Terms of service#

THESE TERMS ARE A BINDING AGREEMENT AND GOVERN ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SERVICE BY CUSTOMER AND ITS USERS.

This Agreement governs Customer's access to and use of the Service and is effective when Customer creates a Tenant or first uses the API (the "Effective Date"). Customer and the Provider will each be referred to as a "party" and collectively as the "parties" for purposes of this Agreement.

SECTION 1. THE SERVICE AND ACCESS RIGHTS#

• 1.1 The Service. The Service delivers favicons of third-party websites as PNG images over public HTTP endpoints (icon0.eu), and lets Customer verify control of its own domains - via a console and a JSON API - to obtain elevated rate limits.
• 1.2 Access Rights. The Provider grants Customer a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use the Service during the Beta, subject to this Agreement.
• 1.3 Beta Service. The Service is currently a free Beta, provided as-is. The Provider may change, limit, or discontinue features - or the Service as a whole - and will give reasonable notice where it does. Nothing in this Agreement promises a particular uptime, retention period, or continuity of the free tier.
• 1.4 Provider. The Service is operated by the service provider named in the Imprint, which also contains the legal disclosure required by § 5 DDG (German Digital Services Act).

SECTION 2. ACCOUNTS AND USING THE SERVICE#

• 2.1 Accounts. Sign-in is provided through the Provider's self-hosted identity service. A Tenant corresponds to an organization; Customer is responsible for everything that happens under its Tenant, including actions of users it adds to its organization.
• 2.2 Credentials. Customer will keep its credentials (passwords, second factors) safe.
• 2.3 Prohibited Uses. Customer will not (and will not permit any other party to): (i) use the Service in connection with unlawful content or activity; (ii) misrepresent served icons as an endorsement by, or affiliation with, the sites they belong to, or use them for phishing or other deception; (iii) claim or verify domains it does not control; (iv) access other Tenants' data; (v) interfere with the operation of the Service; (vi) circumvent rate limits, including by rotating IP addresses or tenants; or (vii) resell, redistribute, sublicense, rent, lease, or otherwise make the Service available to third parties as a service of its own, including white-labeling or wrapping the endpoints in a competing or derivative offering. Displaying icons in Customer's own products, content, and tools is normal use and not a resale.
• 2.4 Abuse Handling. The Provider may block requests, refuse individual domains, or suspend Tenants where use violates this Agreement or creates a security or availability risk for the Service.
• 2.5 Domain Claims. A domain host can be claimed by one Tenant at a time. Verification proves control of the domain via the DNS TXT record described in the docs; the Provider may re-check verification and revoke it where the record disappears or control demonstrably changes.
• 2.6 Rate Limits. Rate limits (currently 30 icons/minute and 1,000/day per IP anonymously; 3,000/minute and 100,000/day per verified Tenant, with a per-IP slice of 300/minute and 10,000/day) are technical protections, not billing units, and may change as the Provider operates the Beta.

SECTION 3. CONTENT#

• 3.1 Third-Party Icons. The favicons served by the Service originate from the respective third-party websites and may be protected as trademarks or by copyright of their owners. The Service supplies them for the customary purpose of identifying and linking to those sites; Customer is responsible for its own use of them beyond that purpose.
• 3.2 Customer Configuration. As between the parties, Customer retains all rights to the domains and settings it configures in the Service, and grants the Provider the non-exclusive license needed to operate the Service: to store Customer's claimed domains, query DNS for their verification, and apply Customer's rate limits. This license ends when the configuration is deleted.
• 3.3 Responsibility for Embedding. Customer is responsible for how and where it embeds the Service's endpoints - the Data processing agreement describes the controller/processor split.
• 3.4 Data Protection. The Privacy policy and Data processing agreement apply to the Service and are incorporated by reference.

SECTION 4. TERM AND TERMINATION#

• 4.1 Term. This Agreement runs from the Effective Date until terminated under this Section 4.
• 4.2 Termination by Customer. Customer can stop using the Service and request deletion of its Tenant at any time via the contact address in the Imprint.
• 4.3 Termination and Suspension by the Provider. The Provider may terminate the Service or individual Tenants with reasonable notice, and may suspend or terminate Tenants immediately where they violate this Agreement, abuse the Service, or create a security risk.
• 4.4 Effect of Termination. Upon deletion of a Tenant, its domain claims are released, requests on its tenant path fall back to the anonymous limits, and its data is deleted as described in the Privacy policy.

SECTION 5. WARRANTIES AND LIABILITY#

• 5.1 As-Is Service. The Service is free of charge and provided as-is. The Provider does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, nor that an icon exists, is current, or is correct for a given domain.
• 5.2 Limitation of Liability. To the extent permitted by German law, the Provider is liable only for intent (Vorsatz) and gross negligence (grobe Fahrlaessigkeit). This limitation does not apply to injury to life, body, or health, or to the breach of cardinal obligations (essential contractual duties whose fulfilment makes proper performance possible in the first place); in the latter case liability is limited to foreseeable, typical damage. Mandatory statutory liability remains unaffected.

SECTION 6. GENERAL TERMS#

• 6.1 Amendments. The Provider may amend this Agreement; material changes are announced on this page before they take effect. The canonical version of this document lives at https://icon0.eu/legal/terms-of-service.
• 6.2 Governing Law and Jurisdiction. This Agreement and any dispute arising out of or in connection with the Service are governed exclusively by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding its conflict-of-law rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). Where legally permissible, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is Berlin, Germany. By accessing or using the Service, Customer accepts this Agreement, including this choice of law and venue.
• 6.3 Severability. If individual provisions of this Agreement are invalid, the remainder stays in effect.

SECTION 7. DEFINITIONS#

"Agreement" means these Terms of service, together with the Privacy policy, Data processing agreement, and Subprocessor list pages, which are incorporated by reference.

"Beta" means the current free beta phase of the Service.

"Customer" means the natural or legal person using the Service under this Agreement. Customer may also be referred to as "you."

"Provider" means botBrains GmbH, as named in the Imprint. The Provider may also be referred to as "we" or "us."

"Service" means icons (https://icon0.eu), a favicon delivery service, including its console, API, and documentation.

"Tenant" means the account (organization) created for a Customer within the Service.

Last updated: August 2026.