Terms & Conditions

Last updated: February 2026

These terms are governed by English law and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

1. About These Terms

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") form a legally binding agreement between you ("you", "your") and Aanil Kumar trading as Rates Goblin ("we", "us", "our").

By creating an account or using the Rates Goblin service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Acceptable Use Policy.

You must be at least 18 years of age to use the service. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you are 18 years of age or older.

If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use the service.

2. Service Description

Rates Goblin is a data organisation and analysis tool designed for construction procurement. The service helps users upload, extract, and benchmark construction quotes and cost plans.

Rates Goblin is NOT:

A professional quantity surveying service
A cost consultancy service
A provider of construction advice
A regulated service under any UK professional or financial regulatory framework

The operation of Rates Goblin does not require the operator to hold professional certifications from RICS, CIOB, or any other professional body. The service is a software tool that assists users with data organisation and analysis only.

3. Account Terms

When you create an account with Rates Goblin, you agree to the following:

You must provide accurate, complete, and up-to-date information during registration and keep your account details current.
You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your password. You must not disclose your password to any third party.
You must not share your login credentials with any other person. Accounts are personal to you.
Device limits are enforced per subscription plan: Professional plans permit a maximum of 2 devices per user (30-day device lock); Business plans permit 3 devices (14-day lock, admin override); Enterprise plans permit 5 devices (no lock).
Device locks apply. Once a device is registered to your account, it remains locked for the period specified by your plan before it can be replaced with a different device.
You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, whether or not you have authorised it.
You must notify us immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your account or any other breach of security.

4. Subscription Plans

Rates Goblin offers the following subscription plans:

4.1 Free Trial (14 Days)

All new users receive a 14-day free trial that includes Business-level features with the following limits:

15 quotes per month
15 extractions per month
100 AI queries per month
5 active cost plans
2 devices per user (14-day device lock)
Full features: Rate Intelligence, VE Opportunities, Dropbox integration, QS sign-off, priority AI

No credit card is required to start the trial. A one-time 14-day extension is available. After the trial ends, your account is automatically moved to the Professional plan. You will not lose any data.

4.2 Professional (£49/month or £470/year)

1 seat
30 quotes per month
30 extractions per month
200 AI queries per month
10 active cost plans
2 devices per user (30-day device lock, self-managed)
Basic Rate Intelligence, 3-quote comparison, NRM classification, Excel export

The Professional plan does not include: VE Opportunities, full Rate Intelligence, Dropbox integration, API export, organisation management, QS sign-off, or priority AI processing.

4.3 Business (£199/month or £1,910/year)

Up to 5 seats
150 quotes per month
150 extractions per month
1,000 AI queries per month
50 active cost plans (shared pool)
3 devices per user (14-day device lock, admin override)
Full Rate Intelligence, VE Opportunities, unlimited quote comparison
Dropbox integration, API export, organisation management, QS sign-off, priority AI

4.4 Enterprise (Custom)

Everything in Business, plus:
Unlimited quotes, extractions, AI queries, and cost plans
Unlimited seats
5 devices per user (no device lock)
Custom integrations and SLA
Dedicated onboarding and support

Enterprise pricing is tailored to your organisation's requirements. Contact us for a quote.

4.5 Top-Up Packs

Users may purchase additional usage credits ("Top-Up Packs") to supplement their monthly allowance:

AI Query Small: 50 additional AI queries for £4.99
AI Query Large: 200 additional AI queries for £14.99
Extraction Pack: 20 additional quotes and extractions for £9.99
Cost Plan Slots: 5 additional active cost plan slots for £7.99

Top-up pack credits do not expire. Credits are consumed automatically when your monthly plan allowance is exhausted, in order of purchase date (oldest first).

4.6 Cancellation and Refunds

You may cancel your subscription at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. No partial refunds are provided for unused portions of a billing period. Unused top-up pack credits are non-refundable.

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, if you are a consumer, you have a statutory right to cancel a paid subscription within 14 days of purchase. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact us.

