Terms of Use

StoryHop is a reading service for families, available on the website storyhop.io and in the StoryHop apps for iOS and Android. It is operated by Aleksandr Gorin, StoryHop, Käthe-Kollwitz-Str. 10b, 14943 Luckenwalde, Germany.

Support contact: support@storyhop.io

Contact form: https://storyhop.io/contact

Privacy contact: privacy@storyhop.io

Further legal provider information is available in the Impressum.

These Terms apply to the StoryHop website at storyhop.io, including the parent area, child profiles, child-device sign-in on the website, and StoryHop Plus subscriptions bought on the website.

The StoryHop apps have their own terms, which apply when you use an app and to subscriptions bought in an app: https://storyhop.io/en/legal/ios/terms for iOS and https://storyhop.io/en/legal/android/terms for Android.

The website and the apps are one service with one StoryHop account. A StoryHop Plus subscription bought on the website also works in the apps, and one bought in an app also works on the website (see section 8). The purchase, payment, cancellation, and refunds of a subscription bought on the website are governed by these Terms, also when you use StoryHop Plus in an app.

StoryHop Plus can be bought on the website, in the StoryHop app for iOS, and in the StoryHop app for Android.

Purchases on the website are made through Link, a service of Stripe, and are marked "Sold through Link". Link takes the payment, sends receipts and invoices, and provides support for the payment under the Link Terms of Service (https://link.com/terms). Stripe calculates and pays taxes such as VAT and handles disputes. Link handles the data you enter in the payment form under the Link Privacy Policy (https://link.com/privacy); our Privacy Policy for the website explains this in more detail.

Purchases in the StoryHop app for iOS are made through Apple and are also subject to Apple's Media Services Terms and Conditions. Your use of the iOS app is also subject to Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement.

Purchases in the StoryHop app for Android are made through Google Play and are also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service and the Google Payments Terms of Service.

We, not Link, Apple, or Google, are responsible for the StoryHop service and for StoryHop Plus itself, wherever you bought it: access, content, availability, and the statutory warranty (see section 22). The terms of Link, Apple, and Google Play apply to the payment itself. If these Terms conflict with mandatory rules of Link, Apple, or Google Play that apply to a payment, those rules apply to that payment.

You accept these Terms on the website. You must be 18 or older to create a StoryHop account.

When you create an account on the website, with an email address and password or, where offered, with your Google or Apple account, you accept these Terms and acknowledge the Privacy Policy for the website. You then confirm that you are 18 or older and a parent or legal guardian. We record which version of these Terms and the Privacy Policy was shown to you.

If you created your StoryHop account in an app, or if you have not accepted the current version of these Terms, the website asks you to accept them before you continue (see section 25). On a device signed in with a child sign-in link, the website asks only in the parent area, after the parent PIN has been entered.

If you use StoryHop on behalf of a child, you confirm that you are the child's parent or legal guardian, or that you have authority from the parent or legal guardian to accept these Terms and manage the child's use of StoryHop.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account and do not use the signed-in parts of the website.

StoryHop is a reading and educational service for families. It provides stories, collections, poems, quizzes, riddles, reading-progress features, child profiles, recommendations, and related features.

The same StoryHop account, child profiles, progress, and StoryHop Plus access work on the website and in the apps.

Some stories and riddles can be tried on the public pages of the website without an account.

StoryHop is designed for children aged 6 to 15, but accounts are created and managed by parents or legal guardians. Children cannot access parent settings.

StoryHop has free features and an optional paid subscription, StoryHop Plus (see sections 8 to 10).

StoryHop is for personal and family use only. StoryHop is not currently offered for school, classroom, teacher, tutoring-center, or institutional use.

Subject to these Terms, StoryHop grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use the StoryHop website for personal and family use.

You may not:

• copy, modify, distribute, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or transfer the website or its software;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to derive the source code, except where applicable law expressly permits this despite the restriction;
• remove legal, copyright, trademark, or proprietary notices;
• use the website to build or train a competing service;
• make StoryHop available to multiple unrelated users or families, for example by sharing an account;
• use the website for school, classroom, group, commercial, or institutional purposes without written permission.

Open-source components, if any, remain subject to their own licenses.

