Terms
The terms of a Less Boring subscription. Reading Boring is free and needs none of this.
Reading stays free
Today’s edition, every story’s own page, the email edition and the corrections are free, and always will be. Past editions on the website need a free account. Less Boring is optional: it adds what changed since yesterday, following stories, a neutral question on most stories, today’s audio edition and the weekly show, in your own private podcast feed, as the Less Boring page lists.
The price
Less Boring is $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year, in US dollars; checkout may show the price in your own currency, converted by Stripe. Payments are processed by Stripe, through Link, which acts as the merchant of record. Taxes are handled by Stripe and may be included in or added to the price, depending on where you live. You pay on Stripe’s own checkout page: your card details go to Stripe and never reach Boring. Your card statement shows LINK.COM* BORING NEWS, and receipts come from Link. Link’s support may help with questions about a payment; questions about Less Boring itself come to us.
The free trial
Your first subscription starts with 7 days free. One trial per account: a later subscription starts paid. Checkout asks for your card, and nothing is charged during the trial. If you cancel before it ends, you pay nothing. If you don’t, you’re charged the price you chose when it ends.
The free week. A new account whose address never had Less Boring gets a week of it at once, with no card, in place of the trial. It ends on its own, and nothing is charged. It comes once per address, aliases included: an account made again with it doesn’t get another. If you subscribe during it, your first charge comes when it ends. After it, you’re charged when you subscribe.
Automatic renewal
Less Boring renews automatically, every month or every year as you chose, and your card is charged at the start of each period until you cancel. If the price ever changes, we’ll email you at least 30 days before your next charge at the new price, so you can cancel first.
Cancelling
Cancel online at any time: on your account page, choose Cancel (on the monthly plan), or Manage subscription and then cancel. You keep Less Boring until the end of the period you’ve paid for, and you aren’t charged again, unless your yearly plan is refunded (below). Cancelling during the trial means you pay nothing. Deleting your account cancels your subscription at once. If anything stops you cancelling online, email boringnews.hello@gmail.com and we’ll cancel it for you.
Pausing
You can pause the monthly plan for 1, 2 or 3 months, on your account page. You can’t pause a free trial, a plan set to end, or the yearly plan. You keep Less Boring until the end of the month you’ve paid for. Then you have no Less Boring, and nothing is charged, for the months you chose. After that, your plan carries on at the same price, every month, until you cancel. You can resume sooner. Before your paid month ends, nothing is charged. After it ends, resuming charges a month at once, and your plan renews on that date each month. You can cancel at any time, paused or not.
Refunds
When you cancel, Less Boring runs to the end of the period you’ve paid for, so we don’t refund part of a period, except where the law requires it, and except the yearly plan below. If we charged you by mistake, write to boringnews.hello@gmail.com and we’ll refund it. Link’s support can also look into a payment, and in some cases may refund it within 60 days.
The yearly plan. If you cancel it within 14 days of being charged for a year (the first charge after the trial, or a renewal), including by deleting your account, we refund that charge in full, automatically, and Less Boring ends then. Free days earned by sharing Boring that moved your next charge later don’t change this: what counts is the date you were actually charged. This happens once per account; after that, a cancellation keeps Less Boring to the end of the year, and a refund is our call. Monthly plans and free trials aren’t refunded.
Check it with Boring
A free account can make 3 checks a month. Less Boring has no monthly limit, within fair use: up to 10 checks a day and 100 a month. A check that can’t be answered, or fails, isn’t counted. Checks start again on the 1st of each month, New York time. A check describes how outlets covered something. It never says whether a claim is true, and like anything AI writes, it can be wrong. What you paste isn’t stored.
Free time from sharing
When someone new signs up through your share link, you each get a week of Less Boring free, up to 12 weeks for you from sign-ups, and when they first pay for Less Boring, you each get a month. If you subscribe, we move your next charge back by that many days instead, counting from the end of the period you’ve already paid for (or the trial you’re in), so you never lose time you’ve paid for: Stripe charges you later, for a full period at your plan’s price. If your subscription isn’t renewing (it has ended, is set to end, or a payment has failed), the days are added to your Less Boring instead. Free time has no cash value and can’t be exchanged for money.
Gifts
You can buy Less Boring for someone else: 3 months for $8.97 or 12 months for $29.99, in US dollars, paid once. It doesn’t renew. We email it to them on the day you choose: today, or a date within 90 days.
They claim it with a free Boring account, from the link in that email. It can be claimed once, by whoever uses the link first, so give the link only to them. If they don’t subscribe, it adds that many months of Less Boring. If they subscribe, we move their next charge back by that many months instead, counting from the end of the period they’ve paid for. If their subscription isn’t renewing (it has ended, is set to end, is paused, or a payment has failed), the months are added to their Less Boring instead. An account with Less Boring and no end date can’t claim it.
Before it’s claimed, write to boringnews.hello@gmail.com and we’ll refund it in full. Once it’s claimed, it can’t be refunded, except where the law requires it. A gift has no cash value and can’t be exchanged for money.
In the EU and the UK
If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the law may give you 14 days from subscribing to withdraw from the contract without a reason. Link, which sells Less Boring as the merchant of record, applies these cooling-off periods where the law requires them, under the terms shown at checkout. You can also write to boringnews.hello@gmail.com within 14 days of subscribing.
Changes to these terms
If we change these terms in a way that affects your subscription, we’ll post the new terms here and email subscribers before the change applies to them.
Contact
Questions about your subscription or a payment: boringnews.hello@gmail.com. Answers to common ones are on Help and support.