Terms of use

DRAFT — to be reviewed by a lawyer before launch. This text was drafted from what the software does today and has not been reviewed. It is not yet the agreement between you and us.

Last updated: 2026-09-29

These terms are the agreement between you and [to be completed] ("we", "us") for the use of Flocking: the website at https://flocking.app, the iPhone app and the Android app. By creating an account you accept them. Please also read our privacy policy, which explains what we do with your data.

1. What Flocking is, and what it is not

Flocking is a planning tool. It helps a group of people, each with a home airport, free days and a budget, find destinations they can all afford, vote on them, and agree on one.

Flocking is not a travel agent, a tour operator or an airline. We do not sell flights, hotels or packages, we do not take bookings and we do not handle payment for travel. You book and pay for your travel yourself, with an airline or a booking site, under that seller's terms.
Prices on Flocking are information, not offers. Before anybody reveals real fares, every price is an estimate from our own model, shown as a range. A real fare is a price a third-party fare provider reported at the time of the search, with its date shown. Fares change constantly; a real fare is not guaranteed to be available, or available at that price, when you go to book.
Booking links. A real fare links to the same search on Aviasales, a third-party booking site. When our partner marker is set, the link carries it, and we may earn a commission from Travelpayouts if you book through it. This costs you nothing extra and does not change which destinations or fares we show you, which follow the group's own votes and budgets.
Weather, descriptions and photographs of destinations come from third parties (Open-Meteo, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons) and are shown for information only, with their source.

2. Your account

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
One account per person. Your account is for you; do not share it or create accounts for other people.
Give accurate information and keep your password safe. You are responsible for what is done with your account until you tell us it has been compromised.
You can sign in with an email address and password, or with Apple or Google where offered.
You can close your account at any time, on the web in your profile or in the apps under You, Delete account. What happens to your data when you do is explained in our privacy policy.

3. Trips and the people in them

A trip is shared by its members. Any member may invite others, rename the trip, change its length, launch it, turn budget sharing on, and put a decided trip back to the vote. There is no owner.
Each stage of a trip runs on a clock shown in the app. When a clock runs out, the stage ends on its own: seats not taken are dropped, votes not cast are not counted, and a lock-in that nobody made takes the top of the ranking. By using a trip, you accept that it moves on without you if you do not act in time.
A trip's link can be read by anyone who has it (see the privacy policy for what they see). Share it only with the people you mean to.

4. Searches, the free search and the wallet

Planning is free. What costs money is asking a fare provider for real fares.

The free search. Each email inbox receives 1 free search for life. Variations of the same address (a plus-tag, dots in a Gmail address, or an account closed and opened again) count as the same inbox.
Paid searches. A search is priced by the questions it asks the fare provider: one question is one destination, from one departure airport, on one pair of dates. Each question costs 1.3 euro cents, and a paid search costs at least €1.00. The button shows the price before you press it, and you are never charged more than that.
Settled to what reached the provider. When the answers are in, the charge is reduced to the price of the questions actually sent to the provider. Questions another search already answered the same day are free.
Refunded searches. A search is refunded in full (the wallet credit given back, or the free search returned) if it found no fares for anybody, if the provider failed to answer more than half of it, or if every answer was one already held. A search interrupted before it finished is also refunded. Refunds for a search that found nothing, or that the provider mostly failed to answer, are limited to 3 per account in any 24 hours; after that, a search is charged as priced, and the app says so before you press.
Whoever presses pays. A search is paid from the free search or the wallet of the person who pressed it, and reveals fares for the whole trip.
The wallet holds credit in euros, whatever currency you budget in. Credit is used only to pay for searches on Flocking. It cannot be transferred to another account or exchanged for cash, except as required by law or as set out below. [to be decided by the owner: whether credit expires and, if so, after how long — the software sets no expiry; and whether unused credit is refunded when an account is closed — today it is not, and closing an account forfeits the balance.]
We may limit searches for everybody when the service's spending ceilings with its fare providers are reached. The app then says when searches are available again, and nothing is charged.

5. Topping up the wallet

On the web

Top-ups on the web are paid through Stripe, in the amounts shown. The credit added to your wallet is exactly the amount you pay. Where the checkout says so, prices include VAT. [to be confirmed by the owner and accountant: VAT registration, and turning Stripe Tax on (`STRIPE_TAX=1`), which makes the checkout and the receipt say "incl. VAT".]

Your right of withdrawal. If you are a consumer in the EU, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract without giving a reason. Wallet credit is made available to you immediately after payment. By ticking the box before paying, you ask us to make the credit available immediately and you acknowledge that you lose your right of withdrawal once the credit is supplied [to be decided by the lawyer: whether withdrawal is lost on supply of the credit, or only on the credit being used for a search, and so whether unused credit remains refundable during the 14 days]. If you did not give that request and acknowledgement, you may withdraw within 14 days of payment by writing to [not set], and we will refund the credit you have not used, by the same means of payment, within 14 days. The receipt we email you after a top-up repeats the wording you ticked and when. [Note for the lawyer: the checkout's current wording (`WITHDRAWAL_WAIVER` in packages/wire) says the right is lost once any of the credit is used for a search, and the receipt offers to refund unused credit within 14 days; align this clause with it, or change both.]