Parents create StoryHop accounts and may create child profiles.

Parents are responsible for the accuracy of account information, choosing whether to enter a child's real name or nickname, supervising child use, deciding which profiles to create, keeping credentials and the parent PIN secure, keeping child sign-in links, codes, and QR codes private, and all activity through their account unless caused by StoryHop's own security failure.

A parent account may be used by parents or legal guardians in the same family if they have access to the same login method. Account sharing with friends, other families, schools, groups, or the public is not allowed.

In the parent area, parents may create a one-time QR code and sign-in link to sign a child's device in to StoryHop without giving the child a username or password. The link contains a one-time six-digit code, and the QR code contains the same link. The child's device can open the link directly or by scanning the QR code, for example with the device's camera app. The website itself never uses your device's camera.

Sign-in links, codes, and QR codes are for the intended child device only. Parents must not post them publicly, share them with other families, or use them to bypass parent controls.

After a child-device sign-in is completed, the device stays signed in until it is logged out or its session expires, as described in the Privacy Policy. A device signed in this way uses the parent account, including its StoryHop Plus access.

If you believe a sign-in link, code, or account session has been misused, log out on the affected device, reset your password, and contact support@storyhop.io.

StoryHop offers free features and an optional auto-renewing subscription called StoryHop Plus, which unlocks additional content such as more stories, collection episodes, and riddle themes. The website shows which content is free and which requires StoryHop Plus. This may change over time (see section 17).

StoryHop Plus is available as a monthly plan and a yearly plan. A StoryHop account can have only one StoryHop Plus subscription at a time, whether it was bought on the website or in an app.

You can buy StoryHop Plus:

• on the website, through Link (see sections 9 and 10);
• in the StoryHop app for iOS, through Apple in-app purchase;
• in the StoryHop app for Android, through Google Play's billing system.

Purchases in an app are described in the terms for that app (see section 1).

A subscription belongs to a StoryHop parent account, not to a device, a browser, or a child profile. A subscription bought on the website belongs to the account that was signed in when it was bought. StoryHop Plus bought on the website also works in the StoryHop apps, and StoryHop Plus bought in an app also works on the website. It applies to all child profiles on that account and to every browser and device signed in to that account, including child devices signed in with a sign-in link or QR code.

On the website, StoryHop Plus can be bought only in the parent area, after the parent PIN has been entered, and only by an account with a verified email address. Purchases must be made by an adult. Pages a signed-in child uses show that some content is locked, but no prices or purchase buttons; the child can only ask a parent, which opens the parent PIN entry.

If your account already has a StoryHop Plus subscription, bought on the website or in an app, you cannot buy another one on the website. This also applies while a website subscription has a payment problem; in that case, update your payment method on the Subscription page instead (see section 9).

A purchase can be linked to only one StoryHop account. While that account exists, the purchase cannot be moved to a different StoryHop account.

Purchases on the website:

On the website, StoryHop Plus costs €7.99 a month or €47.99 a year, including VAT. Depending on your country, the payment page may show the price converted into your local currency. The price that applies to you is the one shown on the website and on the payment page before you buy.

A 7-day free trial is available once per StoryHop account, if the account has never had a StoryHop Plus subscription before, neither on the website nor in an app. Any earlier subscription counts, including one that was cancelled or ended because a payment failed. We check eligibility when you start the purchase, and the payment page shows whether a free trial applies. You need to enter a payment method to start a free trial.

Before you buy, the website and the payment page show the price, the billing period, that the subscription renews automatically, and, with a free trial, when the trial ends and the first payment is due. You complete the purchase in the payment form on the payment page. The form is provided by Stripe and shown inside the StoryHop website.

Link charges your payment method when you confirm the purchase. If you start with a free trial, nothing is charged at the start; the first payment is charged when the trial ends, unless you cancel before the trial ends. Your bank or card statement shows the payment as LINK.COM* followed by our name.

StoryHop Plus is available right after the purchase or the start of the free trial. In rare cases, it can take a few minutes until access appears.

StoryHop Plus renews automatically at the end of each billing period for the same period length, until you cancel. Link charges each renewal when the new billing period starts. Link sends receipts, invoices, and other emails about your payments, for example when a payment fails.

