Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what you're agreeing to

Treader is a collaborative, AI-assisted travel-planning service available at treader.ca (“Treader,” the “Service,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). Treader is an independent service operated as a sole proprietorship under the business name “Treader,” based in the Province of Alberta, Canada. We operate publicly under the Treader business name; the operator’s legal identity is available on request to you or to a regulator.

By visiting Treader, creating an account, or using any part of the Service, you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle your personal information and forms part of these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility and your account

• You must be at least 16 years old (or the minimum age of digital consent in your jurisdiction, if higher) to create an account, and the age of majority in your province, state, or country to purchase a paid plan.
• You agree to provide accurate account information and to keep it up to date.
• Your account is yours alone. Keep your password confidential — you are responsible for activity that happens under your account. Tell us immediately at support@treader.ca if you believe your account has been compromised.
• You may permanently delete your account at any time from Settings (see §12).

3. Plans, billing, and cancellation

The free plan

Treader’s core planning features are free: no payment card is required, and the free plan does not expire. Free accounts have usage limits (for example, on the number of trips you own and monthly AI messages), which we may adjust over time.

Paid subscriptions

• We offer two optional paid plans: Treader Pro ($4.99/mo or $49.99/yr) and Treader Discovery ($9.99/mo or $99.99/yr), each billed monthly or yearly in advance, per the cadence you select at checkout. Applicable taxes may be added at checkout.
• There is no trial. You are charged when you subscribe. The price you pay is the price shown at checkout; if we change prices, the new price applies from your next renewal, and we will tell you before a renewal price increase takes effect.
• Payment is processed by Stripe; your card details never reach our servers. Subscriptions renew automatically each year unless you cancel first.
• You can cancel anytime from Settings. Cancelling stops future renewals; you keep your paid features until the end of the period you have paid for. You can also switch between paid plans from Settings — changes take effect immediately and are prorated through Stripe.
• If a renewal payment fails, we may retry it and, if it continues to fail, downgrade your account to the free plan.
• Except where the law gives you a right we cannot exclude, payments are non-refundable. Nothing in this section limits any refund or cancellation right you have under applicable consumer-protection law (including Alberta’s internet-sales rules).
• If you downgrade or your subscription ends, content or features above the free plan’s limits may become read-only or inaccessible, but we do not delete your content because of a downgrade.

4. Referrals and promotional credits

• We may run a referral program that grants a time-boxed complimentary period of Pro features to you and to the person you refer. Complimentary periods are a promotion, not a purchase: they have no cash value, are non-transferable, and expire on their stated date.
• Promotional credits (for example, credits earned through partner bookings) are applied against future Treader charges, have no cash value, and cannot be redeemed for money.
• We may withhold or revoke referral rewards and credits obtained through abuse — for example self-referrals, fake or duplicate accounts, or automated signups — and may change or end promotional programs at any time (existing, properly earned rewards are honoured to their stated end date).

5. Your content and your licence to us

“Your content” means everything you create or upload on Treader — trips and itineraries, notes and checklists, saved spots, community spots, moments, photos, comments, messages, your profile, and your uploaded travel documents. You own your content.

So that Treader can work, you grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display, and transmit your content solely as needed to operate, provide, and improve the Service and as you direct — for example, syncing a trip to your devices, showing it to collaborators you invite, or displaying a trip, spot, moment, or profile that you choose to make public. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except that (a) content you shared with others may remain visible in their accounts where it also belongs to their context (for example, messages you sent them), (b) copies others lawfully made of your public content are outside our control, and (c) we may retain content briefly in backups made in the ordinary course.

• You are responsible for your content and must have the rights to post it (this includes photos — post only images you took or may use).
• We do not claim ownership of your content and do not use it for third-party advertising.
• If you give us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you.

6. Public and shared content

• Publishing is public. When you make a trip, spot, moment, or your profile public, anyone can view it — including people without a Treader account and search engines — until you unpublish or delete it. A published trip exposes its entire itinerary, including your free-text notes.
• Sharing is sharing. Collaborators you invite to a trip can see and (depending on their role) edit that trip's content. People in a conversation can see the messages you send there.
• Anyone who can see your content can copy or re-share it outside Treader. Publish thoughtfully.

The Privacy Policy, §9 describes exactly what each public surface exposes.

