Terms of Service

Last updated 13 November 2026. These terms apply from 13 December 2026, and to accounts made from 13 November 2026 straight away. Until then, the previous version applies to accounts made before.

What's changing on 13 December 2026

• A limit on what we can be liable for, with your rights under the Australian Consumer Law and laws like it untouched (section 8).
• Who's responsible for what people post, and for bots and servers that aren't ours (section 8).
• The app stores' part (section 9), and what happens if Grumble moves to another business (section 12).
• How we choose what to do when the rules are broken, how fast we look at reports (section 5), what our permission to show your content covers (section 6), what stays after you delete your account (section 10), and a few general terms (section 15).
• In the Privacy Policy: what we do after a data breach or if Grumble changes hands, how long reported copies are kept, and why we're allowed to keep more of what we keep.

The app tells everyone about this change. If you don't agree, you can delete your account before then.

1. About these terms

Grumble is run by Aternix (ABN 85 475 523 046), Victoria, Australia ("we", "us"). You can reach us through our contact page or at admin@aternix.com. These terms are an agreement between you and us about using Grumble, meaning the apps, the website and the servers we run. Our Community Rules are part of these terms, and so are our Developer Terms if you build bots or apps. Our Privacy Policy explains what we keep and why.

2. Who can use Grumble

You need to be at least 13. When you sign up, you pick whether you're under 13, 13 to 15, 16 or 17, or 18 or over, and you agree to tell the truth. Picking under 13 ends sign-up. If we learn that someone under 13 has an account, we'll delete it.

Australian law sets protections for younger people, and Grumble follows them. People under 18 start with DMs from friends only, which they can change, and age-restricted channels stay closed to them. Adults can't start private conversations with anyone under 16 unless the under-16 turns on “My parent or carer is OK with adults contacting me”.

Grumble isn't offered in the UK, Brazil, Turkey, Mississippi or Tennessee, and you need to be 18 in Nebraska and 16 in Ohio, because of their laws (why). Connecting from those places, Grumble tells you so instead of letting you sign up or log in. Don't use a VPN or anything else to get around this.

3. Your account

• You sign in with your username and password. Logins never use an email address or phone number, and your password never reaches us, so we can't recover your account for you. If you forget your password, the 12 recovery words you got at sign-up set a new one. Keep your password and your words safe.
• If you sign up in Australia, the law requires an email address too, which you confirm with a code we email you. It's used only as our Privacy Policy says.
• You're responsible for what you do on your account, and for keeping your password, recovery words and any bot tokens safe.
• Don't use someone else's account without their permission, and don't sell or hand over accounts.

4. The rules

You agree to follow the Community Rules. In particular, you must not use Grumble, or let your account, server or bot be used, to ask for, look at, share or store any of the following. There's no tolerance on Grumble for objectionable content or abusive users.

Never permitted

This is what Australian law calls class 1A material. It is never allowed on Grumble, anywhere:

• child sexual exploitation material: sexual or sexualised material involving anyone under 18, real or not;
• pro-terror material: material that promotes, instructs in or recruits for terrorist acts;
• extreme crime and violence material: real material showing murder, torture, rape or other extreme violence, made or shared to promote or incite it.

Also not permitted

This is what Australian law calls class 1B material. It isn't allowed either, though talking about these subjects (in the news, history, fiction, education or harm reduction) is fine:

• crime and violence material: detailed instructions for, or promotion of, serious crime or violence;
• drug-related material: detailed instructions for making illegal drugs, or promotion of their use.

Intimate images

Never share intimate images of someone without their consent, including fake or AI-made ones, and never threaten to. If it's you in the image, or you're allowed to act for them, report it in the app or use our contact page. The image is hidden from everyone straight away while we look at it, and we remove it within 48 hours of a valid request, along with copies we can find.

Adult content and under-18s

Legal adult content is only allowed between adults who want it, as the Community Rules describe. You must never share pornography or other sexual content with anyone under 18.

If you run a server or a bot

Take reasonable steps to keep it within these terms. Remove material that breaks them when you see it or are told about it, and don't run a server or bot for anything they forbid.

5. What we can do if the rules are broken

If you break these terms, we can do any of the following. We choose what's in proportion to what happened, looking at how serious it was, its context and whether it keeps happening:

• remove or delete material, or limit who can see it;
• restrict what you can do on Grumble, for a set time;
• suspend your account for a set time;
• end this agreement and close your account for good;
• delete a server you own.

If your account, server or bot is used for child sexual exploitation material or pro-terror material, we will remove it as soon as we know about it and close the accounts involved. Where the law requires it, or someone's life or safety is at risk, we report it to the police.

