Terms of use

Scope and operator

These Terms govern StartupBench, a product operated by Marco Herz, trading as StartupBench. The Legal Notice and Privacy Policy form part of these Terms. By requesting a score or placing an order, the user confirms that they can lawfully use the service and, for an order, enter a binding contract.

Service

StartupBench analyzes a publicly reachable startup website, builds a public-evidence profile, applies a published scoring method, and produces a shareable result. It primarily evaluates the visible startup idea and separately evaluates the public website. It does not evaluate private revenue, funding, internal operations, or team quality.

Results are public from submission: every completed score has a public share page and may appear in the recent activity feed. Payment is for detailed analysis access and global board placement. Numeric scores and share images remain public; detailed explanations, improvements and research context require the domain access key. Terms version: 2026-09-06.

Submitted websites

Users may submit only public URLs they are legally permitted to access. They must not submit private areas, credentials, local network addresses, unlawful material, or URLs for the purpose of harassment, security testing, manipulation, or excessive automated requests. Submission does not transfer ownership of website content. Public material remains subject to its owner's rights and terms.

AI output and benchmark limits

Scores, summaries, classifications, comparisons, and improvement suggestions are automated decision-support outputs. They may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or biased. StartupBench does not promise that a score predicts company success, investment return, product-market fit, revenue, or any other business outcome. The service must not be used for credit, employment, housing, insurance, healthcare, legal eligibility, or other high-impact decisions about people.

Free scoring, caching, and fair use

A score and share page are currently free and require no account. To protect service reliability and AI costs, StartupBench applies request limits, blocks duplicate concurrent runs, and enforces a minimum 30-minute cooldown per domain. Requests made during the cooldown receive the latest cached result. Limits must not be bypassed through automation, address rotation, or coordinated requests.

Domain pass pricing

• A domain pass costs USD 10 once. It includes detailed analysis for that domain's scores and its first global board listing.
• Scoring the domain again remains free after the cooldown.
• Future analysis access and updates to the domain's board listing are included without an additional update charge.
• Payment unlocks analysis and board visibility. It never changes a score, criterion, confidence value, or ranking rule.

The global board is ordered by score under the published method. A lower paid score cannot buy a higher position. Prices shown immediately before payment control the order and are displayed before applicable taxes unless checkout states otherwise.

Every current paid listing is accessible on the complete board, including beyond the homepage preview. Updates require the management capability saved in the original purchaser’s browser, and only the newest eligible score can replace a current listing. Contact support with proof of purchase if browser access and the saved backup key are lost. Anyone holding the access key can read the domain's analyses and manage its listing. A purchase is not proof of domain ownership and does not prevent justified ownership or removal reviews. If a newer score makes a paid checkout ineligible before publication, the payment is automatically submitted for a refund.

Checkout and performance

Stripe provides hosted checkout. An order is created only after checkout and payment-provider confirmation. By confirming the required checkout acknowledgment, the customer requests that the listing or analysis access begin immediately. Any mandatory consumer withdrawal, digital-service, conformity, refund, and payment rights remain unaffected. Nothing in these Terms removes a right that cannot lawfully be waived.

Corrections, refunds, and removal

If a payment succeeds but the purchased listing cannot be delivered, contact support for correction or refund review. Otherwise, completed one-time digital services are generally not refundable except where mandatory law or the checkout terms require it. Evidence errors, domain ownership concerns, unlawful content, and justified score-removal requests can be reported with the relevant score URL. A full refund or payment dispute suspends paid analysis access and board placement, including a later included update, pending resolution.

Intellectual property

StartupBench software, scoring presentation, branding, interface, and original documentation are protected by applicable intellectual-property law. Users receive a limited right to access and share their result page. Website content, trademarks, and logos remain the property of their respective owners and are displayed for identification, analysis, and linking.

Availability and changes

The service, criteria, method version, providers, limits, prices, and board presentation may change for security, legal compliance, reliability, or product development. Existing scores retain their recorded method version. StartupBench does not promise uninterrupted availability or permanent storage of every score.

Warranty and liability

Statutory rights are not excluded. Liability is unlimited for intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body, or health, expressly assumed guarantees, product-liability claims, and liability that cannot legally be limited. For ordinary negligence, liability is limited to breach of an essential contractual obligation and the foreseeable, typical damage to the extent permitted by law.

Governing law and contact

German law applies, subject to mandatory protections in a consumer's country of habitual residence. For business customers, courts at the operator's registered office have jurisdiction where legally permitted. Consumers retain mandatory venues and protections. Questions can be sent to support@startupbench.app.