Terms of Service

Effective 8 September 2026. Last updated 21 October 2026.

1. This agreement

These terms are the agreement between you and Vako for the Vako mobile app and this website. By using either, you accept them. If you do not, do not use them. Our Privacy Policy is part of this agreement and explains what we do with data.

You need to be at least 13 to use Vako, or older where your country sets a higher age for digital consent.

2. What Vako is

Vako is a feed of publicly available short-form video in the language you are learning, presented with a time-aligned transcript, an optional translation and per-word meanings, plus a review system for words you save. It is a study tool. It is not a course, not a qualification and not a teacher, and we do not promise any particular result from using it.

3. Your account

The app creates an anonymous account when you first open it, so you can use Vako without signing up. You may later sign in with Google or with Apple, which upgrades that same account and keeps what you have saved. Accounts are no longer made with an email address and a password, but one made that way before we stopped can still be signed in to with them, and deleted like any other.

Accounts are personal. Keep your credentials to yourself, and tell us at [email protected] if you think someone else has got into your account. You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Delete account, or, if you no longer have the app installed, from this page.

4. The free trial, and the subscription

Using Vako needs a subscription, monthly or yearly, which starts with a 3-day free trial where the store offers you one. There is no free plan and no daily allowance. The app shows exactly what the subscription includes, its price and the length of the trial before you start it.

What you are paying for. A subscription pays for Vako: the transcripts, translations, word meanings, reviews and checks we build, and for studying with them. It does not buy the videos. Every clip in Vako is a public YouTube upload that belongs to its creator, is not hosted by us and plays in YouTube’s own player, and it stays free to watch on YouTube for anyone, subscriber or not.

• Who bills you. Purchases are made and charged through the App Store or Google Play under their terms. We do not take payment directly and never see your card details.
• Price. The price is the one shown in the app at the moment you subscribe, in your own currency, including any tax the store applies. We do not quote a price on this page because the store’s is the one that governs.
• Renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends. Your account is charged for renewal within the 24 hours before the period ends.
• The free trial. The trial lasts 3 days and costs nothing. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends, it becomes a paid subscription on the plan you chose, monthly or yearly, and the store charges you at the end of the trial. Cancelling during the trial means you pay nothing. If you have notifications on, the app reminds you the day before the trial ends. A trial is offered once per store account, and the app never promises one to someone the store has already given one to. Any unused part of a trial is forfeited if you start a paid subscription before it ends.
• Cancelling. Cancel in your App Store or Google Play account settings. We cannot cancel a store subscription for you. Cancelling stops the next renewal and leaves your access running to the end of the period you have paid for.
• Refunds. Refunds are handled by Apple and Google under their own policies. If a refund is genuinely owed and the store will not help, write to us and we will do what we can.
• Price changes. If we change the price, it applies from your next renewal, and the store will tell you and ask you to consent before it takes effect.

5. Video, and who owns it

Vako uses YouTube API Services. The videos in Vako are made by third parties and remain theirs. They are not hosted, downloaded, copied or re-uploaded by us: every clip plays through YouTube’s official embedded player. By using Vako, you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. Vako is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by YouTube, Google, Apple or any creator whose work appears in the app.

Because the video is not ours, it can disappear: a creator can delete a clip or turn off embedding at any time, and it will then leave the feed. We check availability, but we cannot promise any particular clip will be there tomorrow.

If you are a creator and would rather your work were not featured, write to [email protected] and we will remove it. You do not need to explain why.

6. What is ours

The translations, word meanings, difficulty grading, the app, this site, the name and the artwork are ours or our licensors’. Transcripts are made from each clip’s own captions or audio and are shown for your study. We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use all of this inside the app for your own learning. That licence does not let you copy it out, republish it or build a competing product from it.

7. What you agree not to do

• Scrape, bulk-download or systematically extract content, transcripts or word data from the app or the API.
• Use the API other than through the app, or automate access to it.
• Work around a subscription or any technical restriction, including by modifying the app.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble the app, except where the law says you may.
• Resell, sublicense or share your access, or use Vako to build a competing service.
• Attack the service: probing, overloading, or interfering with it or with anyone else’s use of it.
• Abuse the reporting tools, or use Vako for anything unlawful.

8. Reporting a clip

Every clip has a report control, and reports are read by a person. Every video in Vako is reviewed and published by a person before anyone sees it (nothing is published automatically), but review is human and fallible, so if something is wrong, tell us and we will look.

9. Availability, and changes to the app

We will try to keep Vako running and will not pretend to guarantee it. We may change, suspend or discontinue features, and we may change the catalogue, the ranking or which features the subscription includes. If a change materially reduces what you have paid for, you may cancel and we will help you get the unused part refunded through the store.

10. Ending it

You may stop using Vako and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and where it is reasonable to do so we will warn you first and give you a chance to put it right. If we close your account without cause and you have paid for a period, you get the unused part back.

11. Disclaimers

Vako is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties, express or implied, about fitness for a particular purpose, uninterrupted availability, or the accuracy of any transcript, translation or word meaning. Machine transcription and machine translation both get things wrong; we review what we publish, and you should still treat any single line as a study aid rather than an authority.

12. Liability

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited. Subject to that, and to the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or US$50.

If you are a consumer, you keep every right your local consumer law gives you, and nothing in these terms takes any of them away.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top changes when we do, and for a material change we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Vako after that is acceptance; if you would rather not, delete your account.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts of India have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, or of the right to bring proceedings there.

15. If you installed Vako from the App Store

This agreement is between you and us. Apple is not a party to it, takes no responsibility for Vako, and on Apple’s platforms the following also apply, because Apple requires them of every app sold there:

• The licence in §6 is, on Apple’s platforms, a non-transferable licence to use Vako on any Apple-branded device you own or control, on the terms of the App Store Terms of Service.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for Vako and its content, and for any maintenance or support. Apple has no obligation to provide either.
• If Vako fails to conform to a warranty we cannot disclaim, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund what you paid for the app. To the maximum extent the law allows, that refund is Apple’s entire obligation, and any other claim, loss, cost or expense is ours rather than Apple’s.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim that Vako or your use of it infringes someone’s intellectual property, and any claim about product liability, a failure to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, or consumer protection law.
• You confirm that you are not in a country under a US Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must keep to any third-party terms that apply to your use of Vako. YouTube’s are the ones that matter here, and §5 says so.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this agreement and may enforce it against you.

16. Contact

[email protected]