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Terms of Service

Last updated: June 22, 2026

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Tenrai website, application programming interfaces, documentation, status pages, and related services (collectively, the “Services”). In these Terms, “Tenrai,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the Tenrai Project.

By accessing or using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you use the Services on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and “you” includes both you and that organization. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

1. Eligibility and authority

You must have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms. If you have not reached the age of legal majority where you live, you may use the Services only with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian who accepts these Terms on your behalf. The Services are not directed to children under 13.

2. The Services

Tenrai provides tools for requesting and working with anime, manga, character, people, and related metadata. The Services may include public endpoints, authenticated endpoints, documentation, examples, schemas, software, and other developer resources. Current features, endpoints, schemas, and rate limits are described in our documentation.

The Services undergo active development, improvement, and maintenance. Bugs, incomplete data, breaking changes, interruptions, and temporary downtime may occur at any time, and you should design your applications with these possibilities in mind.

Unless we expressly agree otherwise in writing, the Services are provided without a service-level agreement, uptime commitment, support commitment, or obligation to maintain any particular endpoint, field, feature, or data source.

3. Permission to use the Services

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, and revocable permission to access and use the Services for lawful personal or commercial projects. You may collect, store, cache, index, aggregate, analyze, and transform API responses for private use or as part of your applications, and may display permitted data in those applications, provided that you comply with applicable law, third-party rights, documented technical limits, and these Terms.

This permission does not transfer ownership of the Services or grant any rights to third-party content. Any rights not expressly granted are reserved.

4. API access and rate limits

You must use the Services in accordance with the published documentation and any rate limits, quotas, authentication requirements, or technical restrictions we apply. Limits may vary by endpoint, access method, or traffic conditions. You must not attempt to conceal, rotate, or misrepresent identifiers, addresses, credentials, or traffic sources to avoid a restriction.

Public requests may be limited by IP address. Private server keys and other credentials may be limited by key and are intended only for secure server-side use. Credentials issued to you must be kept confidential and may not be sold, transferred, embedded in client-side applications, shared publicly, or used by unauthorized parties. You are responsible for activity performed with your credentials and must notify us promptly if you believe they have been compromised.

5. Acceptable use

You may not use or attempt to use the Services to:

  • violate any law, regulation, court order, contractual duty, or third-party right;
  • infringe, misappropriate, or otherwise misuse intellectual property, privacy, publicity, database, or other proprietary rights;
  • distribute malware, harmful code, fraudulent content, or material intended to facilitate unlawful conduct;
  • probe, scan, exploit, disable, overload, disrupt, or compromise the Services or any connected system;
  • bypass or defeat authentication, authorization, rate limits, access controls, robots directives, or security measures;
  • use automated traffic at a volume or in a manner that unreasonably degrades the Services for others;
  • access non-public systems, data, accounts, or endpoints without express authorization;
  • impersonate Tenrai or another person, misrepresent affiliation, or suggest that your product is official or endorsed by Tenrai or a third-party data source;
  • sell, sublicense, or make the Services available to third parties as a substantially similar or competing API, proxy, mirror, or raw-data redistribution service without our written permission; or
  • assist another person in doing any of the above.

Reasonable security research conducted in good faith and reported responsibly to [email protected] is not prohibited, provided it avoids privacy violations, data destruction, service disruption, and exploitation beyond what is necessary to demonstrate the issue.

This Section does not prohibit private wrappers, adapters, caches, proxies, or internal APIs used solely within your own applications, organization, or infrastructure, provided that they comply with these Terms and do not bypass rate limits or expose private credentials.

6. Third-party data, content, and services

The Services may organize, normalize, reference, cache, or link to data and content originating from third parties. Tenrai is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MyAnimeList or any anime or manga publisher, studio, distributor, platform, or rights holder unless expressly stated otherwise.

Third-party names, titles, artwork, images, descriptions, trademarks, and other materials remain subject to the rights of their respective owners. Tenrai does not grant you a license to use third-party material merely because it is accessible through the Services. You are responsible for determining whether your use requires permission, attribution, or compliance with separate terms.

