Terms of Service

Effective date: September 1, 2026 · Operated by Zala Software FZ-LLC

These Terms are written to be clear and fair, but they are a starting-point draft, not a substitute for legal advice tailored to your situation. If something here is unclear, contact us at support@zala-me.com before relying on it for an important decision.

1. Acceptance of These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of Zala, an AI-assisted personal finance tracking application, including its web app, iOS app, Android app, Telegram bot, WhatsApp bot, and related services (together, the "Service"), operated by Zala Software FZ-LLC ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Description of the Service

Zala lets you record, categorize, and review personal income and expenses; scan receipts using AI image recognition; log expenses via chat message or voice note on Telegram or WhatsApp; set savings goals and spending alerts; and receive AI-generated summaries and insights about your own financial activity. The Service is a budgeting and record-keeping tool for personal use — see Section 8.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding contract to use the Service. By using the Service you represent that you meet this requirement.

4. Your Account

You authenticate using our identity provider (Clerk), including email, social sign-in, or other methods we offer. You're responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and for all activity under it. Notify us promptly at support@zala-me.com if you suspect unauthorized access. Each account is for one individual's personal financial data; do not share your login credentials.

5. Subscription Plans, Trials, and Billing

We offer a free tier, a paid tier (currently "Plus"), and a time-limited free trial of paid features.
Paid subscriptions are billed on a recurring basis — monthly or annually, depending on the plan you choose. Prices are shown before you confirm and may change with advance notice.
Where you buy matters. If you subscribe on the web, we bill you through Clerk Billing and Stripe, and the rest of this section applies. If you subscribe inside the iOS app or the Android app, the store is the seller: Google Play or Apple takes the payment, holds your payment details, and applies its own billing, cancellation and refund rules, which override anything below that conflicts with them.
Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. You can cancel at any time. For a web subscription, cancel in your account settings; for a store subscription, cancel in Google Play or the App Store — we cannot cancel it for you, and uninstalling the app does not cancel it. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and access continues until then.
We do not provide prorated refunds for partial periods except where required by law. Refunds for store purchases are requested from, and decided by, Google or Apple under their own policies — not by us.
If a payment fails, we may suspend paid features until payment is resolved, and may downgrade your account to the free tier after a grace period.
Usage limits (for example, monthly AI-parsed messages, receipt scans, or connector links) differ by plan and are described in-app; we may adjust these limits with notice.
Paid plan holders may also purchase a one-time quota "top-up" for additional monthly usage. Top-ups are a single, non-recurring charge (billed separately from your subscription), do not auto-renew, and are generally non-refundable once granted, except where required by law.

6. Your Content and Data

"Your Content" means the financial data, receipt images, notes, and other information you submit to the Service — whether typed into the web app, sent to our Telegram or WhatsApp bot, or uploaded as a photo. You retain ownership of Your Content. You grant us a limited license to store, process, transmit, and display Your Content solely to operate, maintain, and improve the Service for you (including sending relevant parts of it to the AI sub-processors described in the Privacy Policy). You're responsible for the accuracy of what you submit and for having the right to submit it (for example, not uploading someone else's private financial documents without permission).

7. AI-Generated Content Is Not Guaranteed Accurate

Zala uses third-party AI models — Anthropic's Claude to read receipt images, parse free-text messages into structured expenses, and generate written insights and suggestions, and OpenAI to transcribe voice notes to text before Claude processes them — to power these features. AI output can misread amounts, currencies, dates, merchants, or categories, and can occasionally produce incorrect or nonsensical summaries. You're responsible for reviewing and correcting any AI-parsed entry before relying on it. We are not liable for financial, tax, or personal decisions made in reliance on AI-generated content.

8. Not Financial, Investment, Tax, or Legal Advice

Zala is a record-keeping and budgeting tool. Nothing in the Service — including dashboards, "Insights", goal projections, or AI-generated commentary — constitutes financial, investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice, and none of it is personalized advice from a licensed professional. Consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions.

9. Third-Party Services Built Into Zala

To provide the Service, we rely on third-party providers, including: Anthropic (AI processing of receipts, messages, and insights), OpenAI (voice note transcription), Clerk (authentication and web subscription billing), Stripe (payment processing — via Clerk Billing for web subscriptions, and directly for one-time top-up purchases), Google Play and Apple (seller of record for subscriptions bought inside our mobile apps), RevenueCat (processing app-store purchase events so we know whether your subscription is active), Sentry (error monitoring), PostHog (product analytics), Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity (website and web app analytics — see the Privacy Policy), Telegram and Meta/WhatsApp (delivering and receiving your bot messages), Upstash (database hosting), and Vercel (application hosting, file storage, and infrastructure). Your use of Telegram or WhatsApp to interact with Zala is also subject to those platforms' own terms and privacy policies, which we don't control.

10. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

Use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or to store or transmit content that is illegal, fraudulent, or infringes someone else's rights;
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to other users' data, our systems, or our AI/infrastructure providers;
Reverse-engineer, scrape, or use automated means to extract data from the Service beyond normal use;
Abuse the Telegram or WhatsApp bot, for example by spamming, flooding, or attempting to exceed usage limits through automation;
Resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as your own product without our written consent.

11. Intellectual Property

The Service, including its software, design, branding ("Zala"), and underlying technology, is owned by us or our licensors and protected by intellectual property laws. These Terms don't grant you any rights to our trademarks, logos, or brand assets beyond what's needed to use the Service normally.

12. Service Availability and Changes

The Service is provided on an evolving, sometimes-beta basis. We may add, change, or remove features, and may experience downtime for maintenance or due to factors outside our control (including outages at Anthropic, Clerk, Upstash, Vercel, Telegram, or Meta). We'll try to give notice of material changes but aren't obligated to maintain any specific feature indefinitely.

13. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms, misuse the Service, fail to pay for a paid plan, or if we reasonably believe your account poses a security or legal risk. You may stop using the Service and request deletion of your account and data at any time via the account deletion option in the app's Account settings, or by emailing support@zala-me.com. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (e.g., limitation of liability, indemnification) will survive.

14. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.

15. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE AND OUR SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS, OR FINANCIAL LOSS ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) THE SERVICE, INCLUDING LOSSES RESULTING FROM AI MISCLASSIFICATION OR INACCURACY. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE (OR USD 50, IF YOU'RE ON THE FREE TIER).

16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your violation of these Terms or misuse of the Service.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. The parties irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC Courts) to settle any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, we'll notify you in-app or by email before they take effect. Continued use after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@zala-me.com.