identity and archive.

We may change, add, or remove features from time to time as the Service evolves.

3. Your account

To receive briefings, you'll create an account by providing your email and (typically) some information about your interests. You're responsible for keeping your account credentials and email inbox secure and for activity on your account. We use passwordless magic-link sign-in for the web dashboard — anyone with access to your email inbox can sign in to your account, so secure your email accordingly.

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service.

4. Plans, billing, and cancellation

This section is the money agreement. It's written to be read, not skimmed past.

4.1 What you're buying

A plan is bought per briefing, not per person. One subscription runs one briefing; a second briefing on a different beat is a second subscription, billed separately.

Plan Price What it allows
Standard $29 per month, per briefing Up to 10 topics; editions up to Deep
Premium $49 per month, per briefing Up to 20 topics; editions up to Deep; more searching behind each topic
Premium + Ultra $99 per month, per briefing Up to 25 topics; editions up to Ultra Deep

Prices are in U.S. dollars. The price that binds is the one shown on the checkout screen when you subscribe, and the plan you're on is shown on your Billing page in the dashboard.

4.2 Free trials

Standard and Premium start with a free trial — 14 days, or 30 days if you signed up through a referral link. No card is required to start one. The trial is one per person: once you've used it, a later plan starts billing when you subscribe.

Premium + Ultra has no trial. It is billed on the day you subscribe, at the plan price shown at checkout less any discount or referral credit applied there — a referral credit can make that first charge $0, and normal renewals follow.

If you started a no-card trial, we email you before it ends (by default 7 days, 3 days and 1 day out). If it ends without a subscription, your briefings pause. Nothing is charged and nothing is deleted — there is nothing you need to cancel.

If you added a card when you started, the trial converts into a paid plan on its end date and your card is charged then. That date is shown on the checkout screen before you confirm, and again in the email confirming your subscription. Cancel any time before it from your Billing page and nothing is charged.

4.3 Automatic renewal

Your subscription auto-renews each month, at the plan price above, until you cancel. When you subscribe, you authorize us — through Stripe, our payment processor — to charge the payment method you gave us that amount every month until you cancel. Billing is monthly; there is no annual plan and no minimum term. Renewals aren't separately announced beforehand, but your Billing page shows your plan and its status at all times, and Stripe emails you a receipt for every payment showing the amount charged.

4.4 Cancelling, upgrading, and downgrading

You can cancel at any time from the Billing page in your dashboard — Open customer portal, then cancel. It takes a few clicks and no conversation with us.

Cancelling takes effect at the end of your current trial or paid period, not immediately. You keep receiving briefings until then, and after that delivery stops (see §4.6). Cancelling stops future charges; any payment that has already been invoiced and not paid remains due, and if a payment has failed your briefings may pause earlier (see §4.7).

Changing plans happens in the same place:

Plan limits — how many topics you can run and how deep an edition can go — follow the plan you're on.

4.5 Refunds

Cancelling stops future renewals (see §4.4), so we don't run a standing refund program. If something went wrong — a charge you didn't expect, briefings that didn't arrive, a plan you never used — write to us at [email protected]. We look at these one at a time and we'd rather refund you than argue about it. Where we issue a full refund and end your subscription, your access runs to the end of the period it covered and then stops.

4.6 What happens when a subscription ends

When a subscription ends — you cancelled, a trial ran out, or a payment kept failing:

4.7 Failed payments

If a payment fails, we email you and keep delivering for a short grace period while you update your card. Your Billing page shows how long you have. If the payment still hasn't gone through by then, the subscription ends and delivery stops until you subscribe again.

4.8 Price changes

We may change plan prices. If we change the price of a plan you're already on, we'll email you before it takes effect, and it will apply from your next renewal after that notice — so you'll always have a full period in which to cancel instead.

4.9 Referral offers

We sometimes offer a longer trial, a free month, or a similar credit for referring someone or being referred. Those offers are described where they appear, apply to one account each, and can't be combined with each other or exchanged for cash. We may change or end the referral program at any time; an offer already applied to your account isn't taken away.

4.10 The Service is still young

Beta Briefing is a small, actively-developed product. Features may change, break, or be removed, and briefings may occasionally fail to arrive or contain errors — see §12 on accuracy and §13 on liability. We'll try to give reasonable notice before removing something you rely on. If we discontinue the Service, we'll stop billing you and refund the unused part of any period you've paid for.

