Terms of use
Last updated: 19 September 2026
The German version is the legally binding version.
1. Provider, scope, and access
CircleRecs is provided by Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH, Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin, Germany. Contact us at support@circlerecs.com. These terms govern use of CircleRecs. After signing in, you must explicitly accept them and confirm that you are at least 18 years old. You also need a supported Apple or Google account enabled for CircleRecs.
CircleRecs is a service for collecting, sharing, and finding personal place recommendations. Features may change, be temporarily limited, or be discontinued. There is no entitlement to access CircleRecs or permanent availability of a particular feature.
2. Account, circles, and visibility
Keep your account secure and invite only people you intend to include. Circle content and chats are visible to active members of that circle. You are responsible for invitations you create or share. Our community guidelines also apply.
A public profile and recommendations intended for it may be visible and shareable on the internet without sign-in. Review your visibility setting before publishing. Private places, Want and Pass lists, private profile areas, blocks, chats, and import previews remain private or limited to the relevant circle as indicated in the interface. Other members may follow a private profile, but following does not grant access to its private content. A profile owner can remove followers or block accounts.
3. Your content and rights
You remain responsible for recommendations, text, photos, chat messages, reactions, and other content you submit. For as long as it is stored, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to store, technically reproduce, process, display to your chosen audience, and technically adapt that content for different devices. This right is limited to operating and securing CircleRecs and providing the features you use.
Only upload content you are allowed to use. In particular, do not submit unlawful, misleading, insulting, discriminatory, threatening, privacy-invasive material or content that infringes copyright, trade marks, personality rights, or other rights. Do not publish credentials, private contact details, or sensitive information about other people.
This also applies when you pass public links, text, captions, or preview images from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or other sources through the share sheet. Public availability does not automatically give you the right to store or publish another person's content. Check the rights and the generated draft before confirming it as your own CircleRecs content.
4. Recommendations, AI, maps, and external links
Friend recommendations, opening hours, locations, map points, AI answers, and booking links may be incomplete, outdated, or wrong. CircleRecs is inspiration, not a guarantee or professional advice. Check important details with the venue or original source before travelling, booking, or spending money.
Ask and AI-assisted place capture use an AI system. The answers and editable suggestions shown by these features are generated automatically and are not editorially reviewed before display. The recommendations used remain visible as sources where available. When you paste a public Google Maps list link for import, we fetch only the publicly available list data and propose places for your confirmation. When you share a public Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube post through iOS, the supplied link and accompanying text may be used to prepare an editable place draft. AI-assisted place search may also search public web sources. See our privacy notice for more information.
Apple, Google, map services, venue websites, and future reservation partners have their own terms and privacy rules. External links do not mean that we control, endorse, or guarantee the linked content.
Optional nearby search shows up to 20 public places within 200 m straight-line distance of the confirmed search position when you request it. Device location may be approximate; with manual input, you first confirm the area. Geoapify data may be incomplete or outdated. Review your selected place before saving. Regular place search is unchanged. Older app versions may still use the separately consented AI area search without a guaranteed radius.
Explore nearby on the map shows up to 20 public places within 500 m straight-line distance of the selected map centre after separate consent. This does not guarantee a walking route, coverage, current opening hours or a personal recommendation. Ask can additionally use verified public venue facts with their source identified. Saving or recommending requires your explicit selection and review in the existing flow.
5. Exclusive Circles and Apple subscriptions
Approved creators may offer special lists, recommendations, wishes, polls, and other content described in the app through an Exclusive Circle. The included service is shown before purchase. Access is personal and may not be transferred or shared with other accounts unless Apple offers Family Sharing that CircleRecs has expressly enabled. Separate agreements with CircleRecs also apply to creators.
Access is purchased as an auto-renewable subscription through Apple's In-App Purchase system. Apple shows the price, currency, duration, and billing period before confirmation, charges your Apple Account, and renews the subscription for the selected period until you turn off auto-renewal in your Apple Account settings. Cancellation normally ends access only when the already-paid period expires. You can use the provided feature to restore purchases. Mandatory warranty, cancellation, and refund rights remain unaffected; refund requests for purchases processed by Apple are generally submitted to and handled by Apple.
Deleting your CircleRecs account does not cancel an Apple subscription. Cancel it in your Apple Account first if you want to avoid further charges. Access may end automatically following non-payment, expiry, refund, or revocation. If an Exclusive Circle is discontinued, we stop new purchases and renewals and provide already-paid access through the end of its term or another remedy required by law.
6. Acceptable use
Do not scrape CircleRecs, evade technical limits or access controls, exploit security vulnerabilities, distribute malicious code, impersonate others, manipulate reactions, harass people, or use automated access without our permission. Do not use place or profile data to monitor people, follow them in a targeted manner, or create movement profiles.
