Terms of service

These terms (the “Terms”) are a contract between you and Meter (“Meter”, “we”, “us”), the operator of Car Image API at https://carimage.dev. They cover the website, the dashboard, the REST API, the MCP endpoint, the command-line tool, the SDK, the agent plugins and every image they deliver (together, the “Service”).

By creating an account, using an API key or access token, or requesting an image you agree to these Terms and to our privacy policy. If you use the Service for a company, you confirm you are allowed to bind it, and “you” means the company too. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

You describe a vehicle from our catalog by make, model, year, color and camera view, and the Service returns a studio-style render of it on a transparent background, either directly or through a signed URL a browser can load without a key. Renders are produced by an AI image model from that text description; see Generated images for what that means.

• You must be at least 16 years old and give us a working email address.
• API keys, access tokens and signed URLs are secrets. Keep keys on your servers or in your agent’s environment, never in client-side code or public repositories, and use signed URLs where a browser needs an image.
• Everything done with your keys and tokens is your responsibility, including credits they spend. If a key may have leaked, revoke it in the dashboard immediately; revocation takes effect on the next request.
• If you connect the Service to a third-party assistant or app, that app receives an access token to act on your behalf within the scopes you approve, and you can disconnect it from your dashboard. The app’s own terms govern the app.
• One person, one account, unless we agree otherwise in writing.

The Service is prepaid. Current prices, pack sizes, what costs a credit and what is free are published on the pricing page and the billing docs, which form part of these Terms. In summary:

• Every account starts with a free credit allowance. Free credits are promotional; we may change the allowance for new accounts at any time.
• You buy additional credits in prepaid packs through Stripe Checkout, or by turning on optional auto-reload, which charges your saved payment method when your balance falls below the published threshold. Stripe’s terms apply to the payment itself; we never see your full card number.
• Credits are consumed when the Service delivers an image or creates a signed URL, as described on the pricing page. Failed renders are refunded to your balance automatically.
• Credits never expire while your account exists. There is no subscription.
• Credits are a prepayment for use of the Service, not a deposit. Except where the law says otherwise or these Terms provide for it, purchased credits are not refundable for cash and cannot be transferred to another account. If we terminate your account without cause, we will refund the purchase price of your unused purchased credits.
• Prices may change. A change never affects credits you already hold, only what a future purchase buys; we announce changes on the pricing page and in the changelog.
• Taxes may be added at checkout where the law requires it.

You agree not to, and not to let anyone using your keys:

• Break the law, infringe anyone’s rights, or use renders in a way that is deceptive, for example presenting one as a photograph of a specific real vehicle for sale.
• Evade rate limits, credit metering or abuse controls, including by creating multiple accounts to farm free credits, sharing keys between unrelated parties or spoofing request headers.
• Systematically download renders or catalog data to build a competing image library, dataset or service, or to train a model to reproduce the Service.
• Resell, sublicense or proxy raw access to the API. You may of course build products that use the Service and charge for those products.
• Probe, scan or attack the Service, its infrastructure or its providers, or interfere with other customers’ use of it. Good-faith security research reported to hello@meterapp.co is welcome.
• Remove or misrepresent notices about who produced an image or how.

We may throttle, suspend or terminate keys and accounts that violate this section, and we may forfeit credits obtained by abusing the free allowance.

Every render is an AI-generated illustration produced from a text description of a catalog vehicle. It is not a photograph, it is not supplied or approved by the vehicle’s manufacturer, and it does not depict any specific physical vehicle. Renders can contain inaccuracies: wrong trim details, badges, wheels, proportions or colors, or features that never shipped on that model year. Check a render before you rely on it for anything where those details matter, and rate poor results through the feedback endpoint or the MCP tool so we can improve them.

Renders for the same make, model and year may be served from a cache and may be re-rendered when we improve our prompts, so the exact pixels for a given request can change over time.

Vehicle makes and model names are trademarks of their respective manufacturers. The Service uses them only as factual identifiers of the vehicle you asked for, the way a listing or a review names the car it describes. Meter is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any vehicle manufacturer, and nothing in the Service or in a render implies otherwise. You are responsible for how you use manufacturer names and vehicle likenesses in your own products, including not suggesting an affiliation or endorsement that does not exist.

Subject to these Terms, once a render has been delivered to you and the credit for it charged, we grant you a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free license to reproduce, display, modify, and distribute that render as part of your own websites, apps, documents, listings, marketing and other products, including commercial ones. No attribution is required.

The license does not allow you to redistribute renders as a standalone image collection or dataset, to offer them through a service that substitutes for the Service, or to claim that a render is manufacturer imagery. As between you and us, Meter keeps all rights in the Service, the catalog, the prompts and the render pipeline. To the extent AI-generated images attract copyright at all, that varies by jurisdiction; we make no promise that a render is protectable or that it does not resemble another render produced for someone else from the same description.

Anything you send us about the Service (ratings, reasons, bug reports, suggestions) you license to us to use without restriction or compensation.

We work to keep the Service fast and available, and we publish its status at /api/health, but we do not promise uninterrupted operation. We may change or remove features, views, formats or catalog entries, and we may set rate limits and generation budgets to protect the Service. Where a change removes something you depend on we try to announce it in the changelog first.

The Service and every render are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy or that renders will match any real vehicle. Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions, in which case they apply to the fullest extent the law permits.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Meter and the people who work on the Service are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or related to the Service in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you paid us for the Service in that period, or one hundred US dollars if you paid nothing. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

You agree to defend and indemnify Meter against claims arising from your use of renders in your products, your content, or your breach of these Terms, including the acceptable use and trademark sections.

You can stop using the Service at any time and ask us to delete your account by emailing hello@meterapp.co. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if we must in order to comply with the law or protect the Service, or, with reasonable notice, if we discontinue the Service. On termination your keys and tokens stop working; renders already delivered to you keep the license above. The sections on generated images, trademarks, license, warranties, liability and governing law survive termination.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which Meter is organized, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and any dispute will be brought in the courts of that jurisdiction, unless the consumer-protection law where you live gives you the right to bring it elsewhere. Before filing anything, email us; most problems are a billing question we can fix in a day.

We may update these Terms. When we do, we change the date at the top of this page and, for material changes, email account holders at least 14 days before they take effect. Using the Service after that date means you accept the new Terms. If you do not, stop using the Service and contact us about any unused purchased credits.

Meter, the company behind Car Image API: hello@meterapp.co. For how we handle personal data, see the privacy policy.