If your free trial is set to continue as a paid subscription, we email a reminder to the address of your StoryHop account, usually about two days before the trial ends. The reminder does not change the rule above: if you do not want to be charged, cancel before the trial ends, even if you have not received the reminder.

If we change the price of StoryHop Plus on the website, the price of your active subscription changes only after we have told you by email in advance and, where the law requires it, you have agreed to the new price. If you do not want to pay the new price, you can cancel before it applies.

If a renewal payment fails, Stripe tries again to collect it for up to about two weeks. You keep StoryHop Plus for up to 7 days after the end of the period you have already paid for. After that, access is paused until the payment goes through. If the payment still cannot be collected after the last attempt, the subscription is cancelled. If a payment needs to be confirmed with your bank and you do not confirm it, the subscription may also be cancelled. You can update your payment method on the Subscription page at any time.

There is no such extra time after a free trial. If the first payment after the free trial fails, access ends when the trial ends. It returns if the payment goes through while Stripe is still trying to collect it.

StoryHop does not charge you directly and never receives your payment card or bank details.

Purchases in an app:

For StoryHop Plus bought in the iOS app through Apple or in the Android app through Google Play, the price, billing period, free trial, payment, automatic renewal, and price changes follow the rules of Apple or Google Play. Apple or Google Play decides free-trial eligibility and charges you. Details are in the Terms of Use for that app: https://storyhop.io/en/legal/ios/terms and https://storyhop.io/en/legal/android/terms.

Purchases on the website:

You can cancel StoryHop Plus bought on the website at any time:

• on the Subscription page in the parent area of the website, which opens Stripe's subscription management page;
• in your Link account at https://link.com. If you paid without a Link account, Link invites you to create one to manage your purchase;
• by email to support@storyhop.io. Tell us the email address of your StoryHop account. We cancel the subscription within 14 days and confirm the cancellation by email. On the Subscription page or at link.com, you can cancel at once.

Cancelling turns off automatic renewal. You keep StoryHop Plus until the end of the period you have already paid for, and no further payments are taken. If you cancel during a free trial, you are not charged, and you keep access until the trial ends. Until the paid period or the free trial ends, you can resume a cancelled subscription on the Subscription page.

On the Subscription page, you can change a monthly subscription to the yearly plan. The change takes effect immediately, and the price is adjusted for the unused part of the current month. If you change plans during a free trial, the trial continues, and the first payment for the yearly plan is charged when the trial ends. A yearly subscription cannot be changed to the monthly plan. To move from yearly to monthly, cancel the yearly plan and subscribe to the monthly plan after the yearly plan has ended; no free trial applies then.

You can request a refund for a website purchase from us at support@storyhop.io or from Link support at https://support.link.com/topics/sold-through-link. We refund:

• the full amount, if you ask within 14 days after the subscription started; a free trial counts towards these 14 days. This is available once per StoryHop account;
• otherwise, the unused part of the current billing period, in proportion to the time remaining. For example, if you ask 6 months into a yearly plan, we refund half of the yearly price.

We handle refund requests within 14 business days after we receive them. The money is returned through Link to the payment method used for the purchase, and Link confirms the refund by email. When we make a refund under this policy, we also cancel the subscription, and StoryHop Plus access for that purchase ends.

Link can also decide on a refund request itself within 60 days after the payment, including when we do not reply to Link within 48 hours.

If the payment for the current billing period is refunded in full, or you dispute it with your bank or card issuer, StoryHop Plus access ends immediately and the subscription is cancelled. Other refunds, for example a partial refund that Link makes on its own or a refund of a payment for an earlier billing period, do not change your access.

If you delete your StoryHop account, we cancel a subscription bought on the website immediately, including during a free trial or while a payment problem is open. No further payments are taken, and StoryHop Plus access ends with the account. There is no automatic refund for the rest of the billing period; you can request a refund under the refund policy above. Before you delete your account, the website reminds you of this. If the subscription cannot be cancelled at that moment, your account is not deleted, and the website asks you to try again later. Payment pages still open for your account are closed, and if a purchase started before the deletion is completed in another browser tab afterwards, that subscription is cancelled automatically, and if a payment was taken, we refund it in full.

