Terms of Use

CupPhone · Last updated 5 November 2026

These are the rules for using CupPhone, written to be read.

CupPhone is provided by Achelois LLC. These terms are an agreement between you and Achelois LLC, and “we” below means that company. They work together with the Privacy Policy, which says what is stored and for how long, and the Community Rules, which say what gets an account suspended. Breaking the Community Rules is breaking these terms.

There is no tolerance for abusive or offensive content. By using CupPhone you agree to these terms and to the Community Rules, including that abusive content is not tolerated. Anyone can report a conversation or block a person from inside the app. Every report is read, and an account is suspended automatically once several different people report it.

What CupPhone is

An app for calling and messaging someone who does not speak your language. Your words are translated by machine, in both directions.

Your account

• You must be 18 or over.
• One person per account, and one device at a time. Signing in on another phone signs you out of the previous phone, which will no longer ring for incoming calls.
• Keep the email address linked to your account secure and accessible. CupPhone uses email verification codes to sign you in, so anyone with access to your inbox may be able to access your account. If you believe someone has accessed your account without permission, contact support@cupphone.app.
• Use an email address you can continue to access. We do not accept temporary or disposable email addresses because you need your email to sign in again. Email forwarding and privacy-relay addresses, such as Apple’s Hide My Email, are supported. We check addresses against a list kept on our own servers, without sending your address to an external verification service.
• One free account per phone. A phone that has already been used to create a CupPhone account cannot be used to create another. You can still sign in to an existing account on any phone, one at a time. If you bought a used phone, or share a phone with someone who already has an account, and cannot create your own, write to support@cupphone.app.
• You are responsible for what is said and sent from your account.

Plans and allowances

Each plan includes a monthly allowance. The amounts for each plan are shown in the app and on cupphone.app.

Allowances can change. The amounts we show are what each plan includes today, not a permanent commitment, and that includes the free allowance on Paper. We may change them, and a free allowance offered at launch may be reduced or withdrawn later. If we change an allowance we will tell you in the official CupPhone conversation before the change takes effect.

A reduction never applies to the month you are already in. The allowance your month started with runs until your next reset, and a smaller amount begins from that reset. So a change can never put you over an allowance you have already been spending against.

• Text messages are free and are translated without using any allowance.
• Your monthly minutes cover translated calls and translated voice messages together. Only the time someone is actually speaking is counted; silence is not.
• Conversational-voice minutes are part of your monthly minutes, not extra to them. While they last, what you hear on a call is spoken in the conversational voice. When they run out, calls carry on in the robotic voice, read aloud by your own phone. Voice messages are always read in the robotic voice.
• When your monthly minutes run out, you can still call and receive calls. If the other person has a paid plan with minutes left, their plan covers your translation (see below). If neither of you has minutes left, the call still connects, but without translation. Translated voice messages cannot be sent until your minutes reset; text messages are unaffected.
• Reaching your allowance does not end a call already in progress. Allowance limits are checked when you start a new call, and when something on the call changes, such as someone joining or putting it on hold. The voice may switch from conversational to robotic at that point. Time used past your allowance during a call is never charged extra.
• Calls between two people who speak the same language are not translated, cost nothing, and never count against an allowance.

How a plan covers the other person

• On a call, the translation of what you hear comes from your minutes, and the translation of what the other person hears comes from theirs.
• When your minutes run out, a paid plan belonging to the person speaking to you covers your side, as long as their plan has minutes left. The free plan cannot cover anyone.
• This works the same way whoever placed the call.
• Voice messages are never covered by the other person’s plan. They always use the sender’s own minutes.

Resets, renewals and changes

• Allowances reset monthly. On a free plan, on the day of the month you created your account. When you subscribe to a paid plan, or move up to a more expensive one, your allowance month moves to that day instead, so that it matches the day Apple or Google charges you. Moving up starts a new allowance month immediately: minutes you had already used that month are left behind with it. If your reset day does not exist in a month (for example the 31st), the reset happens on the last day of that month. Resets follow Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
• Unused minutes do not roll over.
• Your subscription renewal date is set by Apple or Google. From your first subscription it normally falls on the same day as your allowance reset. Changing plans later can move one and not the other, so the two may drift apart.
• Moving up to a more expensive plan takes effect at once. Apple or Google charge you the new plan’s full price that day and credit you for the time left on the old one, and your new allowance is available immediately. Your billing date and your allowance month both move to that day.
• Moving down to a cheaper plan, or cancelling, takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. Until then nothing changes: you keep the plan you paid for and the minutes that come with it. The lower plan, or the free plan, begins at your next renewal.
• Minutes do not roll over. Each month’s allowance is for that month. Whatever is left when your month resets does not carry into the next one, and minutes have no cash value.
• Your plan stops covering other people as soon as your paid subscription ends.
• Billing. Subscriptions are bought and billed through Apple or Google under their terms, renew automatically, and are cancelled through your device’s subscription settings. Refunds are handled by them, not by us.