7. Acceptable use

Use Treader lawfully and decently. You must not:

• post or share content that is unlawful, infringing, deceptive, hateful, or harassing, or that sexualises minors;
• post other people's personal information without their consent, or use Treader to stalk, track, or harass anyone;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation, or create accounts by automated means;
• scrape, harvest, or bulk-extract data from the Service, or resell or redistribute the map, place, routing, or AI data we provide;
• probe, overload, or disrupt the Service, evade rate limits or plan limits, or otherwise drain the shared third-party services (maps, places, routing, AI) that the Service depends on;
• attempt to access another user's account or data, or interfere with our security or access controls;
• use the Service to send spam or unsolicited promotion.

We may investigate violations and take any action described in §8 and §12.

8. Community features and moderation

• Community surfaces (community spots, public moments, comments, public trips and profiles) are user-generated. We do not endorse user content and are not responsible for it.
• Every community item can be reported. Content that receives multiple reports may be hidden automatically pending review, and we may remove, hide, or restrict any content that we reasonably believe violates these terms or creates risk for users or for Treader.
• We have no obligation to pre-screen or monitor content, but we reserve the right to do so and to act on what we find.
• Repeated or serious violations may lead to suspension or termination of your account (§12).

9. Third-party content and booking links

• Travel data is provided “as is.” Places, opening hours, prices, photos, ratings, routes, travel times, and weather come from third-party providers (such as Google Maps Platform, OpenStreetMap services, and Open-Meteo) and from other users. Any of it can be out of date, incomplete, or wrong. Always verify hours, bookings, road conditions, and travel requirements before you rely on them.
• Booking links go to independent businesses (for example Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Outdoorsy, RVshare). Anything you book is a contract between you and that business, governed by its terms and privacy policy. We may earn a commission on bookings made through these links; this does not change the price you pay.
• Third-party websites and services linked from Treader are not under our control, and we are not responsible for them.

10. Scout and AI-generated suggestions

Scout, our planning assistant, uses a large language model to generate suggestions. AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and may occasionally describe places or details that do not exist. Scout's suggestions are ideas to explore — they are not professional travel, safety, legal, medical, or immigration advice, and you should independently verify anything you act on, especially bookings, border and visa requirements, and safety conditions.

What Scout receives about you — and what it never receives — is described precisely in the Privacy Policy, §6.

11. Availability and changes to the Service

• We work to keep Treader fast and reliable, but the Service is provided “as is” and “as available” — we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation.
• Some features are subject to fair-use protections such as rate limits and daily provider budgets; when a third-party provider is unavailable or a budget is reached, we may temporarily serve reduced data (for example, falling back to open data sources).
• We may add, change, limit, or discontinue features. If we discontinue the Service entirely or materially reduce a paid plan you have already paid for, we will provide notice and a pro-rated refund for the unused portion of that plan.

12. Ending your account

• By you: delete your account at any time from Settings. Deletion is permanent and irreversible and removes the data linked to your account, as described in the Privacy Policy, §11. (Trips you delete individually are recoverable for 30 days, then purged.)
• By us: we may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these terms, if required by law, or to protect users or the Service — with notice where practicable. If we terminate without cause while you have time left on a paid plan, we will refund the unused portion.
• Sections that by their nature should survive (including §§5 licence wind-down, 13, 14, and 15) survive the end of your account.

13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law: the Service is provided without warranties or conditions of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement; and we exclude liability for the accuracy of third-party travel data and AI-generated suggestions (§§9–10) and for decisions you make in reliance on them.

To the same extent, our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the amounts you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim (or, if you have paid nothing, CAD $50), and we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill.

Your legal rights are not erased. Some jurisdictions — including Alberta and other Canadian provinces under their consumer-protection legislation, and Quebec under the Consumer Protection Act — do not allow certain warranties to be excluded or liability to be limited. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts, or modifies rights or remedies you have under law that cannot be excluded, restricted, or modified by agreement.

14. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you will indemnify and hold us harmless from third-party claims, and associated reasonable costs, arising out of your content or your breach of these terms — except to the extent the claim results from our own breach or negligence. This section does not apply where prohibited by applicable consumer law.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Alberta and the federal laws of Canada applicable there. Subject to any mandatory consumer-law right to sue where you live, the courts of Alberta have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes relating to the Service. Before starting a formal proceeding, please contact us at support@treader.ca — most issues can be resolved quickly and informally.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the Service, our practices, or the law changes. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above and give notice within the Service (and, for significant changes affecting paid plans, by email) before the changes take effect. Your continued use of Treader after a change takes effect means you accept the revised terms; if you do not agree, stop using the Service and, if applicable, cancel your subscription.

17. Contact

Questions about these terms? Reach us at support@treader.ca.