If you ask Link to delete your data, Stripe cancels all subscriptions you bought through Link, including StoryHop Plus, immediately. Your StoryHop Plus access then ends at once, not at the end of the paid period.

Purchases in an app:

A subscription bought in an app can be managed and cancelled only in the app store where it was bought. For Apple, on iPhone or iPad, open Settings, tap your name, then tap Subscriptions. For Google Play, in the Google Play app, tap your profile icon, then Payments & subscriptions, then Subscriptions. The Subscription page on the website shows the status of such a subscription, but cannot change it.

Refunds for purchases through Apple are handled only by Apple under Apple's policies; you can request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. Refunds for purchases through Google Play are described in section 11 of the Terms of Use for the Android app (https://storyhop.io/en/legal/android/terms).

Deleting your StoryHop account, on the website or in an app, does not cancel a subscription bought in an app and does not stop Apple or Google Play from charging you. Cancel it in the app store as well if you do not want to be charged again.

Two subscriptions on one account:

If one StoryHop account has two active subscriptions at the same time, for example one bought on the website and one in an app, we review it manually. We do not cancel or refund anything automatically. Contact support@storyhop.io. A subscription bought in an app can only be cancelled in the app store where it was bought.

Your consumer rights:

Nothing in these Terms limits any mandatory consumer rights you have, including any statutory right of withdrawal. For website purchases, Link applies the cooling-off periods required by the consumer laws of your country, and the refunds described above are offered in addition to these rights. For purchases through Apple or Google Play, such requests are handled as described in the terms for that app.

StoryHop is intended to support reading practice and make reading more engaging.

StoryHop does not guarantee any specific educational result, reading improvement, quiz performance, school readiness, curriculum alignment, diagnostic accuracy, or suitability for a particular child, school, exam, or learning need.

Parents remain responsible for deciding whether StoryHop is appropriate for their child.

You must not use StoryHop for unlawful, harmful, fraudulent, abusive, or misleading purposes; attack, disrupt, overload, scan, scrape, crawl, or reverse engineer StoryHop; bypass authentication, parent controls, or StoryHop Plus access controls; share access outside your family; use StoryHop for institutional or commercial purposes without permission; copy or redistribute StoryHop content except as allowed; use bots or automated systems; interfere with other users; misrepresent your identity; or violate applicable laws or third-party rights.

StoryHop and its content are protected by copyright, trademark, database, and other laws.

StoryHop content may include original stories, adaptations, translations, collections, quizzes, riddles, reading levels, recommendations, illustrations, avatars, user interface elements, metadata, and the selection, arrangement, and presentation of materials.

Subject to these Terms, StoryHop grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use StoryHop content on the website and in the StoryHop apps for personal and family reading purposes.

You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, sell, license, scrape, train AI models on, or create competing services from StoryHop content without written permission.

Some source materials used in StoryHop may be public domain works or third-party works used under license or another legal basis.

StoryHop does not claim ownership of public-domain works themselves. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you already have under applicable law to use a public-domain work independently from StoryHop.

StoryHop-created or StoryHop-curated materials remain protected, including illustrations, adaptations, translations, simplified versions, quizzes, explanations, reading levels, metadata, recommendations, interface presentation, and selection and arrangement of materials.

StoryHop does not currently allow parents or children to post public content, comments, reviews, stories, images, free-text prompts, or public profile materials.

Parents may provide account information, child profile information, support messages, contact form messages, and privacy requests. Children may type short answers to riddles, which are used only to score the riddle and are neither stored nor published. These materials are handled under the Privacy Policy.

If you send us feedback, suggestions, bug reports, ideas, or feature requests, you allow StoryHop to use them without restriction or payment to you.

You confirm that your feedback does not include confidential information that you do not want StoryHop to use.

StoryHop is an early-stage service. It may contain bugs, interruptions, missing features, changing designs, or temporary downtime.

StoryHop may change, suspend, remove, limit, or discontinue free features at any time, including stories, collections, quizzes, riddles, illustrations, recommendations, child-profile features, achievements, XP, reading levels, and progress features.