Tenrai does not claim ownership of the MyAnimeList catalogue data or other third-party data and content returned by the API. Restrictions in these Terms govern access to and use of Tenrai’s infrastructure, software, API service, and original materials; they do not assert ownership over the underlying third-party catalogue data.

Third-party data may be inaccurate, incomplete, delayed, altered, removed, or unavailable. We do not control third-party sources and are not responsible for their conduct, availability, policies, or content.

API responses may include mature, explicit, offensive, disturbing, misleading, inaccurate, outdated, incomplete, or user-authored third-party material. Tenrai does not create, review, endorse, or guarantee all such material. You are responsible for applying appropriate content filters, warnings, age restrictions, moderation, and independent verification within your application.

Attribution to MyAnimeList as a data source and to Tenrai as the API provider is appreciated but is not a contractual requirement under these Terms. This does not remove or modify any attribution, licensing, permission, or other obligation imposed by an applicable law or a third-party rights holder.

Cached and stale data

Responses may be served from database, application, edge, network, or other intermediary caches. Cache age and freshness are unpredictable and are not guaranteed. Responses may be stale for any period, differ between endpoints or regions, omit expected headers, reflect different update states, or remain available after the source material has changed or been removed.

Any update frequency, cache duration, refresh schedule, freshness description, or similar statement in the documentation is an estimate or operational target only—not a warranty, commitment, or service-level obligation. Tenrai has no duty to refresh, verify, invalidate, synchronize, correct, or remove cached data within any particular period. You must treat all responses as potentially stale and independently verify information where accuracy, recency, or continued availability matters.

7. Tenrai intellectual property

The Services, including Tenrai’s software, API design, original documentation, website design, branding, logos, and original content, are owned by or licensed to Tenrai and are protected by applicable intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited permission in Section 3, you may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, or create derivative works from the Services unless applicable law permits it or we provide written permission.

You may identify your application as using Tenrai, but you may not use Tenrai’s branding in a way that implies sponsorship, partnership, certification, or endorsement. If you submit suggestions or feedback, you grant us a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use it without restriction or compensation.

8. Intellectual-property complaints

If you are a rights holder or an authorized representative and believe that material accessible through the Services infringes your intellectual-property rights, send a notice to [email protected] containing:

  • your name, organization, and reliable contact information;
  • identification of the work, material, trademark, database right, or other right you believe is affected;
  • the specific API endpoint, record, field, image, URL, or other location of the material;
  • a clear explanation of the legal basis for your complaint and the action you request;
  • a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the rights holder or applicable law; and
  • a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorized to act for the rights holder.

We may request additional information reasonably needed to evaluate a notice. Where appropriate, we may restrict, remove, disable, correct, or investigate the identified material; contact relevant data providers or affected parties; preserve necessary records; or take no action where the notice is incomplete, unsupported, or mistaken. If you believe material was restricted or removed in error, you may respond at the same address with supporting information.

Submitting or responding to a notice does not create an admission of liability, waive any right or defense, or require Tenrai to monitor all material available through the Services. Knowingly submitting materially false or misleading information may expose the sender to liability under applicable law.

9. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data in connection with the Services. You are responsible for providing any notices, obtaining any consents, and maintaining any lawful basis required for personal data that you process through your own application or use of the Services.

10. Voluntary support and third-party payments

Tenrai may accept voluntary support through third-party platforms such as Patreon. Supporter benefits may include a revocable private server key, higher rate limits, or prioritized request handling, as described in the current documentation or supporter offer. These benefits do not create a service-level agreement or guarantee permanent capacity, uninterrupted access, support, uptime, or continued availability of any particular benefit. Eligibility for a Server Key ordinarily ends when the qualifying Patreon membership, payment, or supporter status ends, expires, is cancelled, is refunded, is reversed, or otherwise becomes ineligible. Server Keys remain subject to these Terms and may be rotated, limited, suspended, or revoked at any time for security, abuse, non-payment, loss of eligibility, or operational reasons. Payment processing and supporter benefits offered through a third-party platform may also be governed by that platform’s terms and policies.

If the Services are interrupted or permanently discontinued, associated Server Keys and supporter benefits may be interrupted or end immediately. Where reasonably practicable and within our control, we will attempt to notify affected supporters and disable future benefit-related billing. Cancellation, refund, and chargeback requests are governed by applicable law and the policies of Patreon or the relevant payment platform. Tenrai does not independently guarantee refunds except where required by applicable law or the governing platform’s policies.

