Terms of Service

Last updated: October 13, 2026

Welcome to PlateMotive. These terms form the agreement between you and the operator of PlateMotive named in our Impressum. These terms apply when you create an account and use PlateMotive. If you do not agree with them, please do not create an account.

Your account

You must provide accurate registration information and keep your password secure. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. You must be at least 16 years old to use PlateMotive. If you are under 18, you confirm that a parent or legal guardian has agreed to these terms.

Your content

You keep ownership of everything you create on PlateMotive — recipes, photos, comments and ratings. By posting, you grant PlateMotive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to store, reproduce, technically adapt (for example resize or crop images, convert units, format text and calculate nutrition estimates), correct obvious errors such as ingredient or allergen data, and make publicly available your content on PlateMotive’s website and apps, and to let our hosting and infrastructure providers process it on our behalf. For content you published, this right continues after you delete your account, unless you ask us to remove that content. You are responsible for making sure your content doesn’t infringe anyone else’s rights.

Images you upload

Each time you upload a photo or other image — for example a recipe or step photo, a profile picture, a collection cover or a cooking-log photo — you confirm that you took it yourself or otherwise hold all the rights needed to publish it on PlateMotive, including the consent of any recognisable people shown in it. We store this confirmation together with the upload.

You are responsible for making sure that images you upload do not infringe copyright or other rights. If a rights holder or another third party makes a claim against PlateMotive because of an image you uploaded, and the infringement is your fault, you agree to indemnify PlateMotive against that claim, including the reasonable costs of legal defence.

If we learn that an image infringes someone else’s rights, we may remove it. Depending on how serious the infringement is, or if it happens again, we may also suspend or terminate your account.

Acceptable use

• No content that is illegal under EU law or the law of Germany.
• No unlawful, harassing, hateful or deliberately misleading content.
• No content that infringes copyright or other rights — post recipes in your own words and use images you have the right to use.
• No spam, bulk automated activity, or attempts to manipulate ratings or moderation.
• No attempts to probe, disrupt or gain unauthorized access to the service or other accounts.

Content moderation

We moderate content to enforce these terms and to remove illegal content. Our moderators are people; we do not use automated systems to decide on recipes or accounts.

• Recipes are reviewed by a moderator before they appear publicly. The moderator may approve a submission, request changes with feedback, or reject it.
• Comments are published immediately. An automated filter that only looks for clear spam patterns and clearly abusive terms hides matching comments straight away; a moderator then reviews each hidden comment and restores it or confirms the decision.
• Reports from users and notices from anyone else are reviewed by a moderator.

Depending on the case, we may keep the content, hide or remove it, warn the user, or suspend or terminate the account. We choose a measure that is proportionate, taking into account how serious the violation is, whether it was repeated, and whether it appears to be intentional.

Reporting illegal content

If you are signed in, you can report a recipe, a comment or a public collection with its Report button. Anyone, with or without an account, can tell us about content they believe is illegal or breaks these terms through the contact form or by email to [email protected]. Copyright owners can use the copyright report form.

To help us act quickly, a notice should include the exact link to the content, an explanation of why you believe it is illegal, your name and email address, and a statement that the notice is accurate and complete to the best of your knowledge. We handle notices in a timely, careful and objective way and tell you what we decided.

Our decisions and how to contest them

When we remove or restrict your content or suspend your account, we tell you what we did, which rule or law the decision is based on, and whether it involved automated means, unless the content is high-volume commercial spam or the law prevents us from telling you.

If you disagree with a decision — whether you posted the content or reported it — email [email protected] within six months and explain why. We will review the decision again and tell you the outcome. This does not affect your right to go to court.

Allergens, diets and nutrition

Recipes, nutrition figures and macro estimates on PlateMotive are provided by the community or by PlateMotive and are approximate. They are for general information only and are not medical, dietary or allergy advice.

Allergen information (“Contains”, “May contain traces of”), diet labels such as vegan or gluten-free, and search filters that exclude allergens are derived from the ingredients listed in a recipe and from moderator review. They can be incomplete or wrong: a recipe may leave out an ingredient, and the products you buy can differ by brand, recipe changes or cross-contamination. A missing allergen notice does not mean a recipe is free of that allergen.

If you or someone you cook for has a food allergy, intolerance or a medical diet, always check the labels of the products you actually use and consult a doctor or dietitian. You are responsible for deciding whether a recipe is safe for you. Our liability for allergic reactions or other health effects follows the section Liability below.

Termination

You can end this agreement at any time by deleting your account in Account settings (see our Privacy Policy for what happens to your data).

We can end the agreement with two weeks’ notice by email. We can suspend or terminate an account without notice for good cause, in particular for serious or repeated violations of these terms or for posting illegal content.

Copyright complaints

If you believe content on PlateMotive infringes your copyright, send us a notice through the copyright report form. We review every notice, may disable access to the reported content, and give the person who posted it a chance to respond with a counter-notice. Repeated infringement leads to account termination.

Liability

PlateMotive is free. We work to keep it available and working correctly, but we cannot guarantee that it will always be available or free of errors.

We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or through gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and where we have given a guarantee.

For slight negligence, we are liable only if we breach an essential obligation — one whose fulfilment makes the proper use of PlateMotive possible in the first place and on which you can regularly rely — and only for the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of agreement. Otherwise, we are not liable for slight negligence.

These limits also apply to the personal liability of the people we work with.

Changes to these terms

If we want to change these terms in a way that affects your rights or obligations, we will tell you in advance by email or in the app and ask you to accept the new version, for example when you next sign in. If you do not accept, you can delete your account; we may also end the agreement with notice as described under Termination. Until then, the version you accepted continues to apply to you.

Changes that only add new features, update contact details or correct wording without disadvantaging you take effect when we publish them here.

Contact point and governing law

Our single point of contact for users, and for authorities under the EU Digital Services Act, is [email protected]. You can write to us in English or German.

These terms are governed by the laws of Germany. If you are a consumer, this does not affect any mandatory rights or protections you may have under the laws of your country of residence.

We are not obliged and not willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.