Agreement
By using the spoken.md API or website, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.
The service
spoken.md provides an API that returns podcast episode transcripts as Markdown. The service includes episode search and transcript retrieval endpoints.
Who operates Spoken
Spoken (spoken.md) is operated by Stephan Kaag, registered in the Netherlands. Purchases are sold and invoiced by Stripe as merchant of record; Spoken provides the service itself.
- Chamber of Commerce (KvK): 42067203
- VAT (BTW) number: NL005469689B81
- Contact: support@spoken.md
Payments are processed by Stripe, which issues a VAT invoice to the billing details you enter at checkout.
API keys and credits
- API keys are issued upon purchase and are for your use only.
- You are responsible for keeping your API key secure. Do not share it publicly.
- Each successful transcript request costs 1 credit. Failed requests (404, 502) are not charged.
- Credits do not expire. Refunds are covered below.
- The demo key (
pt_demo) is for evaluation purposes only.
Refunds
If Spoken is not what you expected, email support@spoken.md within 14 days of your purchase. With 20 or fewer credits used, we refund that purchase in full. With more than 20 used, we refund the credits you have not used, at the price you paid for them. After 14 days, credits are non-refundable. Stripe is the merchant of record for purchases and may also issue a refund independently, including where statutory withdrawal rights apply.
Requests that fail (404, 502) are never charged in the first place, so there is nothing to refund for those.
Acceptable use
You may use the API for any lawful purpose. You agree not to:
- Resell raw API access or credits to third parties
- Attempt to circumvent authentication or credit limits
- Use the service to overload or disrupt the API infrastructure
What you may and may not do with the transcript content itself is set out under Transcript content.
Transcript content
Transcripts are sourced from publicly available podcast data. spoken.md does not own the underlying podcast content, and you are responsible for ensuring your use of it complies with applicable copyright and fair use laws.
What you may do. Keep the transcripts you fetch for as long as you like — including in a permanent personal or internal archive, a knowledge base, a vector store, or an LLM's context window. Search them, analyse them, summarise them, quote passages from them in what you build and show those to your own users, publish the work you produce from them, and automate all of it. That is what the API is for.
What you may not do. Redistribute raw transcripts as a standalone dataset or corpus, resell API access or credits, or use transcripts fetched from Spoken to build or train a competing transcript or podcast-data API.
If a transcript disappears upstream. A publisher can withdraw a transcript, and a podcast owner can ask us to exclude their show. Neither touches the Markdown you have already fetched: it is yours to keep, with no dependency on us. Repeat fetches through the API keep working from Spoken's cache after an upstream withdrawal. They stop, with a 404 and no charge, once a show has been excluded at its owner's request.
If you make a podcast. To have your show excluded from Spoken, email support@spoken.md with a link to it. We remove the show's transcripts and pages and exclude it from future collection.
Availability and SLA
spoken.md is provided "as is" without uptime guarantees. We aim for high availability but do not offer a formal SLA. Scheduled maintenance or upstream outages may temporarily affect the service.
If Spoken shuts down
Spoken is a small, independently run service, so it is fair to ask what happens to your credits if it stops. Our commitment:
- At least 90 days' notice by email to every address with an active key before the API is shut down.
- Unused credits refunded at the price you paid for them.
- The transcripts you already fetched are plain Markdown you hold yourself. They keep working with no dependency on us — nothing to export, nothing to unlock.
Pricing changes
We may change pricing for future credit purchases. Existing purchased credits will always be honored at their original value.
Limitation of liability
spoken.md is provided without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by law, spoken.md is not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service. Our total liability is limited to the amount you have paid for credits in the 12 months preceding the claim.
Termination
We may suspend or terminate your API key if you violate these terms; unused credits are not refunded in that case. You may stop using the service at any time — the refund window above still applies.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Netherlands. Any disputes will be resolved in the courts of the Netherlands.
Changes
We may update these terms from time to time. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance. Material changes will be communicated via the email associated with your API key.
Contact
Questions about these terms? Email support@spoken.md.