HanziTales — Subscription, Credits and Refund Terms

Effective date: 22 September 2026 Last updated: 30 October 2026

These terms form part of the Terms of Service between you and Rifta Studio LLC and govern paid plans, credits and refunds for HanziTales.

All prices are in US dollars unless the store or the web checkout shows you a local price. The price shown at the moment of purchase, in the app store or on the web checkout, in your local currency and with any tax that applies, is the price that applies.

1. Plans

The table shows prices, allowances and limits as they stand today. They are not a promise that a plan will always include a particular number of chapters, books or credits: plan contents, prices and credit rates can change as described in section 10.

2. Credits — what they are and how they work

Credits are a prepaid internal unit of account used to price generation inside HanziTales. They are not money, not a gift card, not a stored-value instrument, and have no cash value. They cannot be transferred, sold, exchanged between accounts, or redeemed for cash except where the law requires.

What costs credits. At the current rate, generating a chapter costs 2 credits per 100 target characters, so a 500-character chapter costs 10 credits. Credit rates can change (section 10), so a credit balance is not a promise of a fixed number of chapters, books or stories. Creating a book is free in itself, but it immediately generates chapter 1, which is charged as a normal chapter. Annotation, translation refinement, finalising and audio for a chapter are included in that chapter's price. A private text (a Chinese text you photograph or paste, made readable for you) costs 0.4 credits per 100 characters of its text, with its pinyin, translation and audio included; the price is shown before you confirm. Reading the text off your photos costs no credits, but is limited to 10 readings a day on Free, 40 on Reader and 60 on Writer. Quizzes, reviews, reading and listening to books you already have, and reading shared books, never cost credits.

The price is shown before you spend. The app displays the cost of a chapter and your balance before you confirm.

How you get credits.

• Daily allowance: credits accrue once per day according to your plan and stop accruing when your balance reaches the maximum for your plan. They do not roll up beyond it, so unused daily credits above the cap are lost.
• Welcome credits: a new account on the Free plan starts with a full daily allowance, 30 credits, once. They count as daily allowance credits: they are subject to the Free maximum and are spent first. They are promotional, have no cash value and are not refundable. Using the app without an account (as a guest) does not earn them.
• Top-ups: purchased credit packs (section 4). These never expire while your account exists, are not subject to the cap, and are spent only after your daily allowance credits.
• Redeem codes: we sometimes give away codes granting credits. Codes are promotional, single-use, not for sale, and may expire.

Failures are refunded. If generation fails, the credits charged for it are returned to your balance automatically.

Regeneration. A chapter that has been generated and charged cannot be regenerated for free on any plan. Generating replacement material means generating a new chapter.

Credits expire with the account. Except as described in section 13 of the Terms of Service, unused credits of any kind are lost when your account is deleted or terminated. Before deleting your account, use or request a refund of purchased credits.

3. Subscriptions, renewal and cancellation

Auto-renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each monthly period at the then-current price, and you will be charged through the store or payment method you used, until you cancel. This is disclosed again at the point of purchase.

Cancelling. Cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, otherwise the next period may already have been charged.

• iOS / macOS: Settings › your Apple Account › Subscriptions, or https://apps.apple.com/account/subscriptions
• Android: Google Play › Menu › Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions
• Web: Manage subscription on the Account screen, or at https://link.com with the email you paid with (web purchases are sold through Link, see section 5).

We cannot cancel a subscription bought through Apple or Google on your behalf — only the store can.

What happens when a subscription ends. Access continues to the end of the period you paid for. After that your account moves to the Free plan automatically:

• you keep every book you generated and can still read them;
• your daily allowance drops to the Free rate and your balance is capped at the Free maximum, though purchased top-up credits remain;
• books in progress beyond the Free limit become frozen: still readable, but you cannot continue generating new chapters in them until you resubscribe or finish or abandon others.

Free trial. We do not currently offer a free trial. If we offer one in the future, it will be through the store, and its length will be shown before you confirm. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends, the trial converts into a paid subscription at the price shown. One trial per person, across platforms. Any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription.

Price changes. Subscription prices can change, as described in section 10.

4. Top-up credit packs

Top-up packs are consumable one-time purchases. The price of a pack depends on your plan:

Only the variant matching your current plan is offered to you.

Top-ups add credits; they do not change plan limits. Buying credits on the Free plan does not unlock chapters beyond chapter 2, longer chapters, more books in progress, or full shared-library access — those are plan features. The app states this at the point of purchase. If you want those limits lifted, subscribe.

5. Refunds

Purchases made in the iOS or Android app are sold by Apple or Google, who are the merchant of record. Refunds for those purchases are governed by their policies and must be requested from them:

• Apple: https://reportaproblem.apple.com
• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions

We can see that a purchase happened, but we cannot issue or force a refund for it. If a store refunds a purchase, we may remove the corresponding credits or entitlement from your account.

