Terms of Service

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a legally binding contract to use the Services. The Services are intended only for adults. By using Raft, you represent and warrant that you:

• are 18 years of age or older;
• can complete our identity and age verification process;
• have not been previously removed from or banned from the Services;
• are not barred from using the Services under the laws of any applicable jurisdiction; and
• will comply with these Terms and all applicable laws.

To use the Services you must create an account and provide accurate, current, and complete information. You may hold only one account, and your account is personal to you — you may not share, transfer, sell, or assign it. You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us promptly at hello@raft.social if you suspect any unauthorized use.

Raft is built on real-world trust. An adult who has not yet verified may browse a limited preview of public Pings, but names, member profiles, attendee identities, exact venues, joining, hosting, groups, messages, calls, and dating remain locked. Unlocking those features requires identity and age verification, which includes submitting a government-issued photo ID and a live self-photo (selfie). This check is performed by a third-party identity verification provider, currently Sumsub, which holds the document image, the selfie, and any facial-geometry data used to match them. Raft does not receive or store your face template.

We may refuse, suspend, re-verify, or terminate any account that fails verification, that we reasonably believe is fraudulent or duplicative, or that belongs to a previously banned person. Verification reduces, but does not eliminate, risk — see Meeting Other Members & In-Person Safety.

Raft is offered in layers, which may include:

• Raft Social — coordinating real-world activities through Pings (short, time-bound activity broadcasts), Harbors and Rafts (scoped communities and groups), venue check-ins (by QR code or geolocation), short-lived post-activity recaps, and guest passes.
• Raft Dating — an intentional dating experience in which you have one active match at a time.
• Raft Coaching — a marketplace where members offer and book in-person or remote lessons and sessions.
• Translation — optional machine translation of messages and profiles across languages.

The Services are evolving and may be offered on a pre-release or beta basis. Features may be added, changed, limited, suspended, or discontinued at any time, with or without notice.

Our Community Guidelines are part of these Terms and set out in full what is and is not allowed on Raft. In summary, you agree that you will not:

• harass, threaten, defame, stalk, intimidate, or abuse any person;
• post or share content that is hateful, violent, sexually exploitative, or that endangers or sexualizes minors;
• use the Services for any illegal purpose, or to facilitate illegal activity;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your identity, age, affiliation, or location;
• solicit, spam, advertise, or use the Services for unauthorized commercial purposes;
• share another person’s private or personal information without consent;
• access the Services through automated means, scrape data, or interfere with or circumvent any security or safety feature;
• create duplicate accounts, evade a ban, or manipulate verification; or
• upload viruses or otherwise attempt to disrupt, degrade, or gain unauthorized access to the Services.

Raft keeps a permanent safety record. Deleting your account does not erase it, and a ban does not expire. We want you to understand this before you join, because it is a deliberate design choice and not fine print.

Raft exists to move people from a screen to being somewhere in person with someone they have not met before. When that goes wrong, the record of who arranged what, with whom, and when is often the only thing that can identify the person responsible — and the only thing that stops them coming back under a new account. A service where deleting your account erases what you did is a service where the incentive runs the wrong way.

So the following is retained permanently, and survives account deletion, ban, and the passage of time:

• Your verified identity, in a form that cannot be reversed into your documents — enough to recognize you if you attempt to return after a ban, along with your verification result and any enforcement decision on your account.
• Reports and blocks — reports you file and reports filed about you, blocks, and the moderation decisions and reasons attached to them.
• Meeting history — the gatherings you created or attended, your check-ins and attendance, matches and unmatches, and records of who called whom and when.
• Message versions you take back — see below.

Editing or unsending a message changes what the other person sees. It does not erase what you wrote. Every version a message loses — the text an edit replaces, the text and attachments an unsend removes — is written to an archive that we cannot alter or delete, and that is available to our safety team. If you would not want a message to exist, do not send it; taking it back is a courtesy to the reader, not a deletion.

What is not kept forever. This is a safety record, not a permanent copy of everything. The sensitive things you choose to share about yourself — your sexual orientation, religion, political views, and anything you tell us about drinking, smoking, or substance use — are never part of the permanent record and are deleted when you delete your account. Your wider message and media history is kept while your account is live and for a period after deletion, and is then removed — unless a safety concern has attached to it, in which case it is preserved. The full picture, tier by tier, is in our Privacy Policy.

