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Terms of Service

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These terms are an agreement between you and Vera Platforms Inc., a Delaware corporation based in Ann Arbor, Michigan (“Vera”, “we”, “us”). They cover your Vera account, the Vera emulator and launcher, the Vera website and our documentation (together, “the service”). By registering, starting a trial, subscribing or using the service, you agree to them. If you use the service for a company or other organization, you agree on its behalf and confirm you have the authority to do so. If you have a separate signed agreement with Vera, such as an Enterprise agreement, it takes priority over these terms where the two conflict.

Your account

You must be at least 18 to register. Give us accurate information and keep it up to date. Each account is for one person and comes with one license key. Don’t share your account or license key or let anyone else use them. You’re responsible for your account, your license key and everything done with them. Keep your license key private and tell us promptly through our contact form if you think someone else is using it. We may revoke and reissue a key we believe has been shared or compromised.

The emulator and plans

The emulator is software, distributed as a Docker image, that runs on your own machine and emulates cloud infrastructure services. It doesn’t connect to or change your real cloud accounts. Two self-serve plans are available:

  • Free: a subset of the emulator’s services, at no charge, for personal, educational and non-commercial use.
  • Pro: every service the emulator supports, including for commercial use, for a monthly subscription fee.

Organizations with other needs, such as larger-scale use or support for particular services, can contact us about an Enterprise arrangement, whose terms are agreed with each organization.

A supported service doesn’t include every operation or feature of the real cloud service; our documentation describes each service’s coverage and known limitations. We may add, change or remove services and features over time, and our website describes what each plan includes. If we remove a service in a way that substantially reduces what Pro includes, you may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of what you’ve prepaid for the rest of that billing period.

License

While your account is in good standing, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to install and run the emulator in object-code form, under the plan you’ve chosen.

One person per license. Each license is for the person whose account it belongs to. On Pro, you may use the emulator for your own work, including commercial work for your employer, your clients or your own company. Everyone who uses Pro needs their own account and subscription. Pro runs on the one computer your license is bound to (see License checks, activation and usage data).

Free is non-commercial. The Free plan is for personal, educational and non-commercial use only. Non-commercial use doesn’t include use by or for a business or other for-profit organization, or use to develop, train, test or support a product or service that is sold or earns revenue. Commercial use needs Pro or an Enterprise agreement.

Building and training agents. You may use the emulator to develop, train, test and evaluate your own software, models and AI agents, including agents that operate cloud infrastructure and agents or models you offer commercially (on Free, for non-commercial purposes only). What you build with the emulator is yours, and so are the results you get from it, such as logs, trajectories, scores and evaluation results. This applies even where what you build competes with products Vera offers, including Vera’s own agents.

You may not, and may not let anyone else:

  • use the Free plan for any commercial purpose;
  • copy, sell, rent, lease, sublicense or redistribute the emulator, except for copies you need to run it as licensed;
  • make the emulator available to others, for example as a hosted or managed service, or as training environments, evaluations or benchmarks in which other people’s software uses it, without a separate written agreement with Vera;
  • share an account or license key, or use the emulator beyond your plan or our Fair Usage Policy;
  • reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the emulator, except where the law allows this despite this restriction;
  • remove, disable or get around its license checks or plan limits;
  • use the emulator, or data it produces, to build, train or improve a cloud emulator, a cloud emulation service or model, or any other product meant to reproduce or substitute for the emulator. This is the only kind of competing product these terms restrict;
  • use the service in a way that breaks the law, infringes others’ rights or harms others.

We keep all rights in the service that these terms don’t expressly grant you.

Fair usage

Pro is priced for one person’s development, testing and agent work on their own computer. Shared use, CI pipelines on shared or short-lived machines, and large-scale use, such as clusters or large reinforcement-learning, training or evaluation runs, need an Enterprise agreement. Our Fair Usage Policy explains what each plan covers. If your use goes beyond your plan, we’ll contact you first. If you don’t reduce it or move to a suitable plan within 14 days, we may limit or suspend the use that goes beyond it.

Free trial and billing

Pro starts with a free trial of 14 days, which begins when you complete checkout and is available once per person and per payment card. You add a payment card at checkout. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, your subscription becomes a paid Pro subscription when the trial ends, and you’re charged the monthly price shown at checkout, then again each month until you cancel. We’ll email you before your trial ends. Payments are processed by Stripe, and by subscribing you also agree to Stripe’s terms for that payment.

If a payment fails, Pro stays available for three days from the end of your trial or paid period while the payment is retried; after that your account moves to the Free plan until the payment goes through. If the payment still fails after the final retry, the subscription is cancelled.

You can cancel at any time in the billing portal or through our contact form. Cancelling stops future charges, and Pro stays available until the end of your trial or the period you’ve already paid for. Fees are non-refundable, except as these terms state or where the law requires otherwise. Prices don’t include taxes, which are added where they apply.

We may change Pro’s price for future billing periods. We’ll email you between 7 and 30 days before a new price first applies to you, and you can cancel before it takes effect. Each year we’ll also send Pro subscribers a reminder of the price, how often you’re charged and how to cancel.

License checks, activation and usage data

Pro is activated with the Vera launcher and needs an internet connection when the emulator starts. The first activation binds your license to that computer: the launcher sends a device fingerprint, which we store with your license so we can recognize the computer and manage activation. Pro works only on the computer your license is bound to. To move your license to another computer, contact us.

While Pro runs, the emulator renews its license with Vera at least once a day, sending your license key. If it can’t reach us when it starts or when its license needs renewing, it keeps running with the Free plan’s services until it can.

