CollegeHound Terms of Service

Last Updated: July 6, 2026

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the CollegeHound website, application, digital binder, AI-powered features, and related services (collectively, the "Service"). The Service is owned and operated by CollegeHound, operated by BitWeary LLC, or its applicable owner or affiliate ("CollegeHound," "we," "us," or "our").

Please read these Terms carefully. By creating an account, accessing the Service, purchasing a subscription, starting a trial, inviting a family member, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not access or use the Service.

1. Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using the Service, you represent that:

1. You are at least 18 years old, or you are using the Service with the permission and supervision of a parent or legal guardian.
2. If you create, manage, or approve an account for a minor, you are the minor's parent or legal guardian and have authority to agree to these Terms on the minor's behalf.
3. The information you provide to CollegeHound is accurate, current, and complete.
4. You will use the Service only in accordance with these Terms and applicable law.

If you are using the Service on behalf of a student, child, family member, organization, school, counselor, coach, or other entity, you represent that you have authority to do so.

2. Description of the Service

CollegeHound is a digital college planning platform designed to help students and families organize information related to the college planning and application process.

The Service may include features that help users:

• Create and maintain a digital binder for college planning.
• Track grades, coursework, test scores, activities, awards, volunteer work, employment, essays, application materials, contacts, tasks, deadlines, scholarships, and college lists.
• Organize family college planning information in one shared location.
• Invite parents, guardians, students, or other authorized collaborators to participate in a family account.
• Use AI-powered guidance, including Scout, to help organize information, identify possible next steps, ask questions, evaluate planning gaps, and support college planning workflows.
• Access free and paid features, trials, promotions, or subscription-based plans.

CollegeHound is an organizational and guidance tool. CollegeHound does not guarantee admission to any college, scholarship award, financial aid outcome, athletic recruitment opportunity, test score improvement, essay result, or other educational outcome.

3. Not Professional, Legal, Financial, Tax, or Admissions Advice

CollegeHound may provide general information, planning suggestions, AI-generated guidance, reminders, deadline support, scholarship organization, college comparison tools, and related content. This information is provided for general educational and organizational purposes only.

CollegeHound does not provide legal, financial, tax, investment, mental health, educational placement, admissions counseling, or professional college counseling advice. You should consult qualified professionals, school counselors, financial aid offices, tax advisors, legal advisors, or admissions representatives before making important decisions.

You are responsible for verifying all information before relying on it, including but not limited to:

• College application deadlines.
• Scholarship deadlines and eligibility requirements.
• Financial aid requirements.
• Testing requirements.
• Application plan restrictions, including Early Decision, Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Rolling Admission, Regular Decision, and other application policies.
• College costs, aid estimates, acceptance rates, program availability, and admissions criteria.

College policies and deadlines can change. CollegeHound may help you organize and understand information, but you remain responsible for confirming requirements directly with the relevant college, scholarship provider, testing agency, school, or other official source.

4. Account Registration and Responsibilities

4.1 Account Creation

To access certain features, you may need to create an account. You agree to:

• Provide accurate, current, and complete account information.
• Maintain and promptly update your account information.
• Keep your login credentials confidential.
• Notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.
• Accept responsibility for all activity under your account.

You may not create an account using false information or impersonate another person.

4.2 Family Accounts and Collaborators

CollegeHound may allow families to invite multiple users to access or collaborate within a student profile, family account, or digital binder. Account owners are responsible for deciding who may access the account and what information they may view, add, edit, or manage.

By inviting another person to access a family account, you authorize CollegeHound to make account information available to that person according to the permissions associated with the invitation or account settings.

You are responsible for removing access for any person who should no longer have access to the account.

4.3 Student and Minor Accounts

Students under 18 may use the Service only with permission and supervision from a parent or legal guardian. Parents and legal guardians are responsible for supervising the minor's use of the Service and for all activity that occurs through the minor's account.