4.7 Changes to Plans

We reserve the right to change plan features, quotas, and pricing at any time. Existing subscribers will receive at least 30 days' written notice before any changes to their plan take effect.

Trial period terms, including duration and feature availability, may be adjusted from time to time. We will provide reasonable notice of any material changes.

5. AI Processing & Data

Rates Goblin uses artificial intelligence features powered by OpenAI GPT-4o to process and analyse your data. By using AI features, you acknowledge and agree to the following:

Explicit consent: AI processing of your data will only occur after you have provided explicit consent. You may withdraw consent at any time via your account settings.
Data sent to OpenAI: When you use AI features, the following data may be sent to OpenAI for processing: extracted text from your uploaded documents, line items, and your natural language queries.
No model training: Data sent via the OpenAI API is not used by OpenAI for model training purposes.
Indicative outputs: All AI-generated outputs are indicative only. Outputs include confidence scores to help you assess reliability, but these scores are themselves estimates and should not be treated as guarantees of accuracy.
Independent verification required: You must independently verify all AI-generated outputs before relying on them for any purpose, including but not limited to financial decisions, professional advice, or commercial negotiations.
No liability for AI outputs: We are not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or suitability of any AI-generated output. You use AI features entirely at your own risk.

6. Your Data

Ownership: You retain all ownership rights in your uploaded documents, data, and any content you create within Rates Goblin.
Service licence: By using the service, you grant us a non-exclusive licence to process, store, and analyse your data for the purpose of providing, maintaining, and improving the service. This includes the creation of anonymised, aggregated analytical data as described in Section 6A below.
No selling or sharing of identifiable data: We will not sell, rent, or share your identifiable project data with third parties except as described in our Privacy Policy or as required by law. No individual project, organisation, contractor, or user can be identified from the anonymised data we create.
Your responsibility: You are responsible for ensuring that you have the legal right to upload any documents you submit to the service. You must not upload documents that you do not have permission to use or that contain content which infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party.
Data export and deletion: You can export your data at any time via Settings > Data & Privacy. You may also delete your account entirely from the same settings page. See Section 12 for details on data retention following account deletion.

For full details on how we collect, use, and protect your data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

6A. Anonymised Analytics & Service Improvement

As a core part of the service, Rates Goblin automatically creates anonymised, aggregated analytical data ("Analytical Data") from content uploaded to the platform. This processing is necessary to deliver and improve the analytics, benchmarking, and AI features that form a fundamental part of the service you subscribe to.

6A.1 What We Create

Analytical Data includes statistical patterns, aggregated cost trends, anonymised rate ranges, regional pricing averages, and other derived metrics. It does not include and cannot be used to identify:

Any individual user, organisation, or account
Any specific project, client, or site
Any named contractor or subcontractor
Any individual quote, tender, or priced document

This approach is consistent with established industry practice, including the RICS-endorsed BCIS (Building Cost Information Service) model of anonymised cost data collection, which has operated in the UK construction industry since 1961.

6A.2 Anonymisation Standard

All Analytical Data is created through irreversible anonymisation and aggregation. We apply the ICO motivated intruder test as our standard: a reasonably competent, motivated person with access to publicly available resources must not be able to re-identify any individual, project, or organisation from the Analytical Data. We periodically reassess our anonymisation processes in line with ICO guidance.

6A.3 How We Use Analytical Data

We use Analytical Data to:

Improve the accuracy of cost benchmarking and rate intelligence features
Train and refine AI models that power NRM classification, cost analysis, and other platform features
Identify regional and sector-level pricing trends
Enhance the quality and reliability of the service for all users

6A.4 Status of Analytical Data

Analytical Data is not your data, your content, or personal data within the meaning of UK GDPR (Recital 26). Once created, it constitutes a separate, anonymised dataset owned by Rates Goblin. You retain full ownership of your original uploaded documents and identifiable project data at all times.

Rates Goblin holds a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use, store, analyse, and build upon Analytical Data for the purposes described above, both during and after your use of the service. This right survives termination or expiry of your account.