7. Notices, moderation, and appeals
You may report unlawful or rule-breaking content by emailing support@circlerecs.com. Where possible, include the exact URL or content ID, your reason, sufficient facts for assessment, your name and email address, and a statement that the information is accurate and complete to the best of your knowledge.
A human makes the final decision about reported content. We may remove content, reduce its reach, limit features, or suspend accounts temporarily or permanently where necessary to enforce these terms, comply with law, or protect users, third parties, or the service. Where legally required, we inform affected users of the main reasons and available remedies.
If you believe a moderation decision is wrong, you may appeal by emailing support@circlerecs.com with the decision and your reasons. We will review the appeal again. Knowingly false, abusive, or repetitive notices may be rejected and restricted in cases of misuse.
8. Availability and liability
We aim to keep CircleRecs useful and secure but do not promise uninterrupted availability, permanent storage, or error-free results. Do not rely on CircleRecs as the only place where you keep important information or content.
Statutory liability remains unaffected, including liability for intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body or health, fraudulent concealment of a defect, and mandatory product liability. For slightly negligent breach of essential contractual duties, liability is limited to damage that is typical and foreseeable for the contract. Liability for other slight negligence is excluded where legally permitted.
9. Changes and termination
You may stop using the service and delete your account in the app at any time. An Apple subscription must be cancelled separately in your Apple Account. We may end access for an objective reason, particularly a breach, security risk, or discontinuation of the service. Urgent protective measures may take effect immediately. Mandatory rights relating to already-paid services remain unaffected.
We will notify you in the app or by email of material changes to these terms before they take effect and state the intended date. If you do not agree, you may stop using the service and delete your account before that date. Purely technical, clarifying, or beneficial changes may take effect immediately.
10. Governing law and dispute resolution
German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, mandatory protections of the country of your habitual residence remain unaffected. Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH does not participate in voluntary dispute resolution before a German consumer arbitration board and is not legally obliged to do so.
Optional prize draw
Entry is free, voluntary, age 18+ and requires explicit registration. Before joining, you separately accept that round's rules. Signing in alone does not enter you. No purchase or subscription is required. A private profile is made public only after separate confirmation.
For one entry, all three goals must be met at the deadline: 10 different positive public place recommendations in the same city, following 5 different accounts, and membership in a free Circle with at least 4 active members including you. Your profile and recommendations must be public. Existing activity counts. You need not have created the Circle; other accounts need not enter. Blocked contacts and people who object to processing are excluded. Private places and messages are not evaluated.
One entry per person; no multiple accounts. More activity adds no entries and there is no points leaderboard. Regular community points are unchanged. The first DE/VN cash round is only for people ordinarily resident in Germany or Vietnam. At least 100 valid entrants across both countries combined are required. Below that, no draw or prizes. At 100 or more, three different winners are selected randomly, each receiving the economic value of EUR 100. An explicitly labelled test round remains without payout. The specific rules and dates show whether and when a round is open; this general description does not activate a round.
The rules and dates displayed before registration for the specific round apply. Before a cash round opens, the organizer, eligible territory, any exclusions, and contact, response and payout deadlines must be specified. Available languages do not imply worldwide eligibility. Apple does not sponsor or administer the draw.
Accepting the rules is not consent to advertising. The basis for limited eligibility checks is described in the privacy notice below. There is no public participant leaderboard. You can leave without removing your content, contacts or regular points. An authenticated export of your participation data is available.
Eligibility checks
To verify eligibility, we may process, to a limited extent, account data visible publicly or within the platform about people who do not enter the giveaway, particularly relevant followed accounts or Circle members.
Processing is solely for eligibility verification and proper operation of the giveaway, based on our legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. The data is not used for advertising or published in connection with the giveaway, and is processed only as long as necessary to verify eligibility.
Our privacy policy includes further information about the controller, data subject rights and how to object: Privacy policy.
We store registration, rules version and limited progress counts, not contact or member lists. The DE/VN round also records the rules content hash, declared country of ordinary residence and necessary winner, contact and processing status. Leaving and account deletion remove participation. Earlier v1 rounds are still deleted within six hours of their published expiry. For the DE/VN round, necessary operational data is retained until winner checks, any replacement draws and payment are completed; data no longer needed is then deleted by the cleanup process. Legally required financial, tax and legal records are retained separately and only for those purposes. No advertising use. Objections, access and other privacy rights: support@circlerecs.com or datenschutz@axelspringer.com.
Archive: earlier points challenge, not the rules of this draw