Retaining a record does not suspend your rights. You may still request access to your information, correct it, port it, object to how we use it, and complain to a regulator — including after your account is deleted. Where the law gives you a right to erasure, we honor it for everything outside the safety record, and we tell you plainly what we are keeping and why.

We may review, moderate, restrict, or remove any content, and we may limit or restrict any account, at our sole discretion. We have the right — but not the obligation — to monitor the Services, and nothing in these Terms requires us to pre-screen, review, or retain any content. We may use automated systems, human review, or a combination of both.

Enforcement is not limited to removal. Depending on the circumstances, we may take any of the following actions:

• remove, edit, hide, or refuse to publish content;
• limit the distribution or visibility of content, including withholding it from discovery, nearby feeds, or recommendations;
• restrict access to specific features, such as dating, messaging, calling, hosting, or coaching;
• apply penalties or standing adjustments for conduct such as failing to appear at an activity you committed to attend;
• issue warnings, require re-verification, or place an account under review;
• suspend an account temporarily; or
• terminate an account permanently.

We may act on our own initiative or in response to a report from another member, a partner, or a public authority. We may act before, during, or after review, and we may act without prior notice where we believe there is a risk to safety, to the integrity of the Services, or of legal exposure.

Appealing a decision. If you believe we have made a mistake, write to hello@raft.social within 90 days of the decision. We will review it, and a person — not only an automated system — will make the final call. We will tell you the outcome and the reason. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any moderation decision, including the removal of content, the limiting of reach, or the suspension or termination of an account, and we are not liable for a failure to remove or act on any content.

Raft is designed to help you meet people in the real world. You are solely responsible for your interactions with other members, whether online or in person.

RAFT DOES NOT CONDUCT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND SCREENING OF ITS MEMBERS. Raft verifies that a member is a real adult using a government-issued photo ID and a live selfie. It does not check for criminal convictions, sex-offender registration, or any history of violence. Verification confirms who someone is. It does not tell you what they have done, and it cannot guarantee a person’s conduct, character, or intentions.

Use common sense and take precautions, including:

• meet in public places, especially the first few times;
• tell a friend or family member where you are going and who you are meeting;
• arrange your own transportation and do not feel pressured to go anywhere you are uncomfortable;
• do not send money to anyone you have met on Raft; and
• stop any interaction that feels unsafe and report concerns to us — in an emergency, contact your local authorities.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Raft is not responsible for the conduct of any member, on or off the platform, and you assume the risks of communicating with and meeting other people through the Services.

You retain ownership of the photos, notes, messages, and other content you create or share through the Services (“User Content”). You grant Raft a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, modify (for formatting and for translation), display, and distribute your User Content solely as needed to operate and provide the Services — for example, displaying your profile to a potential match, translating a message for its recipient, or sharing a recap with the people who attended the same activity. This license is limited to operating the Services: we do not use your User Content in advertising or marketing without asking you first. You represent that you own or have the necessary rights to your User Content and that it does not violate these Terms or any law or third-party right.

The license ends when you remove the content or delete your account, except to the extent it is retained under The Permanent Safety Record, is held in backups pending their normal rotation, or has already been shared with other members who retain their own copies.

Raft Dating is intentionally designed around one active match at a time; while you are matched, both people are removed from the active dating pool. Identity verification and the 18+ requirement apply. Access to dating may be gated, queued, or admitted in stages so that the pool stays balanced, and we may adjust these controls at any time. You agree to treat matches with respect and to comply with these Terms and our Community Guidelines in all dating interactions.

Raft Coaching lets members offer lessons and sessions to other members and set their own rates. Coaches are independent third parties, not employees, agents, or representatives of Raft. Raft is not a party to any agreement between a coach and a member, and we do not supervise, direct, or control the services a coach provides.

Every coach must complete identity and age verification. A coach may also require students to be identity verified before booking; where the coach does not require it, students must still be adults and may be asked to verify later. We do not verify a coach’s qualifications, certifications, licensing, insurance, or fitness to teach beyond that identity check. You are responsible for evaluating whether a coach is right for you and for complying with any law that applies to the activity.