6A.5 Professional Confidentiality

We recognise that quantity surveyors and other construction professionals are bound by confidentiality obligations under RICS Rules of Conduct, contractual NDAs, and other professional duties. The anonymisation process described above is designed to ensure that your use of Rates Goblin does not place you in breach of those obligations. No identifiable project pricing, client information, or contractor details are ever exposed to other users or third parties through the Analytical Data.

6B. Community Rate Benchmarking Database

In addition to the Analytical Data described in Section 6A, Rates Goblin maintains a Community Rate Benchmarking Database — a shared pool of anonymised construction rate data that powers enhanced benchmarking features visible to other users of the platform.

6B.1 Opt-In Participation

Contribution to the Community Rate Benchmarking Database requires separate, explicit consent via the dedicated benchmarking opt-in within the application. This consent is independent of your AI processing consent and your general acceptance of these Terms.

6B.2 What You Contribute

If you opt in, anonymised rate data extracted from your uploaded quotes may be added to the shared benchmarking pool. This includes line item descriptions, unit rates, quantities, NRM classifications, general project region, and project type. See our Privacy Policy (Section 3A) for the full list of what is and is not contributed.

6B.3 Anonymisation

All contributed data is anonymised before it enters the benchmarking pool, using the same standards described in Section 6A.2. No personal data, company names, contractor names, client names, or specific project details are included. Once anonymised, the data cannot be traced back to you.

6B.4 Licence to Benchmarking Data

By opting in to the Community Rate Benchmarking Database, you grant Rates Goblin a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, store, aggregate, analyse, and distribute the anonymised rate data contributed from your account for the purposes of:

Building and maintaining shared construction rate benchmarks
Providing enhanced benchmarking features to Rates Goblin users
Publishing aggregated industry rate reports and insights

For clarity: This licence applies only to the anonymised, aggregated data — not to your original uploaded documents, your account data, or any identifiable information.

6B.5 Withdrawal of Consent

You may withdraw your benchmarking consent at any time via Settings > Data & Privacy > Benchmarking. Once withdrawn, no further data from your account will be contributed to the benchmarking pool. However, data that has already been anonymised and contributed cannot be retrospectively removed, as it is no longer identifiable.

6B.6 No Obligation

You are not required to participate in the benchmarking database to use Rates Goblin. Opting out will not affect your access to core features. However, some enhanced benchmarking features that rely on the community data pool may only be available to users who have opted in.

7. Organisation / Team Accounts

If you create or join an organisation within Rates Goblin, the following additional terms apply:

Organisation owners are responsible for managing their organisation, including adding and removing team members and managing seat allocations.
Organisation admins may invite new members to join the organisation and remove existing members.
Member departure: When a member leaves an organisation, their personal data remains with them. Quotes and documents uploaded by a member are owned by that member, not the organisation, unless otherwise agreed in writing.
Compliance responsibility: Organisation owners are responsible for ensuring that all members of their organisation comply with these Terms. Any breach of these Terms by a team member may result in action against the organisation account.

8. Acceptable Use

You agree to use Rates Goblin in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy. Without limitation, you must not:

Upload malicious, corrupted, or harmful files to the service
Attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any part of the service
Use automated scrapers, bots, or crawlers to access the service
Share your account or login credentials with any other person
Use the service for any illegal, fraudulent, or unlawful purpose
Rely on AI-generated outputs as the sole basis for financial, professional, or commercial decisions without independent verification by a suitably qualified professional
Attempt to circumvent usage limits, device restrictions, or other technical controls

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account if you breach the Acceptable Use Policy. For full details, see our Acceptable Use Policy.

9. Intellectual Property

Rates Goblin, including its design, source code, documentation, branding, and all associated intellectual property, is owned by us and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, sublicense, or create derivative works based on any part of the service without our prior written consent.

Third-party trademarks: References to RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors), CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building), NRM (New Rules of Measurement), and BCIS (Building Cost Information Service) within the service and its documentation are used for descriptive purposes only. These are trademarks of their respective owners.

