Legal

Terms

These terms cover using blabe, the subscription and the license to run it on your Macs. They include the refund policy and the end-user license as sections below.

Last updated: October 2, 2026. Effective date: October 2, 2026.

Who provides blabe

blabe is made and sold by Marcos Montalvo, an individual (“I”, “me”). These terms apply to the blabe app for Mac, to blabe’s transcription service, to this website and to your subscription. Contact: support@blabe.dev.

Accepting these terms

By downloading, opening or paying for blabe, you agree to these terms and to the privacy policy. If you don’t agree, don’t use blabe. You must be old enough to make a binding agreement where you live. If you are using blabe for a company, you confirm you can accept these terms for it.

Who sells the subscription

Polar sells the subscription to you and is the merchant of record. Polar handles payment, tax and receipts, and Polar’s checkout buyer terms apply to your purchase. Polar’s terms cover the payment itself: payment, tax, receipts and payment disputes. These terms cover using blabe.

The free trial

For 2 days from when you click Start Free Trial, everything works. There’s no signup: you install blabe and click Start Free Trial. Each Mac is limited to one free trial, within a fair-use limit. All free trials also share a daily transcription capacity, so on a busy day trial dictation can pause until the next day starts (midnight UTC); the 2-day trial isn’t extended for that pause. You don’t need a card, and the trial never turns into a paid subscription on its own. When your trial ends, new dictation stops until you subscribe. What you've already dictated isn't affected. The trial is recorded by blabe’s transcription service, so reinstalling blabe doesn’t restart it.

The subscription

  • Price: $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year, in US dollars. Tax is calculated and shown by Polar at checkout.
  • Automatic renewal: your subscription renews automatically, at the price and interval you chose (monthly or yearly), until you cancel. Polar charges the payment method you gave.
  • Cancel anytime: you can cancel online at any time in your Polar customer portal. You don’t need to email me. Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. After that, new dictation stops until you subscribe again.
  • Renewal reminder: if you subscribe yearly, Polar emails you a reminder about 7 days before the renewal.
  • Price changes: I may change the price. I will give you at least 30 days’ notice, by email, before a new price applies to your next renewal, and you can cancel before it takes effect.
  • What’s included: every feature, for one person on up to 3 Macs, and every update while you are subscribed. Transcription is included, with no separate bill, within the fair-use monthly limit described below.

This section is also my disclosure under California’s Automatic Renewal Law (Business and Professions Code section 17600 and following).

Refunds

Try blabe free for 2 days before you subscribe, and cancel anytime to stop the next renewal. Refunds are given only where the law requires them.

If you live in the EU or UK, you may have a 14-day right of withdrawal for digital services. By starting your subscription, you ask for immediate access to blabe. Where the law still gives you a refund, you will get one.

Your legal rights as a consumer are not affected by this section. Polar may also decide a refund request under its own terms. To ask about a charge, email support@blabe.dev with your Polar order reference and no card details. Deleting blabe or deactivating a Mac doesn’t cancel billing; cancel in the Polar portal.

License to use blabe (end-user license)

If you are in the trial or have an active subscription, I give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and use blabe on up to 3 Macs that you own or control, for personal or business use. A subscription is for one person, so each person on a team needs their own. When your trial or subscription ends, new dictation stops until you subscribe.

You may not:

  • sell, rent, sublicense or share blabe, or share your license key so that more than 3 Macs use it;
  • get around the license checks, the trial, the 3-Mac limit or the fair-use limit;
  • copy or reverse engineer blabe, except where the law says you may despite this rule.

blabe, its name and its logo belong to me. You are licensed to use blabe, not sold a copy of it. You keep all rights in what you say and what you dictate; I get none of it. blabe includes open-source components under their own licenses: Sparkle (MIT License), and, within Sparkle, bsdiff 4.3 by Colin Percival (BSD 2-Clause License), sais-lite by Yuta Mori (MIT License), an Ed25519 implementation by Orson Peters (zlib License) and signature-checking code by Mark Hamlin (BSD 2-Clause License). Their full license texts are in the app under Help → Acknowledgements.

Claude, Codex, Microsoft and other names belong to their owners. blabe is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

To move blabe to another Mac, sign out in Settings → Account on the old one and sign in on the new one. If all 3 Macs are in use, free one in your Polar customer portal first.

Transcription and fair use

blabe transcribes your speech through blabe’s transcription service, which I run. You don’t need an account or API key with any other company, and transcription isn’t billed separately. blabe needs an internet connection to transcribe.

Transcription is included in your subscription within a fair-use monthly limit. The limit refreshes each month on the day of the month you subscribed; yearly plans refresh monthly too. If you reach it, new dictation pauses until it refreshes, and blabe shows the date in its settings. What you've already dictated isn't affected. The free trial has its own fair-use limit.

Use the service only through blabe, for your own dictation. Don’t abuse it, don’t use it for automated or bulk transcription, and don’t resell or share access to it. I may limit or suspend transcription for use that breaks these rules or puts the service at risk, and I’ll tell you why where I can.

Service availability

Transcription depends on blabe’s transcription service and on Microsoft’s MAI-Transcribe 2 model, which Microsoft currently lists as a public preview without a service-level agreement. I run the service on a best-effort basis and don’t offer a service-level agreement either. Transcription may be slow or unavailable at times, and the model may change or be withdrawn. I will work to restore transcription when it stops, but I am not responsible for outages of the other companies’ services it depends on. Polar’s service handles the license checks in the same way.

Using blabe responsibly

  • Transcripts can be wrong. Check what you send, especially before it goes to a coding agent that could act on it. blabe is designed not to press Return at a shell prompt, but you remain responsible for what you dictate, paste and send, and for what an agent does with it.
  • Use blabe lawfully. Get any permission the law requires before recording other people, and don’t dictate content you have no right to send for transcription.
  • Don’t use blabe to harm anyone, and don’t abuse the services it connects to.

Privacy

The privacy policy explains what blabe handles and who else handles it.

Disclaimer

I provide blabe with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, blabe is provided “as is”. I don’t promise that it will be error-free, that transcripts will be accurate, or that it will always be available.

Limit of liability

To the extent the law allows, I am not responsible for indirect or unforeseeable losses, lost profits or business losses, or losses that come from relying on a transcript or from what an agent does with dictated text. My total responsibility to you for anything related to blabe is limited to the fees you paid for it in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits responsibility that can’t be limited by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or willful misconduct, or for anything else the law doesn’t allow me to limit, and nothing here takes away your mandatory rights as a consumer.

Ending your license

You can stop anytime: cancel your subscription and delete blabe. I can end your license if you break these terms, for example by misusing license keys, the 3-Mac limit or the transcription service, and I’ll tell you why where I can. If I stop offering blabe, I will give reasonable notice where I can and handle any paid period as the law requires. Sections that by their nature continue after that, such as ownership, disclaimers and liability, continue.

Changes to these terms

I may update these terms. I will post the new version here with a new date and, for a significant change, say so at the top of this page. A change doesn’t affect a period you have already paid for. If you don’t agree to new terms, you can cancel and stop using blabe.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes go to the state or federal courts located in California. Nothing in these terms removes the mandatory consumer protections of the country where you live, including in the EU and UK. Please contact me first so I can try to fix the problem.

Contact

Marcos Montalvo, support@blabe.dev. I aim to reply within two business days. This is a goal, not a guarantee.