If you offer coaching, you are responsible for your own qualifications, licensing, permits, insurance, and taxes, and you represent that you may lawfully provide the services you list. You are an independent contractor and not a Raft employee. Raft retains a service fee from each booking, disclosed to you before you list; the remainder is paid out through our payment processor on that processor’s schedule. You are solely responsible for reporting and paying tax on what you earn, and we may be required to issue tax documentation and to collect tax information from you.

Cancellations and disputes. A member may cancel a booked session for a full refund up to 24 hours before it starts. Inside 24 hours, the coach’s stated cancellation policy applies. If a session does not happen, or does not resemble what was offered, tell us within 7 days and we may refund the member and reverse the payout. Chargebacks on a completed session are borne by the coach. Disputes about the substance of a session are between the coach and the member; we may, but are not required to, assist.

Physical activity carries risk. If you book or provide coaching involving physical activity, you do so voluntarily and assume the ordinary risks of that activity, including injury. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Raft is not liable for any act or omission of a coach or of a member receiving coaching.

Some features translate messages, profiles, and other content between languages using automated machine translation performed by third-party providers. To do this, the relevant content is transmitted to and processed by those providers, and translations may be cached so that the same text does not need to be translated twice. See our Privacy Policy for who those providers are.

Machine translation is imperfect. Translations may be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, and may not convey tone, nuance, idiom, or intent. Do not rely on translated content for medical, legal, financial, safety, or other consequential decisions. Raft is not responsible for the accuracy of any translation or for any consequence of relying on one.

The Services include voice and video calling and voice messages, carried by a third-party real-time communications provider. Call quality depends on your device, network, and factors outside our control, and the Services are not a replacement for a telephone service. The Services must not be used to contact emergency services.

Raft can transcribe and translate calls, and this is what that means. When live transcription is turned on for a call, the speech of everyone on that call is streamed to a third-party speech-recognition provider, converted to text, and — where the two of you speak different languages — translated so each of you can read the other. Voice messages can also be transcribed, on request, by the same provider. Our Privacy Policy names these providers.

Transcription requires both people to agree. Before a call with transcription begins, both participants are told and can decline; declining ends transcription for that call, not the call itself. If you do not want your speech transcribed, decline. We do this because recording and transcription law varies — many places require the consent of every party — and because being transcribed without knowing is not something anyone should discover afterwards.

You remain responsible for complying with the law that applies to you, and you may not separately record, capture, or transcribe another member’s call, voice message, or likeness where doing so would be unlawful or where these Terms or our Community Guidelines prohibit it.

Some features require payment. Current paid features may include dating access, translation subscriptions and credit packs, gifts to a current match, coaching bookings, and Boosted Pings for businesses. Prices are shown in the app before you buy and may vary by country, currency, and over time. Advertising on Raft takes the form of Boosted Pings — paid, local invitations to real activities — and not the sale of your personal data.

Subscriptions renew automatically. Where a feature is offered on a recurring basis, it will renew at the end of each billing period at the then-current price until you cancel, and your payment method will be charged automatically. You can cancel at any time through your Apple App Store or Google Play subscription settings; the cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period, and you keep access until then. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription.

Credits and virtual items have no cash value. Translation credits and similar in-app balances are a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use a feature. They are not money or property, cannot be exchanged for cash, and may expire, not carry over between periods, or be forfeited if your account is suspended or terminated or if a feature is discontinued. Gifts sent to another member are consumed by that member and are not returnable.

Payments are processed by third-party payment processors, including Apple, Google, and our subscription and payment providers, and you authorize us and our processors to charge your selected payment method. Applicable taxes may be added. Except as set out in the next section, or where required by law or by the applicable app-store policy, all fees are non-refundable, and purchases made through an app store are subject to that store’s refund policy. We may change prices or the features included in a paid plan; we will provide notice of material changes, and changes will not apply retroactively to payments already made.

Several U.S. states regulate dating and social-introduction services and give buyers cancellation rights that these Terms do not reduce. Whether or not your state requires it, we extend the following to everyone:

YOU MAY CANCEL ANY PURCHASE OF RAFT DATING ACCESS, WITHOUT PENALTY OR OBLIGATION, BEFORE MIDNIGHT OF THE THIRD BUSINESS DAY AFTER THE DAY YOU BOUGHT IT. To cancel, email hello@raft.social with the words “cancel dating purchase.” We will refund the full amount within 10 business days of receiving your notice.

