Terms of service

Last updated November 1, 2026. These terms are an agreement between you and Panic (“Panic”, “we”, “us”). By creating an account or using Panic you agree to them and to the Privacy policy. If you don’t agree, don’t use Panic.

PLEASE READ “DISPUTES” BELOW. IT SAYS THAT MOST DISPUTES BETWEEN YOU AND US WILL BE DECIDED BY AN ARBITRATOR, NOT A JUDGE OR JURY, AND ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS, NOT IN A CLASS ACTION. YOU CAN OPT OUT WITHIN 30 DAYS OF ACCEPTING THESE TERMS.

Panic is not an emergency service

Panic alerts the friends you choose. It does not contact 911, police, fire or ambulance for you, and nobody at Panic watches your check-ins or alarms or responds to them. Panic is not a monitoring service, a medical alert device or a security company. If you turn on sharing alarms with police or security near you, that is still not a substitute for calling 911, and they decide for themselves whether and how to respond. If you are in danger, call 911.

Panic depends on things we don’t control: your phone, its battery, signal, settings and permissions, the browser or app staying open, the internet, phone carriers, email providers, and the companies that send our texts, calls and emails. Messages and alarms can be delayed, filtered as spam, or fail. Your friends may not see, read or act on them. Don’t rely on Panic as your only way to stay safe.

Panic is new

Panic is a young service and we are still improving it, including with early customers. Features may change, be added or be removed, and some may have mistakes. Test it with your friends before you need it (a short check-in you let run out shows you exactly what they receive), and tell us about anything that doesn’t work as described.

Your account

You must be 13 or older. If you’re under 18, you need a parent or guardian’s permission, and they agree to these terms for you.
Panic is offered for use in the United States. Texts and calls are sent to US phone numbers.
Give accurate information, keep your password, PIN and emergency code private, and tell us at once if you think someone else is using your account.
You’re responsible for what happens in your account, and for keeping your friends list, phone number and settings up to date.
If an organization (such as your employer or school) provides your plan, these terms are still between you and us. The organization can end your seat; you can then choose your own plan.

Your friends and text messages

Only add people who have agreed to be your safety contacts and to receive texts, emails and automated calls from Panic about you. You confirm that each friend you add has agreed. Tell them about Panic; the app can send them a heads-up when you add them so that a later alarm isn’t mistaken for spam.

Text message program. Panic sends texts and automated calls to the friends you add, only about you: the heads-up, alarms, emergency-code warnings, all-clears, and updates and links you choose to send. Message frequency varies; most people get none. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop texts, or HELP for help. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. A friend who replies STOP may no longer get texts from Panic, including alarms, until they reply START (the texting provider enforces this); alarms still reach them by email if they have one.

Your friends have no duty to you through Panic. We are not responsible for whether or how they respond, or for what they do with what they receive.

Using Panic fairly

Don’t use Panic to:

send spam, prank or false alarms on purpose, or messages to people who didn’t agree to them;
cause a false report to police, security or emergency services;
harass, stalk, threaten or track anyone without their knowledge, or add someone as a “friend” to watch them;
record anyone where the law doesn’t allow it;
break the law, or upload content you don’t have the right to share;
attack, overload, scrape or reverse-engineer the service, or get around its limits or fair-use rules.

We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules, or that we reasonably believe put others at risk, with or without notice. A suspended account can still end a check-in that’s already running.

Plans and payments

Panic is a paid service. Plans are billed monthly: Basic costs $6.99 a month, Pro $14.99, Family $22.99 and Family Plus $34.99 (US dollars, plus any tax). Plus is no longer sold; anyone still on it has Pro’s features at the price they signed up for. You can switch plans any time; the difference is charged or credited right away.
Each plan includes a number of friends, everyday texts and emails, and videos, shown on the plan page; texts, emails and videos are counted over the last 30 days, and a family plan shares one allowance. We email whoever pays when 80% and 100% of everyday texts or emails are used. When they run out, everyday messages (updates, links, place alerts) go by email instead or aren’t sent. You can buy more texts any time.
Alarms never use your allowance and are never stopped by it. They are subject to the fair-use rules below.
New accounts may get a 3-day free trial with its own limits, once per person. When it ends, your account is paused until you choose a plan: a check-in already running can still be finished, and the panic button still saves an emergency to your history but doesn’t alert your friends. We don’t charge you without asking.
If an account never chooses a plan, we delete it, with its friends list and history, 14 days after sign-up. We email a reminder before we do.
Paid plans renew automatically each month until you cancel. Cancel any time in Settings → Your plan → Manage; you keep your plan until the end of the month you paid for. By choosing a plan you authorize us (through Stripe) to charge your payment method each month until you cancel.
Payments are non-refundable except where the law requires, but if something went wrong, email us and we’ll make it right.
If we change prices, we’ll tell you at least 30 days before your next renewal; you can cancel before then.
Gift codes, extra texts and free time from invites can’t be exchanged for cash.

