Last updated September 18, 2026
Plain-language summary (not a substitute for the full text below): Trace is a personal taste-tracking app offered “as is,” with no warranties. You own what you write; you grant us a limited licence to run the service. Most of your data lives in your own browser. Paid plans renew automatically until you cancel. We use third-party catalogue, payment, analytics, and infrastructure providers, and we don’t sell your personal information. You can export or delete your data at any time, subject to records we must keep by law. To the maximum extent the law allows, our liability is limited and disputes are resolved individually.
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and the operator of Trace (“Trace,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) governing your access to and use of the Trace website, applications, and related services (collectively, the “Service”). By creating an account, accessing, or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and by the Privacy Policy below. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
You must be at least 16 years old (or the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher) to use the Service. By using the Service you represent and warrant that you meet this requirement and that you have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms. The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.
Trace is an evolving, best-effort project offered on an “as is” and “as available” basis. Features may change, break, or be removed at any time without notice. Recommendations, valuations, price “guesstimates,” availability data, ratings, and catalogue information are generated algorithmically and/or sourced from third parties, may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing in the Service is financial, investment, appraisal, tax, or legal advice, and you should not rely on it as such.
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any credentials and for all activity under your account. You agree to provide accurate information and to notify us promptly of any unauthorised use. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or that we reasonably believe create risk or legal exposure for us or other users.
Parts of the Service are free; others require a paid subscription (“Pro”). Paid plans are offered on a recurring basis, billed monthly or yearly as shown at checkout, and are processed by our payment provider, Stripe. By starting a paid plan you authorise us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method the then-current fee plus any applicable taxes at the start of each billing period.
Auto-renewal. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period, at the then-current price, until you cancel. Cancellation. You may cancel at any time from your account settings or the billing portal; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period, and you keep Pro access until then. Refunds. Except where required by law, payments are non-refundable and we do not provide partial refunds for unused time. Price changes. We may change prices or plan features; we will give notice before a change takes effect, and the new price applies from your next renewal. We never store your full card number; Stripe handles card data directly.
“User Content” means anything you submit to the Service, including reviews, ratings, tags, list names, notes, ownership records, uploaded images, and profile details. You retain ownership of your User Content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, display, and distribute your User Content solely to operate, improve, secure, and provide the Service. You represent that you have the rights necessary to grant this licence and that your User Content does not infringe any third-party rights or law.
You agree not to, and not to help others: (a) break the law or infringe intellectual-property or privacy rights; (b) upload malware or attempt to gain unauthorised access to systems or data; (c) scrape, harvest, or bulk-extract data except as expressly permitted; (d) reverse-engineer or circumvent security or rate limits; (e) misrepresent your identity or impersonate others; (f) post unlawful, harassing, hateful, or infringing content; or (g) resell or commercially exploit the Service without our written permission.
The Service displays catalogue data, cover art, and availability supplied by third-party APIs, and links to external sites. That content belongs to its respective owners and is governed by their terms, not ours. Each source and its required credit is set out in Data Sources & Attribution below. We are not responsible for third-party content, availability, or practices, and your use of third-party services is at your own risk and subject to their terms.
Except for User Content and third-party materials, the Service and its design, code, and branding are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by law. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the Service for personal, non-commercial purposes, subject to these Terms. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND ANY WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY DATA (INCLUDING PRICE ESTIMATES OR RECOMMENDATIONS) IS ACCURATE OR RELIABLE.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL TRACE OR ITS OPERATOR, CONTRIBUTORS, OR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR REVENUE, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY. OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) US $50. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Trace and its operator from and against any claims, damages, liabilities, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to your User Content, your use of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia and the applicable laws of Canada, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts located in British Columbia will have jurisdiction, subject to any mandatory consumer-protection law that gives you the right to bring proceedings in your own place of residence. Except where prohibited, any dispute will be resolved on an individual basis, and you and we waive any right to participate in a class or representative action. Nothing here limits rights that cannot be waived under mandatory consumer-protection law in your jurisdiction.
You may stop using the Service at any time and may delete your account from your settings. We may suspend or terminate access at any time, with or without cause or notice. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (including ownership, disclaimers, limitations of liability, and indemnities) will survive.
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, by additional notice. Your continued use after changes take effect constitutes acceptance.
This Privacy Policy explains what information Trace handles and how. Trace is designed to be local-first: the large majority of your data, your collection, ratings, reviews, tags, lists, ownership records, and preferences, is stored in your own browser (via localStorage) on the device you use, and is not transmitted to us except as described below.
(a) Data you create, stored locally in your browser as described above, and, if you sign in, synced to our servers so your library is available across your devices. (b) Account data, such as your email address, a handle or display name you choose, and, for password accounts, a hashed password. If you sign in with Google, we receive basic profile information from Google, not your Google password. (c) Billing data: if you subscribe, our payment provider Stripe processes your payment and we store non-sensitive identifiers (a Stripe customer and subscription id and your plan status). We never receive or store your full card number. (d) Search and query text you type into Discover, Search, or the price “guesstimate” tool, which is sent to our server and to third-party model/search providers to return a result, and which we retain as usage data to improve recommendations and our catalogue; your searches are deleted when you delete your account. (e) Usage analytics: pseudonymized events about how the Service is used (see “Product analytics” below). (f) Technical datasuch as basic logs and an IP address needed to operate, rate-limit, and secure the Service.
To run the Service we share limited data with the providers below, each of which processes it under its own terms and privacy policy. We do not control, and are not responsible for, their practices.