Pro-rata refunds. If, after the cancellation period, you die, become disabled such that you cannot use the Services, or move more than 50 miles from your area and dating is not available where you move to, you (or your estate) may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of the unused portion. Write to us with reasonable documentation.

No Raft dating purchase commits you for longer than two years. These rights are in addition to any rights you have under the app store you purchased through, and nothing here limits any non-waivable right under the law of your state or country.

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your account or your access to the Services at any time, for any reason or for no reason, with or without notice, at our sole discretion. This includes, without limitation, where you violate these Terms or the Community Guidelines, where we believe your conduct creates risk or legal exposure for Raft or others, where verification fails or cannot be completed, where an account appears to be duplicative or to belong to a previously banned person, where required by law, or where we discontinue a feature or the Services.

A ban is permanent. On termination, your right to use the Services ends immediately, unused credits and other virtual items are forfeited, and no refund is owed except where required by law or by the applicable app-store policy. The safety record described in Section 6 is retained.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including Meeting Other Members & In-Person Safety, The Permanent Safety Record, User Content, Fees, Intellectual Property, Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability, Indemnification, Dispute Resolution, Governing Law, and Miscellaneous — will survive.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account → Delete account, or by writing to hello@raft.social from the address on your account.

Deletion is immediate and final. You are signed out everywhere, your profile leaves every surface of the app, active matches end, and you cannot sign back in. Your email address stays claimed, so the account cannot be re-created. There is no undo — if you are unsure, step away instead.

What is deleted, what is kept, and for how long is set out in Delete Your Account and in our Privacy Policy. In short: the sensitive attributes you shared about yourself are deleted; your message and media history is removed after a retention period unless a safety concern has attached to it; and the safety record in Section 6 is kept permanently.

We respect intellectual-property rights and respond to notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you believe content on the Services infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent:

Copyright Agent, Raft Ventures, Inc.
copyright@raft.social

Your notice must include:

• identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
• identification of the material you claim is infringing and where it appears on the Services;
• your name, address, telephone number, and email address;
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the rights holder, its agent, or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorized to act on their behalf; and
• your physical or electronic signature.

Counter-notice. If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to the same address including the material and its former location, your contact details, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the removal was a mistake, your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for the district of your address (or, if outside the United States, the district in which Raft may be found), your agreement to accept service from the complaining party, and your signature. If we receive a valid counter-notice we may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless the complaining party notifies us that it has filed an action.

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. Knowingly submitting a false claim, or a false counter-notice, may expose you to liability for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

The Services, including the software, design, text, graphics, and the Raft name and logos, are owned by Raft or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Raft application for your personal use — and, where the Services expressly allow it, to offer coaching or to promote a business through Boosted Pings. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse engineer, or attempt to extract the source code of the Services, except to the extent such restriction is prohibited by law.

The Services rely on third parties, including app distribution and beta platforms (such as Apple and Google Play), payment and subscription processors, identity-verification providers, real-time communications providers, speech-recognition providers, machine translation providers, analytics providers, push-notification services, and hosting and infrastructure providers. Our Privacy Policy names them. Your use of those services may be subject to their own terms, and we are not responsible for third-party products, services, or content. Venues, businesses, and organizations that appear in the Services are independent of Raft, and their listing is not an endorsement.

If you obtain the Raft application from the Apple App Store, you acknowledge that these Terms are between you and Raft only, and not with Apple, and that Raft — not Apple — is solely responsible for the application and its content. Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support, and in the event the application fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, which may refund the purchase price; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation. Apple is not responsible for addressing any claim relating to the application, including product-liability, regulatory, or intellectual-property claims. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you. Similar terms apply where the application is obtained from another app store, in accordance with that store’s requirements.

Portions of the Services may be provided on a beta, preview, or pre-release basis. Such Services may be incomplete, contain bugs, change frequently, or be withdrawn, and are provided “as is” without any warranty.

By creating an account you consent to receive communications from us electronically — including service, security, transactional, and safety notices — and you agree that electronic communications satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing.