5. Your rights to use the content

We want Beta Briefing to be genuinely useful, so the license we grant you is intentionally broad.

You may:

You may not:

6. Additional permissions

We may grant rights beyond those described above through a separate written agreement or explicit written authorization (including by email) from Beta Briefing. Any such additional permissions apply only to the specific party, content, and uses described in the authorization, and do not modify these Terms for other users.

If you'd like to use our content in a way these Terms don't allow, ask us — we're generally willing to work something out.

7. Content you submit

When you sign up, edit your briefing, or otherwise communicate with the Service, you may submit content to us — for example, a written description of your interests, configuration changes via Smart Edit, or freeform feedback.

You retain ownership of content you submit. You grant Beta Briefing a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, store, reproduce, modify, and process that content solely as needed to operate, maintain, personalize, and improve the Service for you, including by sending relevant portions to the third-party AI, search, and infrastructure providers described in our Privacy Policy.

You're responsible for the content you submit. Don't submit anything you don't have the right to share, anything confidential to a third party, or anything illegal.

8. Our content and intellectual property

The briefings, website design, branding, audio briefing recordings, and other materials we produce are owned by Beta Briefing and protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. The license in Section 5 is the full extent of the rights we grant you in our content; all other rights are reserved.

Source material we link to (articles, reports, etc.) belongs to its original publishers. Briefings include short excerpts, summaries, and links under what we believe to be fair use; your use of those underlying sources is governed by their own terms.

9. Copyright complaints

If you believe content in the Service infringes a copyright you own or are authorized to act on behalf of, send a notice to [email protected] that includes:

  1. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed
  2. Identification of the allegedly infringing material on the Service, including a URL or other locator sufficient for us to find it
  3. Your contact information (name, address, telephone number, and email)
  4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
  5. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf
  6. Your physical or electronic signature

We will respond to valid notices in a reasonable time. Knowing material misrepresentations may subject you to liability under applicable law (including 17 U.S.C. § 512(f)).

10. Third-party services and integrations

The Service relies on third-party providers for hosting, AI inference, search, article extraction, email delivery, audio generation, analytics, and optional integrations such as Telegram notifications. Our Privacy Policy lists the providers we use and what each receives.

If you opt into an optional integration (for example, linking a Telegram chat for notifications, or subscribing to a podcast feed in a podcast app such as Apple Podcasts or Overcast), your use of that integration is also governed by the third party's own terms and privacy policy. We aren't responsible for how those third parties operate.

11. Acceptable use

Don't use the Service to break the law, harass others, interfere with the Service's operation, attempt to access other users' accounts, probe for vulnerabilities, or reverse-engineer our systems. We may suspend or terminate accounts that do.

12. AI-generated content and accuracy

Beta Briefing's briefings are produced with the help of AI systems that research, select, and write content based on publicly available sources. We work hard to make them accurate and useful, but:

We don't guarantee that any particular story will be covered, that coverage will be complete or balanced, or that the Service will be available without interruption.

13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Beta Briefing will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or business opportunities, arising out of or related to your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim arising out of these Terms or the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

14. Termination

You can stop using the Service at any time by unsubscribing from briefing emails or by emailing us at [email protected] to delete your account. If you're on a paid plan, cancel it first from your Billing page — or tell us, and we'll cancel it as part of the deletion — so it doesn't renew.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you violate these Terms, if we're required to by law, or if we discontinue the Service. If we terminate your access for a reason other than your breach of these Terms, we'll refund the unused part of any period you've paid for.

Sections 4 (as to amounts already due and refunds owed), 5 (as to content already received), 7 (as to content already submitted), 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, and 18 survive termination.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll notify you by email or through the Service before they take effect, and we'll bump the Version at the top of this document. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

A change to the price of a plan you're already on is handled under §4.8 rather than by this section: we email you first, and the new price applies only from your next renewal after that notice, so you can cancel instead of accepting it.

16. Assignment

Beta Briefing may assign these Terms and all associated rights and obligations to an affiliated entity, successor, or acquirer (for example, in connection with a sale, merger, or restructuring). Your rights under these Terms will not be diminished by such assignment. You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our written consent.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of these Terms or the Service will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Orange County, California, and you consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.

18. Miscellaneous

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any separate written agreements between you and Beta Briefing, are the entire agreement between us regarding the Service. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of our right to enforce it later.

19. Contact

Questions, permission requests, or concerns?