Infrastructure: Vercel (application hosting), Neon (database hosting for your synced account data), and Upstash (a Redis store used for rate limiting and abuse prevention). Payments: Stripe (subscription billing and card processing). Product analytics: PostHog (pseudonymized usage events). Sign-in: Google (only if you choose Google sign-in). AI and search: Anthropic and Voyage AI, used to interpret your Discover queries, enrich catalogue data, and estimate prices; these requests carry the text you typed. Catalogue, artwork, and availability: TMDB (film and television), Open Library (books), AniList (anime and manga), the Apple iTunes Search API (music), RAWG (games), and the Art Institute of Chicago (art). Catalogue requests carry your search terms, not your identity. Cover images are generally loaded in your browser directly from the provider, which means the provider can see your IP address and standard request headers.
We use PostHog, a product-analytics tool, to understand how features are used so we can improve the Service, for example which spaces are opened, when Discover or the price estimator is used, and when sign-in or upgrade happens. Events are tied to a pseudonymized identifier rather than to your name, and we do not use them for third-party advertising or to track you across other websites. This is first-party analytics only. Where your local law requires consent for analytics storage, we will honour that requirement.
We use information to operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Service; to provide sign-in and sync; to process subscriptions and prevent fraud; to generate the recommendations, availability, and price estimates you request; to understand product usage; to prevent abuse; and to comply with law. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.
We keep information only as long as needed for the purposes above. In practice: local data stays on your device until you clear it. Synced account data is kept while your account is active and is deleted when you delete your account. Behavioural event logs are short-lived and are purged on a rolling basis. Billing and tax records (such as invoices and the fact and amount of a payment) are retained for as long as applicable tax and accounting law requires, commonly up to seven years, even after you delete your account; Stripe also retains its own payment records. When you delete your account we anonymize the underlying account record so these financial records remain intact without identifying you.
You can delete your account at any time from your account settings. Deletion immediately cancels any active subscription, removes your synced library, profile, and shared lists from our servers, and anonymizes your account record, subject only to the billing and tax records described above. You can also export a copy of your data from the app at any time, and you can remove locally-stored data by clearing your browser storage for this site.
Depending on where you live, you may also have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to our processing of your personal information, to data portability, and to withdraw consent. We operate from British Columbia, Canada, and handle personal information in accordance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA); you may address a concern to us and, if unresolved, to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or of British Columbia. Where the GDPR applies, our legal bases are performance of our contract with you (providing the Service), our legitimate interests (securing and improving the Service), consent (where we ask for it), and compliance with legal obligations, and you may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. Where the CCPA/CPRA applies, we do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights. To make a request, contact us using the details in the Contact section.
We take reasonable measures to protect information, but no method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure. You use the Service at your own risk and are responsible for safeguarding the device and browser where your local data is stored.
The Service is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us so we can remove it.
The Service may be operated from, and information may be processed in, jurisdictions other than yours, whose data-protection laws may differ. By using the Service you consent to such processing where permitted by law.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time; we will update the “Last updated” date above and provide additional notice where appropriate.
Some outbound links in Trace, for example the “where to watch” and “find a copy” buttons, are affiliate links. If you click one and buy or rent something, Trace may earn a small commission from that retailer at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, Trace earns from qualifying purchases. This never changes the price you pay and never affects which titles we recommend.
Depending on configuration, links may run through programs such as Amazon Associates and the eBay Partner Network, and through an affiliate link partner (Skimlinks) that can rewrite outbound store links into affiliate links.
You are never required to buy anything, and you can always go to any retailer directly instead of using our links. Affiliate tags are only added to links you choose to click.
We respect intellectual-property rights and expect our users to do the same. Most catalogue metadata and cover art shown in Trace is supplied by the third-party sources credited under Data Sources below and is loaded from those sources; a correction or removal of that material usually has to be made at the source. For any material that we host, including user reviews, uploaded images, or profile content, we operate a notice-and-takedown process.
If you believe material available through Trace infringes a copyright you own or control, send a written notice to support@michi.daythat includes: (a) identification of the copyrighted work; (b) identification of the material you say is infringing and enough detail for us to locate it, such as a URL; (c) your name, address, and email; (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent, or the law; (e) a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorised to act on the rights holder’s behalf; and (f) your physical or electronic signature.
On receipt of a valid notice we will promptly remove or disable access to the material we host. We terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe. If you believe material was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice to the same address.
Trace shows catalogue information, cover art, and availability drawn from third-party sources. Each is credited below in the form that source asks for. Metadata and images belong to their respective owners and stay subject to those owners’ terms. Trace is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by any of them.
This application uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB. Film and television metadata, poster and backdrop images, and watch-provider availability are supplied by The Movie Database.
Book metadata and cover images come from Open Library, a project of the Internet Archive. Open Library’s catalogue data is contributed under a CC0 1.0 public-domain dedication. Cover images are aggregated by Open Library from third parties; Trace loads them from Open Library at source rather than rehosting them, and claims no rights in them.
Anime and manga metadata and cover art are supplied by the AniList API. Trace is an unofficial, independent product and is not an AniList service. Cover art belongs to the publishers and licensors of the underlying works.
Album metadata and artwork are retrieved through the Apple iTunes Search API. Where audio previews are offered, they are provided courtesy of iTunes. Apple, iTunes, and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Trace is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc.
Game metadata and images are supplied by RAWG, the source of that data on every page where it appears.
Artwork data and images come from the Art Institute of Chicago API. That data is published under a CC0 1.0 dedication, with the exception of artwork description text, which is licensed CC BY 4.0 and is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago. Trace shows works the museum designates as public domain, captioned in the museum’s requested form: Artist. Title, Date. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Trace does not author catalogue data. If a title, credit, cover, or date is wrong, the correction usually has to be made at the source, and it will flow through to Trace afterwards.
For privacy questions, data-access or deletion requests, or any other matter relating to these documents, reach us at support@michi.day. You can also delete your account, or export your data, directly from your account settings in the app.