How we moderate

• People on our safety team look at reports and notices and decide what to do. We don't use automated tools to judge the messages people write.
• We look at reports of the most serious harm (child abuse, terrorism, extreme violence and intimate images shared without consent) within 24 hours, reports of crime, drugs and self-harm within 3 days, and everything else within 7 days.
• A few things are automatic. Pictures we can see, such as avatars, banners, server icons, emoji and stickers, are compared as they're uploaded with the fingerprints of illegal files (such as child sexual abuse material) we've removed before, and so are the files in a message someone reports. Files in encrypted messages can't be checked as they're uploaded. Matching files are refused or removed, and our safety team is told who sent them. A search for child sexual abuse material gets a warning instead of results. An image reported as an intimate image shared without consent is hidden from everyone until our safety team decides.
• Server owners and moderators look after their own servers, under their own rules on top of ours. They may use AutoMod, which runs in members' apps, to block or flag words they choose.
• We remove terrorist content as soon as we know about it, and within an hour of a removal order from an authority in the EU.
• When we act on your message, account or server, we tell you what we did and why, in the Safety Centre or, if your account is suspended, when you try to log in. You can ask us to look again, and someone other than whoever decided will. If you reported something, we tell you what we decided, and you can ask for a review too.

6. Your content

What you post is yours. You give us permission to store, copy and back it up, and to show it to the people you share it with, only so Grumble works. If you list a server in Discover, or share a theme or cosmetic there, that includes showing it publicly. When you delete something, it's gone from Grumble, except a copy kept if someone reported it (see the Privacy Policy), a copy in a server's AutoMod alert if its moderators set one up, and our backups, which are replaced within 30 days. Direct messages, servers and calls are end-to-end encrypted, so we can't read or hear them, apart from a message someone in the conversation reports, which their app sends us.

We never use your content for advertising, sell it, or use it to train AI.

Only post what you have the right to post. If you believe something on Grumble infringes your copyright, send a notice through our contact page (you don't need an account) and we'll look into it.

7. Bots and apps

You can build bots and apps that use Grumble's API. They must follow these terms and our Developer Terms, keep their tokens secret, and only use what people choose to share with them. We can remove an app or bot that breaks these terms or puts people at risk.

8. The service

• Grumble is free. There are no paid tiers.
• We work hard to keep Grumble running and safe, but we can't promise it will always be available or free of faults, and we may change or stop features. If we ever close Grumble, we'll tell you in the app at least 30 days before, so you can download your data.
• What other people do. People are responsible for what they post and do on Grumble, and server owners for how they run their servers. Most of Grumble is end-to-end encrypted, so we can't check things before they're shared, but we act on reports (section 5). Bots, apps, links and servers that aren't ours have their own owners and terms, and we aren't responsible for them.
• Your rights, and the limit on our liability. Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law or other laws that can't be excluded, or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or gross negligence, or for anything else the law doesn't let us limit. Apart from that, and as far as the law allows: we provide Grumble as it is; we aren't liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost data, profits or opportunities; and our total liability to you for anything to do with Grumble is limited to A$100.

9. Apps from app stores

If you got a Grumble app from Apple's App Store or Google Play, that store's own terms also apply to it. Apple and Google aren't part of these terms and aren't responsible for Grumble, its support or any claim about it, so please come to us.

10. Leaving Grumble

You can delete your account at any time in the app's account settings (hand over or delete any servers you own first). Your messages, files and profile go with it, for good. A few things stay for a set time, as our Privacy Policy lists: a note of the username you signed up with and when (with the email address you confirmed, if you signed up in Australia), for two years from sign-up; copies of anything someone reported, until 90 days after the report closes; and records of what our safety team did, until two years after the end of that year. Our backups are replaced within 30 days.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When a change matters, the app tells everyone at least 30 days before it applies, this page says what's changing and when, and the version before it stays here until then. A change the law requires, or one needed to keep people safe, can apply sooner. Once a change applies, using Grumble means the new terms apply to you. If you don't agree, you can delete your account before then.

12. If Grumble changes hands

We may move Grumble, and these terms, to another business that takes it over, such as a company Aternix sets up. Your account and data would go with it, under the same Privacy Policy, and we'd tell you in the app at least 30 days before. You can delete your account before then if you'd rather.

13. The law that applies

These terms are governed by the law in force in Victoria, Australia, and the courts of Australia can hear any dispute about them. If you live somewhere whose consumer laws protect you whatever a contract says, such as the EU, you keep those protections and can bring a claim in your own country's courts.

If something goes wrong, please tell us first through our contact page, and we'll try to sort it out within 30 days. That never stops you going to a regulator or a court.

14. Questions and complaints

To report something, or complain about how Grumble keeps people safe, use the Safety Centre in the app (Settings → Safety Centre). Anyone, with or without an account, can also use our contact page to report illegal content, get intimate images taken down, send a copyright notice, appeal a suspension, ask about their data, or reach us as an authority. We acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and resolve them within 7 days. If you're not happy with how we handled a complaint, you can contact eSafety, Australia's online safety regulator, or the regulator where you live.

15. The rest of these terms

These terms, with the Community Rules (and the Developer Terms, if you build bots or apps), are the whole agreement between you and us about Grumble. If a court finds part of them can't be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later. You can't transfer your account or these terms to anyone else.