CollegeHound is intended primarily for high school students and their families. The Service is not intended for use by children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information to CollegeHound without appropriate parental consent, please contact us at [email protected].

5. User Content

5.1 Your Content

You retain ownership of the information, documents, text, notes, files, essays, activities, scores, deadlines, college lists, and other materials you submit, upload, enter, or store through the Service ("User Content").

5.2 License to CollegeHound

You grant CollegeHound a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, process, display, reproduce, modify, and use your User Content solely as necessary to operate, provide, maintain, improve, secure, and support the Service, including AI-powered features you choose to use.

This license allows us to provide the Service to you. It does not transfer ownership of your User Content to CollegeHound. This license is for technical operations such as hosting, displaying, formatting, processing for AI-powered features, and delivering the Service. It does not give CollegeHound the right to edit, rewrite, or alter the substance of your essays, applications, or other personal content.

5.3 Responsibility for User Content

You are responsible for your User Content and for ensuring that you have the right to upload, share, or use it through the Service. You agree not to upload User Content that:

• Violates any law or regulation.
• Infringes the rights of another person or entity.
• Contains malicious code or harmful content.
• Is false, misleading, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harassing, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.
• Includes sensitive information you are not authorized to share.

5.4 Backup of User Content

CollegeHound is designed to help organize information, but it should not be your only copy of important documents or records. You are responsible for maintaining your own backups of important content, including essays, applications, official documents, transcripts, recommendation materials, test records, scholarship materials, and financial documents.

6. AI-Powered Features

CollegeHound may include AI-powered features, including Scout, that generate suggestions, summaries, explanations, tasks, comparisons, reminders, gap analyses, or other outputs based on information you provide and information available through the Service.

6.1 AI Outputs May Be Inaccurate

AI-generated content may be incomplete, outdated, inaccurate, or inappropriate for your specific situation. You should review and verify AI outputs before relying on them.

6.2 No Guarantee of Outcomes

AI-powered features are intended to support organization, planning, and understanding. They do not guarantee admission, scholarships, financial aid, acceptance to a program, athletic recruitment, improved test scores, or any other result.

6.3 User Responsibility

You are responsible for decisions made based on AI-generated content. Important decisions should be verified with official sources or qualified professionals.

6.4 Essays and Application Materials

CollegeHound may help users organize essay prompts, brainstorm topics, review structure, summarize application requirements, or track drafts. CollegeHound is not intended to complete applications, fabricate experiences, misrepresent a student's qualifications, or replace the student's own work.

Users are responsible for ensuring that all submitted application materials comply with the rules and honor codes of the relevant college, scholarship provider, school, testing agency, or application platform.

6.5 Third-Party AI Providers and Sensitive Information

CollegeHound may use third-party artificial intelligence service providers to process information and generate responses for AI-powered features. Our collection, use, disclosure, and protection of information used by these features are described in our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

Do not submit passwords, Social Security numbers, financial account credentials, government identification numbers, medical records, or other highly sensitive information through an AI-powered feature unless CollegeHound expressly requests that information for a clearly identified purpose.

CollegeHound may modify, limit, suspend, or discontinue an AI-powered feature at any time, subject to applicable law.

7. Subscriptions, Trials, Payments, and Promotions

7.1 Free and Paid Features

CollegeHound may offer free features, paid subscriptions, trials, discounts, promotional access, launch offers, school-specific promotions, family promotions, or other pricing options. We may change available plans, features, pricing, trial terms, or promotions at any time, subject to applicable law and any commitments we expressly make to existing subscribers.

It is our intention to keep the core Binder features free for all users. If we ever need to change the availability or pricing of free features, we will provide existing users with reasonable advance notice and, where practical, the opportunity to export their information before any change takes effect. If we make changes to pricing for paid features, existing subscribers will be notified before any price increase takes effect on their account. Price changes will not affect your current billing period.

7.2 Billing

If you purchase a paid subscription, you authorize CollegeHound or its payment processor to charge your selected payment method for the applicable fees, taxes, and renewal charges disclosed at checkout.

