Terms of use

Sonar reads the public feeds of selected news domains in 11 areas, gathers reprints of the same news into one story, and computes a 0–100 mood index from the tone of coverage by topic, area and country.

Tone, topics and countries are assigned by a language model, story summaries are written by one, and reprints are grouped by comparing texts. All of these make mistakes: a model can misread irony, a summary can miss a nuance, and two different stories can be merged. The figures are an estimate of what is being published, not a statement of fact about a market, a company, a person or a country.

You need to be at least 16 to open an account, and old enough to enter a contract where you live to buy a plan. You may not use Sonar if you are subject to sanctions that bar us from serving you, or on behalf of someone who is. We may refuse or end service where the law requires it.

The last 24 hours are open to everyone without sign-up. You may read the site, link to it and quote its figures; when you publish Sonar charts or numbers, name Sonar as the source.

You are responsible for your account and the keys you create in it. Keep keys secret; if one leaks, revoke it in your account or write to us. The API comes with the paid plans; current plans, limits and prices are on the Pricing page.

A paid plan is bought for a fixed period, usually 30 days, and does not renew by itself: when the period ends, the account returns to the free plan unless you pay again. You pay in cryptocurrency through our payment provider OxaPay, at the US-dollar price shown before you pay; the plan starts once the payment is confirmed on the network. Network fees and the exchange rate of the coin you choose are yours to bear. Payment by invoice and other arrangements are possible on request.

Limits are applied automatically: once a budget is spent the API answers with status 429 until the minute or the day is over. We may change plans and limits; we will tell holders of a paid plan in advance, and a change does not shorten a period already paid for.

Because a plan starts as soon as the payment is confirmed, you ask us to start the service straight away and agree that, once it has started, you lose the right to withdraw from the purchase that consumer law may otherwise give you. If we fail to provide a paid plan, for example through a long outage, write to us and we will extend the plan or refund the unused part. Nothing here limits rights the law gives you that cannot be waived.

Coverage reports, team plans and other custom work are agreed by email. What is included, the price and the delivery date are set out in our offer, and these terms apply to everything the offer does not cover. A report describes published coverage as our models read it and carries the same limits as the rest of Sonar.

Every account has an invite link. A new account created through it gets a few days of the Pro plan, and the person who invited it earns bonus days when the new account first pays. The current terms are shown in your account.

Rewards are days of Sonar service, not money: they cannot be exchanged, cashed out or transferred. Inviting yourself, creating accounts to collect rewards or otherwise abusing the programme is not allowed and voids the rewards. We may change or end the programme; days already credited stay.

Do not get around the limits with several addresses, accounts or keys, do not put load on the service that disrupts it, and do not try to reach the admin console or other people's accounts and keys.

Using Sonar's data inside your own product, report or newsletter is fine — that is what the plans are for. Do not resell it as a dataset or present it as your own without our written consent.

If these rules are broken we may restrict access, revoke a key or close an account.

We show a headline, the domain, the time and a link to the original. A story's picture, when the publisher's feed has one, is shown as a small thumbnail that we fetch once and serve ourselves. Article texts belong to their publishers: we read them only for the automatic assessment and do not republish them on the site or through the API.

We download articles only where robots.txt allows it, no more often than once every two seconds per site, or less often if robots.txt asks for that.

If you represent a publication and do not want to be in Sonar, write to us from an address on its domain. We will stop collecting your feed, take your headlines off the site and delete the stored texts of your articles.

The service is provided “as is”. We do not guarantee that it will run without interruption, that the data will be complete, accurate or timely, or that any source will keep publishing.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect losses, lost profits or lost data arising from using Sonar or being unable to use it, including trading, investment or business decisions made with our data in mind. Our total liability does not exceed what you paid us over the last three months. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

You can stop using Sonar at any time and ask us to close your account. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms; if we close a paid account without such a reason, we refund the unused part of the period.

We may change these terms. A new version takes effect from the date shown at the top of the page, and we will email account holders in advance about material changes. If you keep using the service after a change, you accept the new version.

Sonar is operated by the team that builds it.

Send questions, data deletion requests and publisher notices to hello@sonarmood.com.