Terms & Conditions

Hi, and welcome. These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") describe the rules for using Milton, a reference management app for academics. Milton is operated by Pierre Jacquel, an individual based at 78 avenue de Paris, 94800 Villejuif, France ("we", "us", "our").

By downloading, installing, or using Milton, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the app — that's totally fine, no hard feelings.

1. Who can use Milton

You need to be at least 13 years old to use Milton. If you're between 13 and the age of legal majority where you live, you must have permission from a parent or guardian. By using Milton you confirm you meet these requirements and that you can legally enter into a binding agreement with us.

2. Your account

Some features of Milton require an account. When you create one, you agree to:

• Provide accurate information (a working email address, basically).
• Keep your login credentials safe — you're responsible for what happens under your account.
• Tell us right away at hello@milton.so if you think someone else has accessed your account.

One person, one account. You can close your account any time from the app or by emailing us.

3. Subscriptions, billing & refunds

Milton offers a free tier so you can try it out, and paid plans (monthly subscription, yearly subscription, or one-time lifetime purchase) that unlock additional features. Pricing is shown in the app and on our website.

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless you cancel before renewal. You can cancel at any time — your access continues until the end of the period you've already paid for.

Refund policy: we offer a 7-day no-questions-asked refund on any paid plan. Just email hello@milton.so within 7 days of your purchase and we'll refund you in full. After 7 days, refunds are at our discretion.

Payments are processed by our payment partner (currently Polar). When you pay, you also agree to their terms.

4. Your licence to use Milton

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use Milton on devices you own or control, for your own academic and personal use, subject to these Terms.

You may not: copy, modify, reverse-engineer, decompile, sell, sublicense, or redistribute Milton or any part of it (except where the law explicitly allows it). The Milton brand, logo, design, and codebase belong to us.

5. Your content

Milton is local-first: your notes, references, PDFs, and other content live on your device, in a local database. We don't see them and we don't have access to them.

In the future we may add optional sync, sharing, or collaboration features. If you choose to use them, the relevant content will be transmitted to and stored on our servers (or trusted infrastructure providers acting on our behalf), purely so we can deliver those features back to you. You'll always own that content. By using such a feature you grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, transmit, and display your content solely as needed to operate the feature for you. We won't use it for anything else.

You're responsible for the content you store in Milton. Don't put anything in there that you don't have the right to use.

6. Acceptable use

Please don't use Milton to:

• Break any law that applies to you.
• Infringe someone else's intellectual property or privacy rights.
• Distribute malware, attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems, or interfere with other users.
• Scrape, crawl, or systematically extract data from Milton without our written permission.
• Resell, white-label, or otherwise commercially exploit Milton.

If you do, we may suspend or terminate your account.

7. Privacy

How we handle your personal data is described in our Privacy Policy. By using Milton you also agree to that policy.

8. Third-party services

Milton may integrate with or rely on third-party services (for example: authentication, payment processing, analytics, or external reference databases like Zotero, CrossRef, etc.). Their terms and privacy policies apply when you use them. We're not responsible for those services, but we choose them carefully.

9. Termination

You can stop using Milton at any time and delete your account. We can suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if we're required to by law, or if we discontinue the service. If we terminate your paid plan without cause, we'll refund the unused portion of your subscription.

When your account ends, your local data on your device stays where it is — it's yours. Any data we hold for sync features will be deleted within a reasonable time, except where we're legally required to keep it.

10. Disclaimers

Milton is provided "as is" and "as available". We do our best to make it reliable and useful, but we can't guarantee it'll be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit a specific purpose. To the maximum extent allowed by law, we disclaim all implied warranties.

You're responsible for backing up your data. Milton is local-first, which is great for ownership but also means data loss can happen if you don't keep backups. We strongly recommend backing up your work.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or related to Milton is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose (or €50, whichever is greater). We won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruption.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that can't be limited under French or EU consumer-protection law.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time — for example to reflect new features, legal changes, or business updates. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page, and for material changes we'll let you know via email or in the app before they take effect. If you keep using Milton after the changes, you're agreeing to the new Terms.

13. Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by French law. Any dispute will be brought before the competent courts of France, unless mandatory consumer-protection rules in your country of residence give you the right to bring proceedings elsewhere.

If you're an EU consumer, you can also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform: ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

14. Contact

Questions, feedback, or need to reach us about anything in these Terms? Email us at hello@milton.so. We're real humans on the other side and we read every message.