terms of service

last updated october 19, 2026

these terms are the deal between you and Zachary ("crouton", "we") for using crouton: the website at crouton.chat, its dashboard, the bot that runs in your twitch chat, and the windows app. by signing in or paying, you agree to them. questions go to support@crouton.chat.

1. what crouton is

crouton is a helpful bot for your twitch chat. while you stream, it welcomes people, answers chat, fills ad breaks, opens and closes the stream, remembers your regulars from one night to the next, and, if you turn it on, does a few things when you ask (a clip, a timeout, a poll). it runs on our server. the windows app, if you use it, lets it hear you on your mic.

2. your account

you sign in with twitch. you need to be old enough to use twitch, and an adult (or have a parent or guardian's ok) to buy a plan. keep your twitch account secure: anyone who can sign in to it can change your crouton settings.

3. your channel and your chat

• you connect your own channel, and a bot account for it to speak as (crouton's shared bot, CroutonChats, or one of your own). you can disconnect either any time from twitch's connections page.
• you're the one running crouton in your chat. use it within twitch's terms of service and community guidelines, and let your chat know a bot is there and remembers things (the privacy page has a line you can paste).
• crouton is quiet by default and has a switch for every kind of line, and one switch pauses it all. mod actions are off until you turn them on, happen only when you or the helpers you name ask, and it never bans anyone.

4. plans and payment

• crouton comes in two plans for each channel today: Plus, $30 a month or $300 a year, and Starter, $15 a month or $150 a year, plus sales tax or vat where it applies. the prices are on crouton.chat/pricing and in your billing page before you pay. Growth is coming, and isn't sold yet.
• three free streams. a channel without a plan gets its first three streams free, with everything on and no card. a stream counts once crouton's been on it for 10 minutes (not paused), and two streams on the same night count as one. after the third, the bot stops until you subscribe, and it keeps what it remembered for when you do. disconnecting and connecting again doesn't start them over.
• Starter is for a channel averaging under 25 viewers over its last 30 days. crouton keeps the viewer count twitch shows while you're live, your free streams included. once it's seen your channel live in the last 30 days, checkout goes by that average: 25 or more is Plus. before it's seen a stream, you tell us at checkout. at each renewal crouton looks at your last 30 days, and if your channel averaged 25 or more, your billing page says so, and your plan moves to Plus at the renewal after that one (a month's notice on a monthly plan, a year's on a yearly one). Starter speaks in your chat as crouton's own bot account (CroutonChats); your own bot account comes with Plus.
• founding prices. the first 100 channels to pay for crouton pay $20 a month for Plus ($12 for Starter) for as long as their plan lasts. founding prices are monthly only. a founding Starter plan that moves to Plus stays founding ($20, not $30). cancelling ends it: subscribing again later is the price of the day.
• a monthly limit on the ai. each plan includes up to $20 a month of claude (the ai crouton writes with) on Plus, or $10 on Starter, counted from your billing day (yearly plans too). past three quarters of it, crouton remembers every other night; at the limit, welcomes and raids get plain lines and the rest stays quiet until the month turns. your billing page shows where you are, and we can raise it for you.
• stripe is the seller. we sell crouton through stripe's managed payments, so link (a stripe company) is the merchant of record: it takes the payment, charges and files the tax, sends your receipts and invoices, and handles payment questions and disputes. receipts say "sold through link" and card statements read LINK.COM* CROUTON. link's own terms apply to the payment itself.
• a plan renews every month (or every year) on the day you subscribed, charged ahead, until you cancel.
• if a payment fails, stripe tries the card again over the following days and lets you know. the bot keeps running for a week after the first failed payment; after that it stops until the payment goes through.
• you can cancel any time from your billing page (stripe's billing portal, or the billing page itself while a move to Plus is waiting). the bot keeps running to the end of the time you've paid for, and you won't be charged again.
• if we ever change the price, we'll tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you, and it starts with your next renewal after that. you can cancel before then. (a Starter plan moving to Plus is the rule above, not a price change.)

5. refunds

the refund policy (crouton.chat/refunds) says when you get money back.

6. using it fairly

don't use crouton to harass people, spam, mislead your chat, break the law or twitch's rules, or get around crouton's limits. don't try to break into it, copy it, resell it, or overload it. trying to talk the bot into saying something hateful counts as misuse even when it says no.

7. what's yours and what's ours

your chat, your settings and the notes you write stay yours. you let us store and use them to run crouton for your channel, as the privacy policy describes. the lines crouton writes for your channel are yours to use. crouton's software, name, mascot and look are ours.

8. the ai part

crouton's lines are written by an ai (anthropic's claude), from what's happening in your chat. they can be wrong, awkward or off, even with the limits and filters we put on it. it's built to leave out private things and to play along with chat without obeying it, but it isn't perfect. you can rate its lines, change how it talks, switch any kind of line off, or pause it.

9. keeping it running

we work to keep crouton up during your streams, but we can't promise it never goes down, never misses a moment, or that every feature lasts: twitch, anthropic and the services crouton runs on change too. when something breaks, crouton goes quiet rather than flooding your chat.

10. ending

you can stop any time: cancel your plan and disconnect your channel. we can suspend or end your account if you break these terms or a payment stays unpaid, and we'll tell you why when we can. what happens to your data afterwards is in the privacy policy.

11. no warranties

crouton is provided as it is and as available. to the extent the law allows, we don't make promises beyond the ones in these terms.

12. limits on liability

to the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect or consequential losses (lost viewers, lost income, a moment the bot missed), and our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the three months before the claim. nothing here limits rights you have under consumer law that can't be limited.

13. changes to these terms

if we change these terms in a way that matters, we'll tell you on the dashboard or by email before the change applies. using crouton after that means you accept them.

14. the law

these terms are governed by the laws of texas, usa. if you're a consumer in the eu or uk, you also keep the protections of the law where you live.

15. contact

Zachary, support@crouton.chat.