The emulator also sends usage data, such as which services and operations are called, how often, and the error messages it returns to requests it rejects. On Free, usage data is part of the plan and can’t be turned off. On Pro it’s on by default, and you can turn it off by setting VERA_DISABLE_EVENTS=1. Usage data doesn’t include request parameters or bodies, the contents of the resources you create, your code or the data you store in the emulator. Error messages can repeat names or values from a request, such as the name you gave a resource, so don’t use personal information or secrets as resource names. Our Privacy Policy lists everything we collect.

We use this information to verify licenses, enforce our plans and these terms, support you, and operate and improve the service. We may also use it, in aggregated or de-identified form, for analytics and to develop and train Vera’s own models and agents. Vera owns aggregated and de-identified usage data.

Updates and preview features

We release updates to the emulator and launcher. Install them when you can: we may stop supporting older versions, and older versions may stop activating Pro. Features we label as preview or beta are provided as is, for testing, and may change or be removed at any time.

Support

On Free, support is our documentation and our community Slack. On Pro, you can also reach us through our contact form, and we’ll make reasonable efforts to help, without a guaranteed response time. Enterprise support is set by each Enterprise agreement.

Your content and feedback

What you run in the emulator stays on your machine, and you keep all rights to your code, configurations and data, and to the agents and models you build or train with it. If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them for any purpose without any obligation to you.

Confidentiality

The emulator’s non-public code and internals, and any non-public pricing or product information we share with you, are Vera’s confidential information. Use it only to exercise your rights under these terms, protect it with at least reasonable care, and don’t disclose it except where the law requires, after telling us where the law allows. This doesn’t cover information that is or becomes public through no fault of yours, that you already knew or developed independently, or that you receive lawfully from someone else.

Open-source components

The emulator includes open-source components, each governed by its own license. Where an open-source license gives you rights that conflict with these terms, that license prevails for that component.

Third-party services and trademarks

The emulator works with third-party tools, such as cloud providers’ command-line tools and SDKs and Terraform, which are governed by their own terms. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are trademarks of their respective owners. Vera isn’t affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by them.

Disclaimers

The emulator approximates the behavior of third-party cloud services. It may differ from them, and results you get in the emulator don’t guarantee the same results in a real cloud. You’re responsible for testing anything, including any agent, before you use it on real infrastructure, and for what it does there.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, to the fullest extent the law allows. We don’t warrant that the service will be accurate, uninterrupted or error-free.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Vera won’t be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from or related to the service or these terms, even if we were told they were possible. Our total liability for all claims related to the service or these terms is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the service in the 12 months before the claim arose and 100 US dollars. Some jurisdictions don’t allow some of these limits, so they may not apply to you.

Indemnification

You’ll defend, indemnify and hold harmless Vera and its officers, directors, employees and agents against any third-party claim, and the resulting losses, damages and reasonable costs (including attorneys’ fees), arising from your breach of these terms, your use of the service in violation of the law or others’ rights, or software, models or agents you build, train or run with the emulator, including their use on real infrastructure. We’ll tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control its defense. You may not settle a claim in a way that imposes obligations on Vera without our written consent.

Suspension and termination

You can stop using the service and close your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms, if your use creates a security or legal risk, or if the law requires it. We’ll tell you when we reasonably can and, where the problem can be fixed, give you a chance to fix it first.

We may discontinue the service, a plan or the Free plan with at least 30 days’ notice. If we discontinue Pro, we’ll refund what you’ve prepaid for the period after it ends.

When your access ends, your license ends, and you must stop using the emulator and delete your copies of it. The sections on the license’s restrictions, confidentiality, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, export controls and governing law and disputes continue after your access ends, as does any fee you owe.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For a material change, we’ll email registered users and update the date at the top at least 30 days before it takes effect; for Pro subscribers, it applies from your next billing period after that notice. If you don’t agree, you can cancel or close your account before it applies to you. If you keep using the service after it takes effect, you accept the updated terms.

Export controls and sanctions

You’ll comply with US and other applicable export-control and sanctions laws. You confirm that you aren’t located in, or organized under the laws of, a country or region subject to comprehensive US sanctions, and that you aren’t on, or owned or controlled by anyone on, a US government restricted-party list. You won’t export, re-export or give access to the service in violation of those laws.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before starting a lawsuit, each side will try to resolve the dispute informally for at least 30 days after giving the other written notice. Any dispute related to these terms or the service will be heard only in the state or federal courts located in Washtenaw County, Michigan, and you and Vera consent to their jurisdiction. Either side may seek urgent injunctive relief in any competent court to protect its intellectual property or confidential information.

To the extent the law allows, you and Vera each waive the right to a jury trial in any dispute related to these terms or the service.

General

  • Entire agreement: these terms, together with the policies they link to, are the whole agreement between you and Vera about the service, subject to any separate signed agreement described at the top.
  • Assignment: you may not assign or transfer these terms without our written consent. We may assign them as part of a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.
  • Severability and waiver: if any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Not enforcing a right isn’t a waiver of it.
  • Force majeure: neither side is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control, except for payment obligations.
  • Notices: we’ll send notices to the email address on your account, and you agree to receive communications from us electronically. Send legal notices to us through our contact form, marked “Legal notice”.
  • Relationship: you and Vera are independent parties. These terms create no partnership, agency or employment relationship, and no third-party beneficiaries.
  • US government users: the emulator is “commercial computer software” and its documentation is “commercial computer software documentation”. Government users receive only the rights in these terms, under FAR 12.212 and DFARS 227.7202.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Reach us through our contact form.