Terms & Conditions
Last updated 5 November 2026
Crimson Reader lets you open books you already have and read them as bound volumes, with optional narration. These are the terms you accept by using it. They are short, because the service is narrow.
Using the service
You may use Crimson Reader for personal reading. You can read without an account; signing in adds syncing across devices, narration, and the community features. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account.
The books you open are yours, and stay yours
We claim no rights over anything you open. Your books stay on your device and we never receive the files, so there is nothing for us to license, publish or claim.
In return, you are responsible for having the right to read what you open. Do not use Crimson Reader to open material you are not permitted to have. We have no way to check this — the files never reach us — which is exactly why it rests with you.
Public-domain books offered through the catalogue come from Project Gutenberg and carry their own terms, which travel with the file.
Narration
Narration costs real money to produce, so it is metered. Signed-in readers get a monthly allowance of narrated audio, and Premium lifts it; when an allowance runs out, the browser’s own voice keeps working. Some voices are restricted to administrators.
You agree not to:
- use narration for bulk audio production rather than reading;
- automate requests to the service, or attempt to work around the allowance;
- share an account to multiply the allowance.
The allowance may change as the underlying costs change. If it changes downward, we will say so in the application first.
Paying for things
Reading is free and stays free. One thing costs money: Premium, a monthly subscription that lifts the narration allowance and adds offline listening. Nothing else is for sale — every frame, paper, scene and page effect in the app is earned, and none of them can be bought at any price. Prices are in US dollars and are shown before you pay. Subscribing needs an account, because the subscription is recorded against one.
Polar is the seller. Everything here is sold and billed by Polar as merchant of record. Polar takes the payment, charges any sales tax or VAT due where you are, and issues your receipt — your card details never reach us. Their terms cover the transaction itself; these cover what you get in the app.
Premium is billed monthly, in advance, until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from Manage subscription in the app, which opens Polar’s billing portal. Cancelling stops the next charge and leaves Premium running until the end of the period you have already paid for; we do not refund part of a period you have started. If a payment fails, Premium keeps working for a short grace period while Polar retries the card.
Packs are earned, never sold. Every reader claims 5 a month, whatever they pay, and more arrive with an achievement, with a rank and with the levels of the reading track. A duplicate card pays foil, and foil buys further packs — foil itself is earned only and is not for sale. Packs deal random items, which is exactly why no amount of money buys one, directly or through a currency. What a pack can contain is published in the application before you open one.
By subscribing, you ask for Premium to start immediately rather than after a cooling-off period. Nothing here removes a right you have under the law where you live, and if the law gives you a right to cancel that we have not described, you keep it.
The price and what Premium includes may change. A change is announced in the application first and applies to your next billing period, never to one you have paid for. Anything you have already collected stays yours. We may suspend an account that charges back a payment it made, or that subscribes through someone else’s card.
Reviews and community
Ratings, reviews and discussion posts are public — they appear next to your display name for anyone who can see that book. Post nothing unlawful, abusive, or that you do not have the right to post. We may remove content and suspend accounts that break this, and reviews are subject to moderation.
You keep ownership of what you write; you grant us permission to display it within the service.
Acceptable use
- Do not attempt to break, overload or probe the service, or to access another user’s data.
- Do not scrape the service or run automated clients against it.
- Do not resell access, or present the service as your own.
What we do not promise
Crimson Reader is provided as is. It is actively developed, features change, and it may be unavailable at times. Narration depends on outside providers and can fail independently of everything else.
Keep your own copies of your books. They live in your browser’s storage, which you or your browser can clear — when you wipe site data, reinstall, or use a private window. We hold no copy to restore, so this one is worth taking literally.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost data. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
Ending it
You can stop at any time, and delete your account from the application. Doing so deletes the data described in the Privacy Policy. Cancel Premium first if you are on it: the subscription is held by Polar and deleting the account does not cancel it. Deleting the account ends Premium’s benefits with the account itself, and nothing is refunded; what you have collected on a device stays on that device. We may suspend accounts that breach these terms, and will explain why where we reasonably can.
Changes
These terms may change; the date at the top changes with them. Continuing to use the service after a change means accepting it. Material changes will be announced in the application.
Contact
Write to support@crimsonreader.app, or use the contact form on the home page. Billing questions, receipts and refunds are handled by Polar as the seller; their details are on the receipt they send you.
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