Developer Terms

Last updated October 14, 2026

These Developer Terms cover Couchmate’s developer API (the “API”): the keys you create on your profile, and the titles, airings, links, images and attribution the API returns (“API data”). They add to our Terms of Service, which still apply to you, and our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information. You accept these terms when you create a key. This is version 1 of these terms.

Who can use the API

• You need a saved Couchmate account. An account can have up to 5 keys at a time.
• If you use the API for a company or another organization, you accept these terms on its behalf and confirm that you’re allowed to.
• You’re responsible for everything done with your keys.

Your keys

• A secret key is for your server (or curl). Keep it secret: don’t put it in a web page, an app or a public code repository. The API detects a browser, and a secret key is refused in any browser, couchmate.com included. If one leaks, revoke it on your profile and create another.
• A publishable key is for your site’s pages, where anyone can see it. In a browser, it works only from the origins you list, and from couchmate.com, so the API reference’s Test Request console works. List only origins you control. Anyone who has a publishable key can still call the API with it from a server, so treat it as public.
• Don’t share your keys, or let anyone use them to get around these terms or the limits.

Attribution

• Each airing comes with an attribution list: the providers whose listings it uses, each with a name and a url. Wherever you show API data, show each provider’s name near it, linked to the address it gives, as “Listings by TV Media”. Show the credit as the provider licenses it: use the name and the address the API returns, and don’t reword, shorten or hide it.
• Don’t remove, hide or change the credits in share images.

Linking to Couchmate

• Link to Couchmate with the links the API gives you (an airing’s room, short and page links), unchanged. Don’t frame Couchmate’s pages, or send people somewhere else while saying it’s Couchmate.
• You may say that your site uses Couchmate, and use the Couchmate name to describe its links. Don’t use our logo, or suggest that Couchmate endorses or partners with you, without our written permission.
• You may show share images at any size, but don’t crop, alter or cover them.

Storing data

Data that the Terms of Service license under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, such as show and episode names and the other facts in Couchmate’s programme database, stays under that license: nothing in these terms limits what it lets you do with that data. The limits on storing, selling and rebuilding below apply to the schedule data the API returns: airing times, channels, status and links.

• You may keep API data for up to 24 hours. After that, ask the API again or delete it: listings change, and the API always has an airing’s current time and status.
• You may keep an airing’s room link and short link for as long as you like. They usually follow the airing if it moves. They don’t when it moves past the listings we hold, when we can’t tell which airing it became, or when it’s cancelled or pre-empted; then the API answers that the airing is gone and you should drop the link.

Not allowed

You may not:

• sell, license or otherwise hand on API data as data, alone or in bulk;
• build a TV listings guide or a listings database from the API, or collect API data to rebuild Couchmate’s;
• get around the limits, for example with several accounts or keys;
• use the API in a way that breaks the law, our Code of Conduct or other people’s rights, or that harms or overloads Couchmate;
• present API data as your own, or as complete or always correct.

Limits

Each key has a limit on how many requests it can make a minute, which the developer page lists. We may change the limits, and we may slow down or refuse requests to keep Couchmate working for everyone. The API is free. If that changes, we’ll update these terms first, and the change won’t apply to you until you accept it.

What we record

For each request we record the key, the account it belongs to, the endpoint, the result and the time, and we keep each key’s last-used time. We use these records to run and protect the API, to enforce these terms and to see how the API is used.

Revoking keys and ending access

• You can revoke a key at any time on your profile. A revoked key stops working within a minute.
• We may revoke a key, or suspend your access to the API, at any time: for example when we think you’ve broken these terms, when a key seems to have leaked, or to protect Couchmate, its users or the providers whose data it shows. When we can, we’ll tell you first.
• Deleting your account deletes your keys.
• When your access ends, stop using API data and delete what you’ve kept, apart from room and short links.

No warranty

The API and API data are provided “as is” and “as available”, as “Disclaimers” in the Terms of Service describes. Listings come from other providers and can be wrong or change. We may change the API or stop offering it at any time. Within version 1 of the API (addresses starting /api/v1) we only add fields and new values; a change that would break your code comes as a new version. Your code should tolerate values it doesn’t know.

Liability

“Limitation of liability”, “Indemnity” and “Governing law and disputes” in the Terms of Service apply to the API too, and the indemnity covers claims arising from your use of the API and of API data.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Each update changes the date at the top; a significant one also changes the version number, and we may ask you to accept the new version before you create another key. If you keep using your keys after a change takes effect, you accept the new terms.

Contact

Questions about the API or these terms: support@couchmate.com.