Transcripts and consent

• Call audio is not recorded. The sound passes through the interpreter to be translated and is not kept.
• Translated calls are transcribed. Every translated sentence is saved into your conversation with that person, in both languages, so you can both read it afterwards. Calls between two people who share a language are not transcribed.
• Voice messages keep their recording, and, when they are translated, a transcript and its translation.
• Notice. Both people on a translated call see a notice on screen during the call saying that what they say is translated and saved.
• Your part. If anyone other than the two CupPhone users can be heard on your call — for example on speaker — you are responsible for telling them and for getting any consent the law where you are requires.
• How long transcripts and recordings are kept, and how to delete them, is in the Privacy Policy.

Your content

What you say and send on CupPhone remains yours. You give us permission to process, translate, store and deliver it only as needed to provide the service to you and the people you talk with, as described in the Privacy Policy.

Personal and business use

CupPhone is sold for personal use. Using it for your own work calls from time to time is fine. Running it as part of a business’s operations — a call centre, a clinic’s interpreting line, an automated service, or calling on behalf of many people — needs a separate agreement; write to support@cupphone.app. We may limit an account that is being used that way without one, or that is used to send unsolicited messages or to harass someone.

What you must not do

• Use CupPhone to threaten, harass, defraud or abuse anyone.
• Record or transcribe someone without the consent the law where they are requires.
• Create accounts in order to collect free allowances.
• Attempt to break or overload the service, or to reverse-engineer it, except where the law allows this regardless of these terms.

Availability

We will try to keep CupPhone working, but it depends on other companies' services and on your phone's network. We do not promise it will always be available, and it is not a replacement for a telephone. It cannot call emergency services.

Account deletion and suspension

Deleting your account. You can delete your account at any time in the app’s Settings or at cupphone.app/delete. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription purchased through Apple or Google. To stop future renewals, cancel your subscription separately through the store where you purchased it. The deletion page lists what is removed and what is kept.

Suspension. An account is suspended automatically when several different people report it within a short period, as described in the Community Rules. We may also limit or close an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless we are prevented from doing so.

• A suspended account cannot place calls or send messages. You are told when you try. You can still sign in, read and export your conversations, and delete your account.
• To ask for a review, write to abuse@cupphone.app. A person reads every appeal.
• Suspension does not cancel your subscription. Cancel it through Apple or Google if you want to stop renewals; you can do that whether or not you can use your account.

Liability

CupPhone is provided as it is. We do our best to keep it working and accurate, but we do not promise that translations will be correct or that calls will always connect.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost business, lost opportunities or losses resulting from reliance on an incorrect translation. Our total liability to you for anything else is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim or US$50, whichever is greater.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit. Nothing here affects your rights as a consumer under the law where you live.

Changes to these terms and official notices

The date at the top of this page shows when these terms last changed.

CupPhone includes an official, read-only conversation called “CupPhone”. We use it to send service announcements, information about app updates, and notices about changes to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You cannot reply to this conversation.

We will notify you of material changes to these terms through this conversation at least 30 days before they take effect, unless a shorter period is necessary to comply with the law or address abuse or a security issue. Each notice will explain the main changes, state the effective date, and link to the updated terms.

By continuing to use CupPhone after the changes take effect, following notice, you agree to the updated terms, to the extent permitted by applicable law. If you do not agree, stop using CupPhone. You can export your conversations and delete your account. Deleting your account does not cancel an Apple or Google subscription; cancel it separately to stop future renewals.

We will also communicate Privacy Policy updates through the official CupPhone conversation. Where applicable law requires separate consent for a change in how we use your information, we will request it before making that change.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Contact support@cupphone.app.