Unless otherwise stated at checkout, paid subscriptions automatically renew until canceled.

7.3 Trials and Promotional Access

CollegeHound may offer free trials or promotional access. Trial and promotional terms may vary by user, school, event, location, grade year, launch campaign, or other criteria. We may modify, limit, revoke, or discontinue promotions at any time if we believe a promotion is being misused, shared improperly, or used contrary to its intended purpose.

If a trial requires payment information, you may be charged when the trial ends unless you cancel before the trial period expires, as disclosed at signup.

7.4 Cancellations

You may cancel your subscription according to the cancellation instructions provided in your account settings, checkout flow, billing portal, or other customer support process. Cancellation will stop future renewal charges but does not automatically refund past charges unless required by law or expressly stated by CollegeHound.

7.5 Refunds

Unless otherwise stated at checkout or required by applicable law, fees are non-refundable. CollegeHound may consider refund requests on a case-by-case basis, but granting a refund in one instance does not require us to grant refunds in the future.

7.6 Taxes

You are responsible for any applicable taxes, duties, or similar charges associated with your purchase, except for taxes based on CollegeHound's income.

7.7 Failed Payments

If your payment method fails, we may suspend, downgrade, or terminate access to paid features until payment is successfully processed.

8. Acceptable Use and Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Violate any applicable law, regulation, or third-party right.
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your identity or affiliation.
• Upload or transmit viruses, malware, or other harmful code.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, user accounts, systems, or networks.
• Interfere with or disrupt the Service.
• Reverse engineer, scrape, crawl, copy, or access the Service through automated means without our written permission.
• Use the Service to harass, abuse, threaten, defame, or harm another person.
• Upload content that is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory, obscene, abusive, or otherwise objectionable.
• Use the Service to generate, submit, or assist with fraudulent, deceptive, or dishonest applications, essays, recommendations, scholarship submissions, resumes, or other materials.
• Misuse promotional codes, trials, family accounts, or subscription features.
• Resell, sublicense, rent, lease, or commercially exploit the Service without written permission.
• Use the Service to develop or train a competing product or service.

We may investigate suspected violations and take appropriate action, including limiting, suspending, or terminating access to the Service.

Competitive Use Restrictions

CollegeHound is intended for personal, family, educational, and authorized college-planning use. You may not access or use the Service, directly or indirectly, for competitive, commercial, benchmarking, product development, market research, copying, or evaluation purposes without our prior written permission.

Without limiting the above, you agree that you will not:

• use the Service to build, improve, train, test, evaluate, copy, benchmark, or inform a competing or substantially similar product, service, platform, tool, AI assistant, database, workflow, user interface, or business;
• access the Service on behalf of a competitor, consultant, agency, investor, researcher, contractor, or other third party for competitive analysis, product development, market research, or benchmarking;
• copy, record, scrape, reproduce, summarize, publish, distribute, or share non-public features, prompts, workflows, AI outputs, screens, designs, product behavior, onboarding flows, pricing experiments, user experiences, or other proprietary aspects of the Service;
• create an account using false, misleading, incomplete, or concealed identity information;
• invite collaborators, family members, students, parents, contractors, consultants, or other users for the purpose of allowing unauthorized third-party access;
• attempt to bypass account limits, promotional restrictions, subscription requirements, usage limits, access controls, or security features;
• use any manual or automated method to collect, extract, monitor, copy, or analyze the Service, its content, its outputs, or its functionality without our written permission.

We may determine, in our reasonable discretion, whether any use of the Service is competitive, unauthorized, abusive, deceptive, harmful, or inconsistent with the intended purpose of the Service.

9. Privacy and Data Protection

Your use of the Service is governed by our Privacy Policy, which explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect personal information. By using the Service, you acknowledge that you have reviewed our Privacy Policy.

