Terms of Service
Draft. Not yet reviewed by a lawyer, and not yet published. The items at the bottom need a legal answer first.
Last updated: 12 August 2026 Applies to: OpenHeart, the app and openheartapp.org
What this is
OpenHeart is a free dating app. It is funded by donations and it always will be.
There is no paid tier, no subscription, no boost, no "see who liked you", and no in-app purchase of any kind. Every feature is available to every user. That is not a launch promotion, it is the rule the project is built around: a feature that exists to extract money from a lonely person does not ship.
The software is open source under the AGPL-3.0. These terms cover your use of the service we run at openheartapp.org. They do not restrict your rights under that licence to the source code itself, which are set out in the licence and win over anything here if the two ever disagree.
You must be 18
There is no discretion in this. If you are under 18 you may not use OpenHeart, and if we find out that you are, the account goes.
Your account
- One person, one account. Do not create an account for anyone else.
- Use your own photos, of yourself.
- Your date of birth is set once at signup and cannot be changed afterwards. If you entered it wrongly, write to [email protected].
- You are responsible for keeping access to the email address you sign in with, because that address is the only way in.
What you must not do
- Harass, threaten, stalk, or abuse anyone.
- Post sexual content involving minors. This is scanned for on every upload, it is reported, and it ends the account permanently.
- Impersonate anyone, or use photos that are not of you.
- Post another person's private information.
- Solicit money, advertise, recruit, or run any kind of scam.
- Use the service to sell sexual services.
- Automate, scrape, or otherwise access the service other than through the app.
- Try to work out someone's exact location.
What we can do about it
We can remove content, suspend an account, or end one. We try to do the smallest of those that fixes the problem, and a person makes the decision.
A suspension does not end because you delete your account. If you think we got it wrong, reply to us and say so, and a person will look again.
Moderation, and what it is not
Photos are scanned before anyone sees them and reports are read by a human. Neither of those makes this a safe place by itself, and we will not pretend otherwise.
We do not run background checks on anyone. We do not verify that a person is who they say they are beyond checking that the face in the selfie matches the face in their photos. Photo verification is an anti-bot measure. It is not a character reference.
Meeting people
Meet in public the first few times. Tell someone where you are going. Do not send money to anyone you have not met, for any reason, however good the reason sounds. If someone makes you uncomfortable, block them; they are not told.
If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first, and tell us afterwards.
Your content
You keep ownership of your photos, your bio and your messages.
You give us the permission we need to run the service with them: to store them, resize them, and show them to the people the app is meant to show them to. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account, except that messages you have already sent stay in the other person's conversation, because they are that person's history too.
Do not upload anything you do not have the right to upload.
Donations
Donations happen on the website, never in the app, and they buy nothing. A donor's account is identical to everyone else's. We are not able to give a donor better placement, more matches, or any other advantage, because the code does not have a way to express it.
Ending it
You can delete your account at any time, from Settings. It is immediate and it is real. What survives it, and why, is set out in the privacy policy.
We can end your account for a breach of these terms, or if we stop running the service. If we ever shut down, we will say so in advance and give you time to get your data out.
The honest part about a free service
OpenHeart is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be available, that it will find you anyone, or that anyone you meet through it will be who they say they are.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for what happens between you and another user, and our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid us, which is nothing. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. If you are a consumer, you keep every right your local law gives you.
Changes
We will post changes here and, if they matter, in the app. The full history is in the git repository.