ByteThirst Terms of Service

Last updated: April 26, 2026 · Version 1.2

1. Acceptance of Terms

By installing, accessing, or using any ByteThirst™ product — including the ByteThirst Chrome extension, the ByteThirst CLI (the bytethirst npm package), the ByteThirst team dashboard (bytethirst.app), or our marketing website (bytethirst.com) — you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, do not use ByteThirst.

The ByteThirst CLI is additionally licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. To the extent there is any conflict between these Terms and the AGPL with respect to the CLI source code, the AGPL governs the source code rights granted to you. These Terms continue to govern the use of the ByteThirst service and brand.

2. Description of Service

What ByteThirst measures

ByteThirst estimates the environmental impact — the QueryWeight™ — of your AI usage. QueryWeight represents the estimated water consumption (mL), energy usage (Wh), and carbon emissions (g CO₂) of AI interactions across 14 supported platforms: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Studio, Copilot, Perplexity, Poe, You.com, Mistral, HuggingChat, Figma AI, Lovable.dev, Bolt.new, and NotebookLM. For AI code builder platforms (Lovable.dev, Bolt.new), ByteThirst estimates the impact of the AI model powering code generation but does not monitor the code execution environment (such as WebContainers or preview sandboxes).

All numeric values generated by ByteThirst are estimates based on publicly available research and reasonable assumptions about model size, token-to-energy ratios, data center water usage effectiveness, and grid carbon intensity. They are not direct measurements. See Section 5 (Estimation Disclaimer) and our Methodology page for sources, calculation details, and known limitations.

How ByteThirst is delivered

ByteThirst is delivered through four products. The same QueryWeight calculation engine powers all of them, so estimates are consistent regardless of which product produced them:

The extension, CLI, dashboard, and website are independent products that can be used separately or together. Sign-in with the same account links them so usage from each surface appears in a unified dashboard.

Subscription tiers

We offer four tiers:

Free Tier

Available to all users without account creation. Includes daily and weekly QueryWeight dashboards, volume conversions (mL to tsp, tbsp, fl oz, cups), achievement badges, and one shareable social impact card per week. All data is stored locally on your device unless you opt in to Community Benchmarks (see Section 4b, available on all tiers).

Premium Tier (ByteThirst+)

Available for $3.33 per month billed annually ($39.99/year, a 33% savings), or $4.99 per month billed monthly. Includes everything in the free tier plus historical trend analytics (30/60/90-day charts), unlimited social impact cards, usage spike alerts, code generation impact breakdowns, and expanded achievement badges. Requires Google Sign-In for authentication and payment processing. Includes a 7-day free trial.

Teams Tier

Available for $16.99 per seat per month or $160 per seat billed annually, with a 5-seat minimum. Each seat includes full Premium features plus access to the team QueryWeight dashboard, team challenges and goals, and admin controls and insights. The team admin is billed for all seats on a single invoice. Includes a 7-day free trial.

Enterprise Tier

Custom pricing for organizations with 100+ seats. Includes everything in Teams plus SSO/SAML integration, QueryWeight API access, Scope 3 emissions reporting, and priority support. Contact hello@bytethirst.com for details.

3. Account Creation and Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years of age to use ByteThirst (or the minimum age established by applicable local law, which may be as low as 13 in some jurisdictions). The free tier does not require an account. Premium, Teams, and Enterprise tiers require Google Sign-In for authentication, subscription verification, and payment processing. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your Google account credentials.

4. Subscription and Billing

Premium subscriptions are available in two billing options: (a) annual at $39.99 USD per year ($3.33/month effective rate), or (b) monthly at $4.99 USD per month. Teams subscriptions are available in two billing options: (a) annual at $160 USD per seat per year ($13.33/month effective rate), or (b) monthly at $16.99 USD per seat per month. All plans are processed through Stripe. Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period unless cancelled. You may cancel at any time through the Stripe Customer Portal accessible from within the extension or team dashboard. Upon cancellation, you retain access to paid features through the end of your current billing period. We do not offer prorated refunds for partial billing periods. Prices may change with 30 days’ advance notice.

Premium and Teams plans include a 7-day free trial. Your trial begins when you activate the subscription. If you cancel before the trial period ends, you will not be charged. Pursuant to California Business and Professions Code §§17600–17606, we will send a clear reminder before any trial conversion to a paid subscription.

4b. Community Benchmarks

Users on any tier (Free, Premium, Teams, and Enterprise) may opt in to Community Benchmarks from the extension settings. When enabled, the extension shares query counts and calculated impact estimates (water mL, energy Wh, CO₂ g) along with a random, non-reversible device identifier (not your email or Google account) and the date. No personal information or conversation content is ever collected. This data helps all users understand how their AI usage compares via the Community Benchmarks feature in Analytics. You may opt out at any time from the extension settings. Opting out permanently deletes your anonymous benchmark data from our servers.