StoryHop may add stories, collection episodes, or riddle themes to StoryHop Plus and may replace individual items with comparable content, for example to fix errors, keep content age-appropriate, or meet licensing or legal requirements. These changes do not cost you anything. Mandatory consumer rights, including those under sections 327f and 327r of the German Civil Code, remain unaffected.

StoryHop may update the website, fix bugs, or change features.

We will try to avoid unnecessary disruption, but we do not promise that any feature or content item will remain available forever.

StoryHop may suspend, restrict, or delete an account, child profile, session, sign-in link or code, or access if we reasonably believe these Terms have been violated, an account is being misused, sign-in links or codes were compromised, the service or users are at risk, an account is involved in attacks or fraud, or action is needed to comply with law or protect StoryHop.

You may stop using StoryHop at any time, delete your account in the parent area of the website under Privacy, or request account deletion by contacting support@storyhop.io or privacy@storyhop.io. Section 10 explains what happens to your subscription when you delete your account.

If we suspend or delete an account with StoryHop Plus bought on the website, we cancel the subscription and refund the unused part of the current billing period, in proportion to the time remaining.

StoryHop cannot cancel a subscription bought through Apple or Google Play. If such an account is suspended or deleted, cancel the subscription in the app store to stop future charges.

This does not limit your mandatory consumer rights.

The StoryHop Privacy Policy for the website explains how StoryHop collects and uses personal data, including cookies, Google Analytics, purchases on the website, subscription data, and what is kept after account deletion.

The Privacy Policy is information under data protection law. It is not part of these Terms, and these Terms do not replace it.

Pages a signed-in child uses on the website contain no links to other websites or apps.

Parent-only parts and public pages of the website may contain links to external services, such as Link or email. The payment form on the payment page and the subscription management page that opens from the Subscription page are provided by Stripe.

StoryHop is not responsible for external websites or services that we do not control.

StoryHop is operated from Germany. The website can be accessed from any country. StoryHop is offered in the European Union, the European Economic Area, Switzerland, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine. On the website, StoryHop Plus can be bought in the countries where purchases through Link are available.

You are responsible for following laws that apply to you. StoryHop may restrict access from countries, regions, networks, accounts, or devices if needed for legal, security, operational, or compliance reasons.

For StoryHop Plus, the statutory rules on digital products apply, including your rights if the product is defective (sections 327 et seq. of the German Civil Code). This applies whether you bought StoryHop Plus on the website or in an app. You can contact us about these rights at support@storyhop.io.

The free parts of StoryHop are provided free of charge. We work to keep them available and working, but we cannot promise uninterrupted or error-free operation.

StoryHop does not promise any particular learning outcome.

Mandatory consumer rights remain unaffected.

StoryHop and Aleksandr Gorin are liable without limitation for intent and 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 for breach of an obligation that is essential for performing the contract and on which you may regularly rely, and then only for foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract. Otherwise, liability for slight negligence is excluded.

Mandatory consumer rights remain unaffected.

These Terms are governed by the laws of Germany.

If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you habitually live. Where that law does not allow a choice of law for consumer contracts, as in Switzerland, the law of that country applies.

If you are a consumer, you can bring claims in the courts of the country where you habitually live, and mandatory rules on jurisdiction that protect consumers remain unaffected.

StoryHop may update these Terms as the website or service changes.

Each version of these Terms is identified by its date, and a published version is never changed afterwards.

When we publish a new version, the website asks you to accept it the next time you use the signed-in parts of the website; on a device signed in with a child sign-in link, it asks only in the parent area after the parent PIN has been entered. You can postpone this with Later. The new Terms apply to you only once you accept them; until then, the previous Terms you accepted continue to apply to you. If you have never accepted the Terms for the website, for example because you created your account in an app, you must accept them before you continue on the website. If you do not accept, we may end the free service with reasonable notice, and you can cancel StoryHop Plus as described in section 10.

The current and all earlier versions of these Terms are available at https://storyhop.io/en/legal/web/terms.

Support: support@storyhop.io

Contact form: https://storyhop.io/contact

Privacy: privacy@storyhop.io

Operator: Aleksandr Gorin, StoryHop, Käthe-Kollwitz-Str. 10b, 14943 Luckenwalde, Germany

Further legal provider information is available in the Impressum.