Fair use of alarms

Every alarm reaches every friend you added. Because texts and calls cost money and can be abused, fair-use rules decide how an alarm is sent, never whether: each alarm texts (and, on plans with calls, calls) a limited number of your first friends and emails the rest; after a number of alarms in a day, alarms skip automated calls; and after more alarms in a day or in 30 days, alarms go by email, except to friends with no email address, who still get a text. The current numbers are on the pricing page and in Settings → Texts and messages. We may change them; we will never change them so that an alarm isn’t sent at all.

Recording and the law

Panic can record sound and video: when you choose to, when an alarm goes off (if you turned that on), and on walks (if you turned that on). Some states, and some countries, require everyone in a conversation to agree before it is recorded. Others allow it if one person agrees. Laws also differ for private places, and for video.

States that require everyone’s consent include California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington, and in some situations Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada and Oregon (this list may change and other countries have their own rules).

You alone are responsible for every recording you make with Panic: for telling the people you record, and for getting their consent wherever the law requires it. You confirmed this when you created your account. Panic, its owners and its staff are not responsible for your recordings or for whether you had the consent you needed, and you agree to cover any claim against us that arises from your recordings. Panic doesn’t know who is nearby or what they agreed to. If you’re not sure, tell people you’re recording, or turn automatic recording off in Settings → Check-in defaults.

Location and missing persons

If you let friends see your location in their Panic app (“Always” or “Only when I push”), they see your latest location while your phone is sending it, and only after they accept an invite sent to their own phone or email. You can change or stop this at any time.

You agree that if a public safety agency tells us you are missing, we may share your location with that agency for a limited time, as described in the Privacy policy (“Missing persons”), including asking the Panic app on your phone to send its location while it is open. Panic is not a tracking service and can’t guarantee your location will be available or accurate.

Police, campus and venue security

If you choose to share your alarms with police or security near you, or join an organization that does, they are independent of us. We don’t control whether they see an alarm, how quickly, or what they do. Sharing is not a request for emergency services and not a substitute for calling 911.

AI features

Some features use artificial intelligence (AI) from outside providers named in the Privacy policy: filling in a plan from one sentence, the short alarm summary for your friends, the practice fake call, translating alerts for friends who speak another language, reading a license plate from a photo, and writing out voice notes as text. These are marked in the app where they appear.

AI can be wrong. It may misread a plate, mishear a voice note, leave something out of a summary or get a translation wrong. Always check what it fills in, and don’t rely on AI output alone in an emergency: the original recordings, photos and details stay available to your friends, and in danger you should call 911. AI never decides whether an alarm goes off or who is alerted.

We may turn AI features off for everyone at any time; Panic works without them.

Quick ways to start an alarm

The panic shortcut link (for Siri, Back Tap, the Action Button or a home-screen shortcut) starts your alarm for anyone who opens it, so keep it private, and make a new one in Settings if you think someone else has it. “Shake or triple-tap for help” and the shortcut’s countdown can be cancelled for a few seconds; after that, your friends are alerted as with the panic button. Turn these off if they go off by accident. The emergency code is designed to look like a normal PIN on your screen, but we can’t promise that nobody will notice it was used.

Other services we rely on

If you connect Discord, X or Mastodon, Panic posts your alarms and all-clears there (and, if you choose, an alarm’s photos, voice notes and videos to Discord). You decide who can see them on that service; once posted, they follow that service’s own terms and stay there even after Panic deletes its copy. Uber is used only to read the trip you’re on when you ask. Each service can change or stop what it allows, so these connections may not always work.