If a top-up is refunded or charged back through your bank, the credit it added is taken back from your wallet. If some of it has already been spent, your account may be held from paid searches and web top-ups until we have looked at it.

In the iPhone and Android apps

Top-ups in the apps are in-app purchases sold through Apple's App Store or Google Play, at the prices shown by the store. They are governed by Apple's or Google's terms as well as these. Refunds of in-app purchases are requested from, and decided by, Apple or Google, not us. When you ask Apple for a refund, you agree that we tell Apple whether the credit was delivered and how much of it you have used, as Apple asks sellers to. If a store refunds or reverses a purchase, the credit it added is taken back from your wallet, as above.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

break the law, or use Flocking to harass, threaten, impersonate or deceive anybody;
post content that is illegal, hateful, sexually explicit, violent, or that infringes somebody else's rights, including copyright and privacy;
put another person's personal details (such as their email address or budget) where others can see them without their permission;
use automated means to create accounts, collect data, or use searches, or try to get more free searches than you are entitled to;
probe, overload or interfere with the service or its security, or get around any limit, block or bot check;
resell or commercially exploit the service or the fares it shows without our written permission.

7. Your content

Your content is what you put into Flocking for others to see: your name and username, your profile picture, the names of your trips and the names you write on seats, and your destination notes.

You keep ownership of your content.
You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, reproduce and display your content, only as needed to run Flocking: to show it to the people it is shared with (members of your trips, your companions, and, for destination notes, everyone), and in backups. The licence ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for copies in backups until they are replaced, and except where we must keep content to handle a report or comply with the law.
Destination notes are public and shown with your first name.
You confirm that you have the right to post your content, and that it does not break these terms or the law. Only upload a profile picture you are entitled to use.

8. Reporting content, and what we do about it

If you see content on Flocking that you believe is illegal or breaks these terms, you can tell us:

with the Report button next to a picture, a name, a destination note or a trip name written by somebody else; or
by email to [not set].

Our page on how to report content explains what a notice should contain, including notices of copyright infringement.

We review every report. If we find the content illegal or in breach of these terms, we remove it or disable access to it in the least drastic way available (for example, removing the picture from the profile, hiding the note, or putting a name back to a plain one), and we email the person whose content it was a statement of reasons, explaining what we did and why and how to contest it. If you disagree with our decision, reply to that email and a person will look at it again. The reporter is told the outcome too. You may also use any out-of-court dispute settlement body certified under the Digital Services Act, or go to court.

9. Suspending and ending

You can stop using Flocking and close your account at any time.
We may suspend or close an account, remove content, or block access from an address, if the account or address is used in breach of these terms or the law, to protect the service or other people, or if we are required to. Where appropriate we will tell you why, and you can contest the decision by replying. [to be decided by the owner: the policy for repeat infringers and for closing accounts that repeatedly post illegal content.]
If we close your account for a serious breach, unused wallet credit may be forfeited [to be decided by the lawyer: whether this is permissible for consumers]. If we close Flocking altogether, we will give reasonable notice and refund unused wallet credit bought from us on the web.

10. Availability and changes to the service

We work to keep Flocking available, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or free of errors. We may pause features, such as sign-ups, real fares, top-ups or trip emails, for maintenance, security or cost reasons, and we may change or discontinue features. Fare providers and other third-party services may be unavailable or return incomplete answers; refunds for such searches are set out in section 4.

11. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for anything else that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you. If you are a consumer, you keep all the rights mandatory consumer law gives you.

Subject to that:

we are not responsible for travel you book, for the conduct, prices, availability or terms of airlines, booking sites or other third parties, or for decisions your group makes using Flocking;
we are not responsible for a fare shown on Flocking being different, or no longer available, when you come to book;
we are liable only for foreseeable loss caused by our breach of these terms, and [to be decided by the lawyer: whether and how to cap liability, e.g. at the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim].

12. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, for example when the service changes or the law requires it. We will publish the new version here with a new date, and tell you by email or in the app at least [to be decided by the owner: e.g. 30] days before a change that affects you materially takes effect. If you do not agree, you can close your account before then. Continuing to use Flocking after the change takes effect means you accept it.

13. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by [to be decided by the owner: the law of the country of establishment]. If you are a consumer living in the EU, you also keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. [to be decided by the owner: the courts with jurisdiction for other disputes.]

If you have a complaint, please write to us first at [not set]. If we cannot resolve it, you may refer it free of charge to a consumer mediator: [to be completed by the owner: the name, website and address of the consumer mediation body the business has joined, as required for consumers in France and some other EU countries]. (The EU's online dispute resolution platform closed on 20 July 2025 and is no longer available.)

14. General

If a court finds part of these terms invalid, the rest still applies.
If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.
You may not transfer your account or these terms to anybody else. We may transfer them to a business that takes over Flocking, provided your rights are not reduced.
These terms are available in English and French. [to be decided by the owner: which language prevails in case of difference; for French consumers the French version should apply.]

15. Contact

[to be completed], [to be completed], [to be completed]. Email: [not set].