5. Estimation Disclaimer

ALL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT FIGURES DISPLAYED BY BYTETHIRST — INCLUDING QUERYWEIGHT VALUES FOR WATER, ENERGY, AND CARBON — ARE ESTIMATES BASED ON PUBLICLY AVAILABLE RESEARCH AND ESTIMATION METHODOLOGIES. THEY ARE NOT DIRECT MEASUREMENTS OF ACTUAL RESOURCE CONSUMPTION BY ANY SPECIFIC AI PLATFORM OR DATA CENTER. ACTUAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT MAY VARY SIGNIFICANTLY. BYTETHIRST DOES NOT CLAIM THAT ITS ESTIMATES REDUCE, OFFSET, OR MITIGATE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT. SEE OUR METHODOLOGY FOR SOURCES, CALCULATION DETAILS, AND KNOWN LIMITATIONS.

6. Intellectual Property

ByteThirst™ and QueryWeight™ are trademarks of ByteThirst. All ByteThirst source code, website content, design, brand assets, and the QueryWeight™ methodology are owned by ByteThirst and protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You retain full ownership of any data generated or stored by ByteThirst products on your device. We claim no rights to your usage data or any content you create using the social impact card feature.

Open-source components. The ByteThirst CLI is licensed to you under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. The full license text ships in the LICENSE file inside the npm package and is available in the source repository. AGPL-3.0 grants you the right to use, study, modify, and distribute the CLI source code, subject to the AGPL's copyleft and network-use terms (Section 13). The Chrome extension, team dashboard, web app, and Cloud Functions backend are not open-source and are not licensed under the AGPL — they remain proprietary to ByteThirst.

Trademark use. The AGPL license grant for the CLI source code does not include a license to use the ByteThirst™ or QueryWeight™ trademarks. If you fork or redistribute the CLI, you must remove or replace ByteThirst branding in any user-facing copy, package name, documentation, or marketing materials. You may state factually that your fork is “based on ByteThirst CLI” or “a fork of ByteThirst CLI,” but you may not use the marks in a way that implies sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation with ByteThirst.

7. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

8. Limitation of Liability

ByteThirst provides environmental impact estimates based on publicly available research and reasonable assumptions. These estimates are approximations only and should not be treated as precise measurements. We do not guarantee the accuracy of any specific calculation.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, ByteThirst shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the service.

9. Disclaimer of Warranties

ByteThirst is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. We do not warrant that the extension will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components. We make no guarantees about the accuracy of environmental impact estimates, as these depend on publicly available data that may change.

10. Email Communications

By submitting your email address through our beta signup form, you consent to receive the following communications from ByteThirst:

Every email includes an unsubscribe link. You may opt out at any time, and we will stop all non-essential communications within 10 business days. We will never sell or share your email address with third parties for marketing purposes.

11. Privacy

Your privacy is fundamental to ByteThirst. Our data practices are described in detail in our Privacy Policy. ByteThirst never collects your AI conversation content. The Chrome extension free tier makes zero network calls (unless you opt in to Community Benchmarks). The ByteThirst CLI makes network calls only after you sign in to enable cloud sync or team features. The marketing website at bytethirst.com uses Google Analytics 4 with consent management via the Ketch Consent Management Platform — see Section 11a below and our Privacy Policy for details.

11a. Website Use, Cookies, and Consent

This section applies to your use of the marketing website at bytethirst.com. It does not apply to the Chrome extension or the ByteThirst CLI, neither of which uses cookies or trackers.

When you visit bytethirst.com, we use the Ketch Consent Management Platform to determine your jurisdiction and present an appropriate consent experience:

We use Google Tag Manager on bytethirst.com to manage tags — analytics, advertising, and conversion measurement code — without modifying the underlying website code. Tags currently loaded through GTM include Google Analytics 4 (described above), the Reddit Pixel with its server-side Reddit Conversion API, and the LinkedIn Insight Tag with its server-side LinkedIn Conversion API. These advertising tags measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns we run on Reddit and LinkedIn (e.g., counting how many visitors who clicked an ad subsequently installed the extension or signed up). Each advertising tag only fires after the appropriate consent signal is granted.

You can change your consent preferences at any time by clicking the “Privacy Choices” link in the Ketch banner. Withdrawing analytics consent stops all future data collection through Google Analytics; withdrawing advertising consent stops the Reddit Pixel, the LinkedIn Insight Tag, and both Conversion APIs. See our Privacy Policy for the complete list of cookies, retention periods, third-party processors (Google, Reddit, LinkedIn), and opt-out methods.

12. Modification of Terms

We may update these Terms of Service from time to time. Material changes will be announced via the extension's update notes in the Chrome Web Store. Your continued use of ByteThirst after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms. If you do not agree with updated terms, you may uninstall the extension and, for premium subscribers, cancel your subscription.

13. Termination

You may stop using ByteThirst at any time by uninstalling the extension. Premium and Teams subscribers may cancel their subscription at any time. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate access to premium features for users who violate these terms or engage in abusive behavior. Upon termination, your locally stored data remains on your device until you clear it or uninstall the extension.

14. Governing Law

These terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

15. Contact

For questions about these terms: hello@bytethirst.com