Purchases made on the web are sold through Link, the merchant-of-record service operated by Stripe. Link is the seller: it takes the payment and any tax, sends the receipt, and handles payment and refund support (https://support.link.com), under its own terms of sale. These terms still govern what the purchase gives you in HanziTales. We can also refund a web purchase ourselves, under the policy below, and Link may refund one within 60 days of purchase in certain cases. When a web purchase is refunded, by us or by Link, we remove the corresponding credits or plan from your account.

Statutory withdrawal right (EEA and UK)

If you are a consumer in the EEA or UK, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a purchase of digital content or a digital service without giving a reason. For web purchases, Link applies these rules as the seller.

When you buy a subscription or credit pack, you ask for it to be supplied immediately. Where you have also acknowledged that you lose the right of withdrawal once supply has begun, the right ends once your subscription is active or the credits are in your balance. Otherwise, if you withdraw within 14 days, you are refunded, less a proportionate amount for what was supplied before you withdrew, such as credits you spent, valued as in our refund policy below. Where supply has not begun, you are refunded in full.

Our voluntary refund policy

Beyond what the law requires, for purchases made on the web:

• Subscriptions: if you are unhappy within 14 days of a first purchase or a renewal, write to support@hanzitales.com and we will refund it, less the value of any credits spent in that period. For this purpose, each credit spent is valued at the price you paid for the period divided by the number of credits the plan provides over it (the daily allowance multiplied by the number of days in the period) — for example, about $0.11 per credit on a Reader monthly plan.
• Credit packs: we refund unused credits from a pack bought within the last 30 days. Spent credits are not refundable, because the generation they paid for has been performed and cost us money.
• Service failure: if the Service was substantially unavailable or a feature you paid for did not work, we refund or credit you fairly, regardless of these time limits.

Refund requests: support@hanzitales.com, from your account email, with the approximate purchase date.

6. Taxes

Where Apple or Google is the merchant of record, they handle sales tax and VAT, and the price they show you includes it where required. For web purchases, Link is the merchant of record: it calculates, collects and remits any sales tax, VAT or GST, and the checkout shows the tax, added to the price or included in it depending on where you are, before you pay.

7. Multiple platforms

Your subscription is attached to your HanziTales account, not to a device, so signing in elsewhere gives you the same access without paying again. Manage or cancel it where you bought it: the App Store, Google Play, or for a web purchase, Manage subscription on the Account screen or https://link.com. "Restore purchases" recovers Apple and Google purchases only. Do not buy a subscription in a second store while one is active — we cannot refund a duplicate bought through a store.

8. Complimentary and promotional access

We sometimes grant free access for testing, teaching, support or promotion. Complimentary access behaves like the equivalent paid plan, may be time-limited, may be withdrawn, and is not sold. Promotional codes are not redeemable for cash, and are void where prohibited.

9. Fair use and abuse

Credit allowances and book limits exist to keep the Service viable, since every generated chapter costs us money in AI and speech processing. We may limit or suspend accounts that attempt to circumvent these limits — for example by automating generation, operating multiple accounts to multiply free allowances, or reselling access. Where we do, section 13 of the Terms of Service applies.

10. Changes to prices, plans and credit rates

Almost everything HanziTales generates is paid for per use to AI, speech and hosting providers, whose prices we do not control. So that we can keep the Service running, we may change:

• subscription prices;
• what a plan includes — its daily credit allowance, maximum balance, chapter length, number of books in progress and shared-library access;
• top-up pack prices and the number of credits in a pack;
• credit rates — how many credits it costs to generate a chapter, a book, a story, audio or any other generated content.

We make these changes only for a valid reason, such as a change in the costs of providing the Service (including our providers' prices), a change in taxes or law, a change to the features or quality of what is generated, or to prevent abuse. Changes in your favour — a lower price, a lower credit rate, a larger allowance — may take effect immediately.

Notice and your right to cancel. For any change that is less favourable to you, we will tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days before it takes effect.

• Subscriptions: a price increase or reduction in plan contents takes effect from your next renewal after the notice period ends, never part-way through a period you have paid for. You can cancel before then and keep your current terms to the end of the paid period. For a subscription bought through Apple or Google, the store also applies its own notice and consent rules; if the store asks you to accept a higher price and you do not, your subscription will not renew.
• Credit rates: a higher credit rate applies to generation you start after it takes effect. Credits already in your balance, including purchased top-up credits, are never reduced or removed because of a rate change, but they are spent at the rate in force when you spend them. The cost is always shown before you confirm (section 2).
• Purchased credits and a rate increase: if you bought a top-up pack on the web within the 30 days before we announce a credit-rate increase, you may ask for a refund of its unused credits within the notice period, even if the refund period in section 5 has passed. For packs bought through Apple or Google, refunds are handled by the store (section 5).

If you do not accept a change, your remedy is to cancel your subscription, stop buying credits, or delete your account; where we terminate or materially reduce a paid feature ourselves, section 13 of the Terms of Service applies.

11. Contact

support@hanzitales.com · legal notices: legal@hanzitales.com