CollegeHound does not sell student data. When you use AI-powered features, your messages and relevant account information may be processed by third-party artificial intelligence service providers acting on our behalf, using safeguards designed to limit the information shared to what is reasonably necessary for the requested feature. See our Privacy Policy for details about this processing and its limits.

Because CollegeHound may involve student and family information, you should carefully consider what information you choose to enter, upload, or share.

10. Third-Party Services and Links

The Service may include links, integrations, references, data, or information from third-party websites, platforms, colleges, scholarship providers, testing agencies, payment processors, AI providers, analytics providers, or other services.

CollegeHound does not control third-party services and is not responsible for their content, accuracy, availability, policies, practices, or security. Your use of third-party services may be governed by separate terms and privacy policies.

Links or references to third-party services do not imply endorsement by CollegeHound.

11. College Data, Deadlines, Costs, and Scholarship Information

CollegeHound may display or help organize information about colleges, deadlines, application requirements, costs, scholarships, financial aid, admissions statistics, student preferences, and related topics.

This information may come from user-entered data, public sources, third-party sources, AI-generated outputs, or other sources. Although we aim to provide helpful information, we do not guarantee that such information is complete, accurate, current, or applicable to your situation.

You are responsible for confirming all important information directly with official sources, including college websites, admissions offices, financial aid offices, scholarship providers, testing agencies, and school counselors.

12. Intellectual Property

The Service, including its software, design, layout, features, functionality, text, graphics, logos, branding, icons, images, workflows, databases, AI prompts, user interface, and other content created by CollegeHound, is owned by CollegeHound or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property and other laws.

Except as expressly allowed by these Terms, you may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse engineer, create derivative works from, or otherwise exploit any part of the Service without our written permission.

The CollegeHound name, logo, marks, and related branding are trademarks or service marks of CollegeHound or its owner. You may not use them without prior written permission.

Protection of CollegeHound Materials

The Service includes proprietary content, technology, workflows, prompts, AI behavior, user experiences, product structure, page layouts, feature organization, visual design, software, databases, and other materials developed by CollegeHound.

You may not copy, imitate, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, distribute, display, publish, reverse engineer, decompile, create derivative works from, or commercially exploit any part of the Service without our prior written permission.

You may not use access to the Service to study, evaluate, benchmark, copy, or replicate CollegeHound's features, workflows, AI guidance, prompts, product structure, user experience, or business model for the purpose of developing, improving, or supporting a competing or substantially similar product or service.

13. Feedback

If you submit suggestions, ideas, comments, improvements, or other feedback about the Service, you grant CollegeHound the right to use that feedback without restriction or compensation to you. Feedback does not include your private student or family content.

14. Service Availability and Changes

We may update, modify, suspend, discontinue, or restrict access to any part of the Service at any time. We may also add, remove, or change features, including free and paid features.

We do not guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or available at all times. We may perform maintenance, experience outages, or encounter technical issues.

15. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, COLLEGEHOUND DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AVAILABILITY, AND RELIABILITY.

COLLEGEHOUND DOES NOT WARRANT THAT:

• THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR NEEDS OR EXPECTATIONS.
• THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR AVAILABLE.
• INFORMATION OR AI-GENERATED CONTENT WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, CURRENT, OR RELIABLE.
• ANY COLLEGE, SCHOLARSHIP, ADMISSIONS, FINANCIAL AID, TESTING, OR EDUCATIONAL OUTCOME WILL BE ACHIEVED.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of the above may not apply to you.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, COLLEGEHOUND AND ITS OWNERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AFFILIATES, LICENSORS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOSS OF OPPORTUNITY, APPLICATION ERRORS, MISSED DEADLINES, ADMISSIONS OUTCOMES, SCHOLARSHIP OUTCOMES, FINANCIAL AID OUTCOMES, OR OTHER EDUCATIONAL OR FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, COLLEGEHOUND'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF:

1. THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO COLLEGEHOUND FOR THE SERVICE IN THE THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE; OR
2. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some of the above may not apply to you.

17. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless CollegeHound and its owners, officers, employees, contractors, affiliates, licensors, service providers, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or related to:

• Your use or misuse of the Service.
• Your User Content.
• Your violation of these Terms.
• Your violation of any law or third-party right.
• Your misuse of another person's account, information, or content.
• Your use of the Service to submit or support inaccurate, misleading, fraudulent, or unauthorized materials.

18. Suspension and Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time. You may also cancel your subscription as described in these Terms and in your account or billing settings.

We may suspend, limit, revoke, downgrade, or terminate your access to some or all of the Service at any time, with or without notice, if we believe in good faith that:

• you have violated these Terms;
• your use is unauthorized, abusive, fraudulent, deceptive, competitive, or inconsistent with the intended purpose of the Service;
• your account information is inaccurate, misleading, incomplete, or used to conceal your identity or affiliation;
• your access creates legal, security, privacy, business, reputational, operational, or intellectual property risk to CollegeHound, our users, or others;
• your account has been compromised or used without authorization;
• payment is overdue;
• you are misusing a free trial, promotion, family account, collaborator invitation, subscription feature, or access privilege;
• your continued access may harm CollegeHound, our users, the integrity of the Service, or the intended purpose of the Service.

We may take action without prior notice when we believe immediate action is appropriate to protect the Service, our users, confidential information, intellectual property, product integrity, security, privacy, or business interests.

If your access is suspended, limited, revoked, or terminated because we believe you violated these Terms or used the Service in an unauthorized, abusive, deceptive, competitive, or harmful manner, you will not be entitled to a refund except where required by law.

If your account is suspended, limited, revoked, or terminated, you may not create another account or access the Service through another person, account, organization, device, email address, invitation, family account, or workaround without our written permission.

Upon termination, your right to use the Service will end. Certain provisions of these Terms will survive termination, including provisions related to intellectual property, user content, payment obligations, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, dispute resolution, competitive use restrictions, and any other provisions that by their nature should survive.

19. Data Export and Deletion

Subject to account status, technical limitations, and applicable law, CollegeHound will provide reasonable tools or support to help you access, export, or delete your account information.

Deleting an account or content may not immediately remove all copies from backups, logs, legal records, payment records, security systems, or other systems where retention is required or reasonably necessary.

20. Copyright and Intellectual Property Complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright or intellectual property rights, please contact us at [email protected] with enough information for us to evaluate the claim, including:

• Your name and contact information.
• A description of the copyrighted or protected work.
• A description or location of the allegedly infringing material.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized.
• A statement that the information you provide is accurate.

21. Dispute Resolution

Please contact us first at [email protected] so we can try to resolve any concern informally.

If a dispute cannot be resolved informally, the dispute will be governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to conflict of law principles, unless applicable law requires otherwise.

You agree that any legal action or proceeding arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be brought in the state or federal courts located in North Carolina, unless applicable law requires otherwise. You consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts.

22. Class Action Waiver

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you and CollegeHound agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, private attorney general, or representative proceeding.

23. Export Controls and Sanctions

You may not use, export, re-export, or transfer the Service except as authorized by United States law and the laws of any other applicable jurisdiction. You represent that you are not located in, under the control of, or a resident or national of any country or person subject to applicable sanctions or trade restrictions that would prohibit your use of the Service.

24. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last Updated" date above. We may also provide additional notice when changes are material.

Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms are posted or otherwise made available means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service.

25. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any additional terms presented at signup, checkout, or within the Service, constitute the entire agreement between you and CollegeHound regarding the Service and supersede any prior or contemporaneous agreements regarding the Service.

26. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

27. No Waiver

Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms does not waive our right to enforce that provision or any other provision in the future.

28. Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms or your rights under them without our prior written consent. CollegeHound may assign or transfer these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, reorganization, change of control, or by operation of law.

29. Contact Information

If you have questions about these Terms, please contact us:

CollegeHound Email: [email protected]