Terms of Service

Effective July 20, 2026.

These terms govern your use of the Bento app, bought outright or through a Bento Plus subscription. Bento is made by West End Studios, based in Ontario, Canada. By purchasing, downloading, or subscribing, you agree to these terms.

1. What Bento is, and who it’s for

Bento is a desktop planning app designed for university and college students, sold two ways. The buy-once license is a one-time purchase of the app, with AI features powered by your own API key from a supported AI provider (Anthropic or OpenAI). Bento Plus is an all-inclusive subscription: the app plus AI through our service, no AI provider account needed. Either way, the app runs on your computer and stores its data there.

Bento and its AI features are intended for users 18 years of age or older. Purchases may be made by an adult student, or by someone purchasing Bento for an adult student. Bento is not directed at children, and the AI features are built for postsecondary coursework. If you bring your own API key, holding that key is governed by your provider’s own account terms, including any age requirements they set.

All purchases, buy-once licenses and Plus subscriptions alike, are sold and billed by Paddle, our merchant of record; West End Studios licenses and supports Bento. Refunds and cancellation rights for either purchase are covered by our refund policy and any mandatory rights under applicable consumer law.

2. The buy-once license

The one-time purchase grants one student a perpetual license to use the Bento app, activated on up to three devices over its life (replaced a machine? email hello@bentoplanner.com and we’ll free the old slot). The license itself never expires, though we can’t promise that today’s Bento will remain compatible with every future version of macOS or Windows, or future hardware. It includes the updates we make available to existing Bento customers at no additional charge; it is not a promise of specific future features or of future major versions. AI features run on your own API key from the provider you choose in the app (Anthropic or OpenAI, or another OpenAI-compatible service you configure yourself): that usage relationship, including billing and acceptable use, is directly with that provider, under its terms. We are not a party to it and never receive your key or your content.

Bento is licensed, not sold outright: West End Studios keeps ownership of the software itself. Don’t resell or redistribute Bento, sublicense or share your license key, or circumvent its licensing, except where the law expressly permits it.

3. Bento Plus

• What you get: a license key that unlocks the app with AI included, backed by our service. AI features run for as long as your subscription is active, and your first paid Plus period also includes a perpetual license to the non-AI features of the Bento app. If Plus ends, the planner, notes, marks, and everything already generated keep working on your computer; only the included AI service ends. If that first purchase is refunded or reversed, the license included with it ends too. Plus is deliberately all-inclusive: it does not have a bring-your-own-key mode.
• Monthly AI allowance: Plus includes a defined monthly AI allowance, currently 1,000,000 tokens per month (tokens are the unit AI text is measured in), resetting on the first day of each calendar month (UTC). The current allowance is always shown on this page, and if it changes, the new allowance applies from a future billing period, never partway through a period already paid for. If you reach the allowance, AI features pause until your next allowance reset; everything else in the app keeps working. It is sized well above ordinary study use, and exists so one account’s extreme usage can’t degrade the service (or its economics) for everyone else.
• One student, one license: a Plus license is for one student’s use, active on up to three devices (a device that hasn’t used Bento’s AI features for a week automatically frees its slot). Don’t share the license for use by another student or anyone else; we may suspend or deactivate a license if we reasonably determine its key is being resold, publicly shared, or pooled among multiple users.
• Billing: Plus renews automatically at the billing interval shown when you subscribe, until you cancel; if the renewal price ever changes, we’ll give you advance notice before the new price takes effect. Cancelling stops future charges, and Plus keeps working until the end of the period already paid for.

4. Acceptable use of the AI features

On Bento Plus, AI features are powered by Anthropic’s Claude models, and your use of them must comply with Anthropic’s Usage Policy, which passes through to you as a condition of these terms. On the buy-once license, your use of the AI features must comply with the acceptable-use terms of the provider whose key you bring, for example Anthropic’s Usage Policy or OpenAI’s Usage Policies. Additionally, don’t attempt to use Bento Plus as a general-purpose AI gateway: it exists to power Bento’s features, and we may deactivate licenses used to systematically extract raw model access.

5. Academic integrity

Bento is a study tool, deliberately designed not to do a student’s work for them (see How Bento uses AI). You are responsible for using it within your school’s academic-integrity rules. AI output can be wrong; it is study support, not an authority, and grades or academic outcomes remain your responsibility.

6. Your data

Your planner data lives on your computer, not with us. We don’t claim ownership of the content you put into Bento: you keep whatever rights you already have in your notes, documents, schedules, and other content. AI output Bento generates for you is yours to use for your studying, subject to the terms of the AI provider that produced it. Our privacy policy explains what information the Plus service processes and retains; if anything in these terms seems to imply otherwise about personal information, the privacy policy governs.

7. Warranty and liability

Bento is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, to the extent the law allows. We are not liable for indirect or consequential damages. For a claim relating to a buy-once license, our total liability is capped at the amount paid for that license; for a claim relating to Bento Plus, it is capped at the amount paid for Plus in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, and if you are a consumer, nothing here reduces rights your local consumer law guarantees you.

8. Changes and termination

We may update these terms from time to time; changes apply prospectively, and material changes will be posted here with a new effective date. For Bento Plus, we’ll give reasonable notice of material changes before they take effect, such as by email or in the app, and continued use of Plus after the effective date is acceptance. Changes will not retroactively take away rights already granted under a buy-once license unless the law requires it. You can stop using Bento at any time; your data is on your machine and exportable. We may deactivate a license key if we reasonably determine it is being resold, publicly shared, or used to circumvent its activation limits, and we may suspend Plus service for violations of section 3 or 4. Either way, we will say why when we do.

9. Contact and governing law

Questions: hello@bentoplanner.com. These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable there. If mandatory consumer protections in your home jurisdiction apply regardless of this choice of law, those protections still apply.