Effective 4 September 2026. This replaces the version of December 2018.
These terms govern your use of the KnowDrugs apps for Android and iOS. Section 2 also covers the information we publish on the knowdrugs.app website. The KnowDrugs shop at shop.knowdrugs.app is a separate service and has its own terms and privacy policy.
Provider
Plant Product Design UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Mahlower Str. 24, 12049 Berlin, Germany
Represented by Managing Director Philipp Kreicarek
Contact: [email protected]
How we handle personal data is described separately, in our Privacy Policy.
The short version
- KnowDrugs gives you information. It does not give you medical advice, and it cannot tell you whether anything is safe to take.
- Harm-reduction content is free of charge. Some additional features are paid.
- You need to be 16 to use the app, and 18 to buy anything.
- If you donate an image or submit an experience report, you allow us to use it to operate and improve KnowDrugs.
- We do not carry advertising, and no investor or partner has a financial interest in what the app tells you.
1What these terms cover
These terms are an agreement between you and Plant Product Design UG (haftungsbeschränkt) ("KnowDrugs", "we", "us") about your use of the KnowDrugs mobile apps.
By using the apps you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the apps.
2What KnowDrugs is — and what it is not
Using drugs involves risks to your health. We strongly advise against using illegal psychoactive substances.
KnowDrugs is an information service. The content we publish — text, images, graphics, drug checking results, warnings, substance information and safer-use material — is provided for information only.
This section applies to KnowDrugs information wherever you read it — in the apps and on the knowdrugs.app website.
It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a treatment recommendation, and it is not a substitute for any of those. Nothing we publish can tell you that a substance is safe, that a dose is safe, or that a combination is safe. Drug checking results describe one sample that was tested, not any sample you may have.
Always follow the medical advice of your doctor. Never delay seeking medical help because of something you read in an app, including this one. In an emergency, or anything that might be one, call the emergency services.
The harm-reduction content in the app is provided free of charge. Some additional features are paid; see section 7.
There are no investors or partners with a financial interest in the information provided in the app, and we carry no advertising of any kind.
3Who may use KnowDrugs
You must be at least 16 years old to use the apps.
To buy anything you must be 18 or older, or have the agreement of a parent or guardian. Under German law a contract entered into by a person under 18 without that agreement is generally not binding (§§ 106–108 BGB).
We do not verify age, and these terms do not claim otherwise.
4Your account
You can use most of KnowDrugs without an account. Some features — experience reports, the newsletter, supporter features, syncing across devices — need one.
If you create an account, keep your sign-in details to yourself and tell us if you think someone else has access to it. You can delete your account in the app at any time.
5How you may use the app
Use KnowDrugs for your own information and safety. Please do not:
- collect data from the app automatically, by scraping, bulk querying or any comparable method;
- resell, redistribute or republish warnings, drug checking results or substance data as a dataset or a service of your own;
- interfere with the app's security, or try to reach parts of our systems that are not open to you;
- use the app to help anyone produce, supply or distribute controlled substances.
If you seriously or repeatedly breach this section, we may suspend or close your account — see section 13.
6Content you contribute
Some features let you contribute content: donating an image to image search, and submitting an experience report. Both are optional and both are off unless you choose them.
When you contribute content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, adapt and use that content in order to operate and improve KnowDrugs. That includes training and evaluating our image-recognition model, and publishing results in aggregated form that does not identify anyone.
This licence rests on the consent you give in the app — at the moment you switch image donation on, or when you submit a report — for the purposes described there and in our Privacy Policy. These terms record its scope; they are not where it is granted.
You keep ownership of what you contribute. This licence lets us run the service; it does not make your content ours.
A donated image cannot be withdrawn afterwards. That is a technical fact rather than a policy choice: a donated image carries nothing that links it back to you, so we cannot find it again in order to remove it. You are told this before you turn image donation on, and our Privacy Policy says the same.
You confirm that you are entitled to contribute what you contribute — that it is yours to share, and that it does not show another person who has not agreed to it.
7Paid features
Harm-reduction content is free. Some additional features are offered as a paid subscription.
You buy them from the app store, not from us. Purchases are made through the Apple App Store or Google Play, and the payment contract is with the store. Billing, renewals, cancellation and refunds are handled there under that store's terms. We are told that your entitlement is active; we never see your payment details.
A subscription renews automatically until you cancel it. You cancel it in the store, not in the app. If it lapses, the paid features stop and everything free stays as it was.
Dark mode unlocks bought as a one-off purchase in earlier versions remain valid and can be restored through the store. They are no longer offered for sale.
8Availability
We do our best to keep KnowDrugs working, but we do not guarantee that it will be available without interruption or free of errors. We may change, suspend or discontinue features, and we may stop offering the apps altogether. You need a working internet connection for most of the app.
9Liability
9.1 We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz), and where we have given a guarantee.
9.2 Where we cause damage by slight negligence, we are liable only if we have breached an obligation whose fulfilment makes proper performance of this agreement possible in the first place, and on whose observance you may regularly rely (an "essential contractual obligation"). In that case our liability is limited to the damage that is foreseeable and typical for an agreement of this kind.
9.3 Any liability beyond sections 9.1 and 9.2 is excluded.
9.4 Nothing in this section changes the burden of proof to your disadvantage.
10Links and services from others
The app links to websites and services operated by other people and organisations — counselling services, drug checking providers, maps and similar. Those links are a convenience. We do not control what is on the other end, and we are not responsible for it. If you follow a link, you do so at your own risk and under that provider's terms.
11Our content
The KnowDrugs apps, their content, the underlying data, the name and the logo, and the models we train, belong to us or to the people we license them from. You may use them within the app as these terms allow. Everything else needs our agreement in writing.
12App store rules
You get the apps through the Apple App Store or Google Play, and that store's own terms apply alongside these. Where they conflict on the subject of the download itself, the store's terms come first.
For the iOS app: this agreement is between you and us, not with Apple, and Apple is not responsible for the app or its content. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.
13Ending this agreement
You can stop using KnowDrugs at any time, and delete your account in the app.
We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly breach section 5, or where we are required to by law. If we do, we will tell you why unless we are not allowed to. Sections 6, 9 and 11 continue to apply afterwards.
14Changes to these terms
We may change these terms where there is a good reason — a change in the law or in case law, a new feature, a feature we discontinue, or a security or regulatory requirement.
We will tell you at least 30 days before a change takes effect, in the app or by email if we have your address.
- For minor changes — corrections, clarifications, a new address, a newly available optional feature — the change takes effect on the date we give.
- For material changes — anything affecting what you pay, the licence you grant us under section 6, or your rights under this agreement — we will ask you to accept them. We will not treat your silence as acceptance.
If you do not want to accept a change, you can stop using KnowDrugs and delete your account before it takes effect.
15Final provisions
Governing law. German law applies. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another country of the European Union, this does not deprive you of the protection given to you by provisions of the law of that country that cannot be varied by agreement.
Dispute resolution. We are not obliged, and are not willing, to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.
If part of this is invalid. If any provision of these terms is or becomes invalid, the rest stay in force, and the invalid provision is replaced by the applicable statutory rules.
Languages. These terms are available in German, English, Spanish, French and Polish.
Data protection. How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy, which is not part of these terms.
16Contact
Plant Product Design UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Mahlower Str. 24, 12049 Berlin, Germany
[email protected]