We reach you by email and by push notification. Raft does not ask for your phone number and does not send text messages. You can turn push notifications off in your device settings, and you may opt out of promotional email at any time using the unsubscribe link. You cannot opt out of essential service and safety notices while you hold an account.

THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, and we do not guarantee any particular match, meetup, outcome, translation, coaching result, or the conduct or identity of any member beyond our verification efforts. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, RAFT AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) THE SERVICES OR YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER MEMBERS. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICES WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (a) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO RAFT IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (b) US$100. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some of the above may not apply to you.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Raft and its officers, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the Services, your User Content, your interactions with other members, any coaching you provide or receive, or your violation of these Terms or any law or third-party right.

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS, INCLUDING YOUR RIGHT TO BRING A CLAIM IN COURT AND TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION. IT CONTAINS AN OPT-OUT YOU CAN USE WITHIN 30 DAYS.

1. Talk to us first. Before starting an arbitration or a court case, send a written Notice of Dispute to legal@raft.social describing the dispute and the relief you want, and give us 60 days to resolve it. If you have a claim against us, we will do the same before bringing one against you. This step is a condition of starting a proceeding, and the limitation period is paused while it runs.

2. Arbitration. If we cannot resolve it, you and Raft agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by JAMS under its Streamlined Arbitration Rules (or its Consumer Arbitration Minimum Standards where those apply), before a single arbitrator. The arbitration will be seated in Wilmington, Delaware, but you may elect to appear by telephone or video, or to have the matter decided on documents alone. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. The arbitrator may award any relief a court could award to you individually.

3. Costs. Where you are a consumer, Raft pays all arbitration filing, administration, and arbitrator fees beyond the first US$250, which we will reimburse if the arbitrator finds your claim was not frivolous. Each side bears its own legal fees unless the law or the arbitrator provides otherwise.

4. Small claims and injunctive relief. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, and either of us may seek injunctive relief in court to stop unauthorized access to, or misuse of, the Services.

5. No class actions. You and Raft each waive any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. If this waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — must proceed in court, and the rest of this section still applies.

6. Coordinated filings. If 25 or more similar claims are filed against Raft by or with the coordination of the same counsel, JAMS will administer them in batches of no more than 50, each batch before one arbitrator, with a single filing fee per batch. The limitation period is paused for all claims in the queue while the batches proceed.

7. Who decides what. The arbitrator decides all issues of arbitrability, except that a court decides whether paragraph 5 or 6 is enforceable.

8. Your right to opt out. You may opt out of this arbitration section by emailing legal@raft.social with the words “arbitration opt-out” and your account email within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out costs you nothing and affects nothing else. If you opt out, disputes go to the courts identified in the next section.

Nothing in this section limits any non-waivable right you have under the law of your country or state, and where mandatory local law makes pre-dispute arbitration unenforceable for you, this section does not apply to you.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware and the federal laws of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles, except where mandatory consumer-protection laws of your place of residence provide otherwise. For any dispute not subject to arbitration, you and Raft consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Wilmington, Delaware — except that you may always bring a claim in the courts of your own place of residence where the law of that place gives you that right.

You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as terrorist-supporting, and that you are not named on any U.S. Government restricted-party list. You agree not to use or export the Services in violation of U.S. export control or sanctions laws.

Neither party is liable for a failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including natural disaster, war, civil unrest, epidemic, labor dispute, network or utility failure, or the act of a government or a third-party provider. This does not excuse your obligation to pay amounts already due.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide notice through the Services or by other reasonable means at least 30 days before they take effect, and update the date above. Your continued use of the Services after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, delete your account before the effective date. Changes to the Dispute Resolution section do not apply to disputes of which we had notice before the change.

These Terms, together with the Community Guidelines and the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Raft regarding the Services. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Section headings are for convenience only.

If you send us feedback, suggestions, or ideas about the Services, you grant us an unrestricted, perpetual, royalty-free right to use them without obligation or compensation to you.

California residents. Under Cal. Civ. Code § 1789.3, you may contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or 1-800-952-5210.

Questions about these Terms? Contact us at hello@raft.social. Legal notices: legal@raft.social. Copyright notices: copyright@raft.social.