Rates Goblin is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by RICS, CIOB, BCIS, or any other professional body. Any references to industry standards and frameworks are for informational and descriptive purposes only.

10. Professional Disclaimer

This is a critical section. Please read it carefully.

Rates Goblin is a data organisation tool only. It does not provide:

Professional quantity surveying advice
Cost consultancy services
Construction advice of any kind

ALL outputs generated by Rates Goblin, including but not limited to AI classifications, rate comparisons, benchmarks, cost estimates, regional adjustments, and value engineering suggestions, are INDICATIVE ONLY.

All outputs MUST be independently verified by a suitably qualified professional before any reliance is placed upon them or any decision is made on the basis of them.

Data sources and limitations:

No BCIS copyrighted data is reproduced within the service.
NRM classifications use publicly available element category names only.
Building cost ranges and regional adjustment factors are Rates Goblin indicative estimates and are provided for general reference only.

We accept no liability whatsoever for any losses, damages, costs, or expenses arising directly or indirectly from reliance on the outputs of this system.

11. Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for:

Death or personal injury caused by our negligence
Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation
Any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by English law

Subject to the above, our total aggregate liability to you in respect of all claims arising out of or in connection with these Terms or your use of the service shall not exceed the greater of:

The total amount you have paid to us in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim; or
£100.

We shall not be liable to you for any:

Loss of profits (whether direct or indirect)
Loss of data (beyond our reasonable backup obligations)
Loss of business opportunity
Indirect, special, or consequential losses of any kind

The service is provided "as is" and "as available" to the fullest extent permitted by law. We make no warranties, express or implied, regarding the reliability, accuracy, availability, or fitness for purpose of the service.

12. Termination

Termination by you: You may terminate your account at any time by navigating to Settings > Data & Privacy and selecting "Delete Account".
Termination by us: We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these Terms. Where practicable, we will provide you with notice and an opportunity to remedy the breach before taking action.
Data export on termination: Following termination of your account, you will have 30 days to export your data. After 30 days, your identifiable project data, uploaded documents, and personal account information will be permanently deleted from our systems.
Anonymised data retention: Analytical Data created under Section 6A and any anonymised benchmarking data contributed under Section 6B will not be deleted, as this data is anonymised, cannot be traced back to you, and does not constitute personal data under UK GDPR. This data may be retained indefinitely to support ongoing service improvement, benchmarking accuracy, and AI model development.
Audit log retention: Audit log entries will be anonymised but retained for compliance and regulatory purposes in accordance with our data retention policy.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in the service, legal requirements, or business practices.

Where we make material changes, we will notify registered users by email at least 30 days before the changes take effect. The updated Terms will also be published on this page with a revised "Last updated" date.

Your continued use of the service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree with the changes, you should stop using the service and delete your account before the effective date.

14. Consumer Rights

If you are a consumer (as defined by UK law), nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

If you upgrade to a paid subscription plan, you have the right to cancel within 14 days of purchase under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, without giving any reason. To exercise this right, you must notify us of your decision to cancel within the 14-day cooling-off period.

If you request that the service begins during the cancellation period and you subsequently cancel, you may be required to pay for the service provided up to the point of cancellation.

15. General

Severability: If any provision of these Terms is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, unlawful, or unenforceable, that provision shall be severed from the remaining Terms, which shall continue in full force and effect.
Entire agreement: These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, and AI Disclosure, constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of the service and supersede all prior agreements and understandings.
No waiver: Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of that right or provision. Any waiver must be in writing and signed by us to be effective.
Force majeure: We shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations where such failure or delay results from circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism, government actions, power failures, internet or telecommunications failures, or third-party service outages.
Assignment: You may not assign, transfer, or sub-contract any of your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations without restriction.

16. Contact

If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us:

Name: Aanil Kumar, trading as Rates Goblin
Email: hello@ratesgoblin.ai
Address: 6 Wheelwright Close, Bushey, WD23 4UE