Terms of Service

Last updated October 8, 2026

Couchmate is a place to chat and react with other people watching the same TV airing. These Terms are an agreement between you and Couchmate (“Couchmate”, “we”, “us”). They cover the Couchmate apps for iOS and Android, the web app, and couchmate.com (together, the “Service”).

By using the Service you agree to these Terms and to our Code of Conduct, which is part of them. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Service.

Who can use Couchmate

• You must be at least 13 years old, or older if the law where you live sets a higher age for using a service like this without a parent’s consent (for example, 14 in Quebec).
• If you’re under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, you need a parent’s or guardian’s permission, and they accept these Terms on your behalf.
• Couchmate is intended for people in the United States and Canada. If you use it from somewhere else, you’re responsible for following your local laws.
• You can’t use Couchmate if we’ve banned you or if the law doesn’t allow you to.

Your account

• When you first open Couchmate we create an anonymous account with a random username. Anonymous accounts can watch rooms and send vibes.
• To chat, rate and review, report messages, or keep your account across devices, you save it by confirming an email address with a one-time code. There are no passwords: anyone who can read your email can sign in to your account, so keep your email secure.
• You’re responsible for what happens on your account. If you think someone else has used it, email support@couchmate.com.
• Your username has to follow the Code of Conduct. We may change a username that doesn’t.
• You can delete your account at any time in the app, under Profile. Anonymous accounts that go unused for 180 days are deleted automatically.

Your content

“Your content” is anything you post or send through the Service: messages, vibes, ratings, reviews, reports and your username.

• You own your content.
• You give Couchmate a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, display, transmit and analyze your content, and to show it to other users, so that we can run, protect and improve the Service. For reviews and ratings, the license includes showing them to anyone on Couchmate’s public pages and in search results. This license continues for content we keep after you delete a message, a review or your account, as the Privacy Policy describes.
• Rooms are public to everyone in them. Don’t post anything you want to keep private.
• Reviews are public. An approved review shows on Couchmate’s public pages and in search results with your username, your score, whether you watched live and the date. A rating without a review only counts toward an average and is never shown with your name.
• Messages leave the room shortly after the airing ends, but they aren’t erased: we keep a record of what’s posted, even after you delete a message or your account. See the Privacy Policy.
• You’re responsible for your content. You promise you have the right to post it and that it doesn’t break these Terms, the Code of Conduct or the law.
• We check a review before it appears until you’ve had a few approved in a row; after that, your reviews appear straight away. Either way, we may remove a review, or mark it as containing spoilers so its text stays folded away until someone chooses to read it.
• We don’t review messages before they’re posted and we aren’t responsible for what other users post, but we may remove anything at any time.

Rules and enforcement

Follow the Code of Conduct. You also agree not to:

• break the law, or help anyone else break it, using the Service;
• interfere with, overload or attack the Service, or get around its limits (such as rate limits, slow mode, mutes or our enforcement);
• use bots, scripts or other automation to post, create accounts or collect data;
• scrape or bulk-collect data from the Service, except by crawling public pages as our robots.txt allows;
• access anyone else’s account, or reverse engineer the Service except where the law allows it.

If we believe you’ve broken these Terms or the Code of Conduct, or we need to protect users, Couchmate or the public, we may, with or without notice: hide or remove your content, warn you, change your username, stop you chatting for a period, or ban your account and the email address on it. We decide in our reasonable judgment, and the action depends on how serious the problem is.

If you think we got it wrong, email support@couchmate.com with your username and what happened. We’ll take another look.

We report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as US law requires, and we may report other illegal content to the authorities.

TV listings

• Schedules, show and episode details, images and station logos come from third-party providers. They can be incomplete or wrong and can change without notice.
• Couchmate isn’t affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any network, studio, channel or streaming service. Show titles, logos and trademarks belong to their owners.
• Couchmate doesn’t stream or broadcast TV. You need your own way to watch.

Our property

The Service, including its software, design, text, graphics and the Couchmate name and logo, belongs to Couchmate or its licensors. Apart from the license in “Apps and app stores”, these Terms don’t give you any rights in it. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without owing you anything.

Copyright complaints

If you believe something on Couchmate infringes your copyright, email support@couchmate.com with the subject “Copyright notice” and include:

• your physical or electronic signature;
• the copyrighted work you believe is infringed;
• the content you want removed and where it is (the show and airing, the time, and the username);
• your name, address, phone number and email;
• a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized by the owner, its agent or the law; and
• a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or are authorized to act for the owner.

If your content was removed because of a notice and you believe that was a mistake, you can send a counter-notice to the same address with: your signature; the content removed and where it was; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your name, address and phone number; and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if you’re outside the United States, any judicial district where Couchmate may be found) and will accept service from the person who sent the notice.

We end the accounts of repeat infringers where appropriate.

Apps and app stores

Subject to these Terms, we give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the Couchmate app on devices you own or control, for your own non-commercial use. We may release updates, and some may be required to keep using the app.

If you got the app from Apple’s App Store:

• These Terms are between you and Couchmate, not Apple, and Couchmate, not Apple, is responsible for the app and its content.
• Your license is limited to using the app on Apple-branded products you own or control, as the App Store’s Usage Rules allow.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to meet any warranty that applies, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund the price you paid for it, if any. To the extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app.
• Couchmate, not Apple, is responsible for any claims about the app, including product liability claims, claims that it fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws.
• If anyone claims the app or your use of it infringes their intellectual property, Couchmate, not Apple, is responsible for investigating, defending, settling and resolving the claim.
• You confirm that you’re not in a country subject to a US government embargo or designated by the US government as supporting terrorism, and that you’re not on any US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Questions and complaints about the app go to support@couchmate.com.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.

If you got the app from Google Play, Google Play’s terms also apply to your download, and these Terms are between you and Couchmate, not Google.

Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, Couchmate makes no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We don’t promise that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that listings are accurate, or that a room will open for any particular airing.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• Couchmate isn’t liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, arising from or relating to the Service or these Terms, even if we were told they were possible.
• Couchmate isn’t liable for the content or conduct of other users or of third parties.
• Couchmate’s total liability for all claims relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to US$100.

Some places don’t allow these exclusions or limits, so some of them may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have under consumer protection laws that can’t be waived.

Indemnity

To the extent the law allows, you agree to cover Couchmate’s losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) from any claim arising from your content, your use of the Service, or your breaking these Terms or the law.

Ending your use

You can stop using the Service at any time and delete your account in the app. We may suspend or end your access as “Rules and enforcement” describes, and we may change or stop offering all or part of the Service at any time. “Your content” (for content we keep), “TV listings”, “Our property” and every section from “Disclaimers” on continue after your use ends.

Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Before bringing a claim, please email support@couchmate.com so we can try to sort it out. Any claim relating to the Service or these Terms must be brought in the state or federal courts in New York County, New York, and you and Couchmate agree to their jurisdiction. Either of us may instead bring a claim in small claims court where you live. If the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim in your local courts, these Terms don’t take that away.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. When we do, we’ll change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you in the app before it applies to you and ask you to accept the new version before you chat again. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms.

General

• These Terms, the Code of Conduct and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Couchmate about the Service.
• If part of these Terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a part of these Terms, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer these Terms to anyone else. We may transfer them to whoever runs the Service after us, such as a company we form.
• No one else has rights under these Terms, except Apple, as “Apps and app stores” describes.

Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@couchmate.com.