11. Changes to the Services

We may modify, deprecate, suspend, limit, or discontinue any part of the Services for legitimate operational, security, legal, financial, or technical reasons. Where reasonably practicable, we will provide advance notice of material breaking changes through the website, documentation, status page, or another appropriate channel. Emergency, security, abuse-prevention, and legal changes may take effect immediately.

We may immediately suspend or discontinue the Services if required or reasonably prompted by a court order, governmental or law-enforcement request, rights-holder complaint or demand, hosting or infrastructure provider action, domain or registrar action, payment-platform action, upstream data-source restriction, legal threat, or any circumstance in which continued operation may expose Tenrai or its operator to material legal, security, financial, or operational risk. We are not obligated to contest such action, migrate to replacement infrastructure, or restore the Services.

12. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Services at any time. We may restrict, suspend, or terminate access if we reasonably believe that you violated these Terms, created risk or legal exposure, threatened the security or availability of the Services, or used the Services in a manner that could harm Tenrai, our users, or third parties. Where appropriate and lawful, we will attempt to provide notice and an opportunity to correct the issue.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination—including provisions concerning ownership, third-party rights, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, disputes, and general terms—will survive.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available.” Tenrai disclaims all express, implied, and statutory warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, availability, security, and compatibility. We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, complete, current, or free of harmful components, or that data will be preserved.

You are responsible for evaluating API responses, maintaining backups, handling errors and schema changes, securing your application, and determining whether the Services are suitable for your use. The Services are not designed for emergency, safety-critical, medical, legal, financial, or other high-risk decision-making.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tenrai will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, goodwill, business opportunities, data, or use, arising from or related to the Services or these Terms, even if advised that such damages were possible.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tenrai’s total aggregate liability for all claims arising from or related to the Services or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid directly to Tenrai for the Services during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim or (b) EUR 50.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, or death or personal injury where applicable. If you are a consumer, these Terms do not limit any mandatory consumer rights or remedies available to you under applicable law.

15. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Tenrai, its contributors, developers, and service providers against any third-party claims, actions, or demands, including without limitation reasonable legal fees, arising or resulting from your breach of these Terms, any claim of infringement or misappropriation arising out of your applications or your data, or your other access, use, or misuse of the Services. We will promptly notify you of any such claim and give you the opportunity to assume sole control over the defense and settlement; you will not be responsible for any settlement you do not approve in writing (such approval not to be unreasonably withheld or delayed).

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Sweden, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Subject to the consumer protections below, the courts of Sweden will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from or related to these Terms or the Services.

If you are a consumer residing in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, you retain the benefit of mandatory protections provided by the law of your country of residence and may bring proceedings in any court available to you under applicable law. Before starting formal proceedings, the parties should make a good-faith attempt to resolve the dispute by written notice.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms for legitimate legal, security, technical, or operational reasons. The updated Terms will be posted on this page with a revised “Last updated” date. If a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will provide reasonable advance notice through the Services when practicable. Changes will not apply retroactively unless required by law.

Your continued use of the Services after updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, you must stop using the Services. Mandatory consumer rights are unaffected.

18. General terms

These Terms and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between you and Tenrai concerning the Services and supersede prior understandings on that subject. If a provision is found unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum lawful extent and the remaining provisions will remain effective. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign them as part of a reorganization or transfer of the Services, provided that doing so does not reduce mandatory consumer rights.

Tenrai is not responsible for delay, degradation, interruption, data loss, or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including war, armed conflict, acts of terrorism, civil unrest, state-declared emergencies, natural disasters, distributed denial-of-service attacks, traffic floods, botnets, malicious abuse, security incidents, infrastructure or CDN outages, upstream data-source failures, hosting or registrar suspension, takedown demands, court or governmental action, labor disputes, power failures, or internet and network failures. Section headings are for convenience only. The words “including” and “includes” mean “including without limitation.”

19. Contact

Questions, complaints, and legal notices concerning these Terms may be sent to [email protected]. Please include enough information for us to understand and respond to your request.