Panic also relies on other companies (named in the Privacy policy) to host the service and send texts, calls and emails. They are not our agents, and we are not responsible for their outages, delays or mistakes.

Your content

What you write and record stays yours. You let us store it, process it (for example, converting video so it plays on every phone) and show it to the people the app is designed to show it to, only to run Panic. Panic is not a storage service: recordings and history are deleted as described in the Privacy policy, and can be lost. Keep your own copy of anything you need, for example from Settings → Your data. If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.

Changes and ending

We may improve, change or stop parts of Panic. If we change these terms in a way that matters, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect; using Panic after that means you accept the new terms. You can stop using Panic and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your account as described above, or if we stop offering Panic, with notice where we can. The sections on plans already paid for, recordings, content, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and disputes still apply after your account ends.

No warranties

PANIC IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE MAKE NO PROMISES OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DON’T PROMISE THAT PANIC WILL KEEP YOU SAFE, PREVENT ANY HARM, ALWAYS WORK, BE ERROR-FREE OR SECURE, OR SEND, DELIVER OR RECEIVE ANY ALARM, MESSAGE, CALL, LOCATION OR RECORDING, ON TIME OR AT ALL.

Your safety is your responsibility

You use Panic at your own risk. You understand that Panic is a tool to tell people you choose that you may need help; it can fail for many reasons, and it can’t stop anything from happening to you. To the fullest extent the law allows, you take on all risks of using Panic and of relying on it, and you release Panic, its owners, staff and providers from claims arising from an alarm, message, call or location that was delayed, not sent, not delivered or not acted on.

Limits on our liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS: (1) Panic, ITS OWNERS, STAFF AND PROVIDERS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY PERSONAL INJURY, DEATH, PROPERTY DAMAGE OR LOSS OF DATA, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF PANIC OR ANY FAILURE OR DELAY IN SENDING OR RECEIVING AN ALARM, MESSAGE, CALL, LOCATION OR RECORDING, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD IT WAS POSSIBLE; AND (2) OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO PANIC IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF WHAT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR $100. These limits apply whatever the legal theory (contract, negligence, product liability or otherwise). Some places don’t allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you; in that case our liability is limited as far as the law there allows.

Covering our costs (indemnity)

You agree to defend and cover Panic, its owners and staff against claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) brought by anyone else that arise from: your recordings; the friends you add and the messages sent to them at your request; your content; your misuse of Panic; or your breaking these terms or the law.

Disputes

Talk to us first. Before starting any claim, email us at [email protected] with your name, what happened and what you want. We’ll try to resolve it within 60 days.

Individual arbitration. If we can’t resolve it, you and we agree that any dispute about Panic or these terms will be decided by binding individual arbitration under the American Arbitration Association’s Consumer Arbitration Rules, not in court, except that either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court, and either of us may ask a court to stop infringement or misuse of the service. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. We’ll pay the filing and arbitrator fees the AAA rules require a business to pay. The arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could.

No class actions or juries. YOU AND WE EACH GIVE UP THE RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND TO TAKE PART IN A CLASS, COLLECTIVE OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. Claims can only be brought individually. If many similar claims are filed at once, they may be administered in batches under the AAA’s mass-arbitration rules.

Opting out. You can opt out of arbitration by emailing [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting these terms, with your name, account email and “I opt out of arbitration”. Opting out doesn’t affect the rest of these terms.

Time limit. To the extent the law allows, any claim must be brought within one year after it arose, or it is permanently barred.

If the class-action waiver is found unenforceable for a claim, that claim goes to the courts named below, not to arbitration.

The law that applies

These terms are governed by the laws of Kentucky, USA (and, for arbitration, the Federal Arbitration Act), without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Anything not decided by arbitration or small claims court goes to the state or federal courts in Kentucky, and you and we agree to their jurisdiction, except where your local consumer law says otherwise.

The rest

These terms and the Privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Panic. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce something right away, we haven’t waived it. You can’t transfer your account or these terms; we may transfer them, for example if the business is sold. We aren’t responsible for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages of carriers, providers or the internet, natural disasters or attacks. You agree to receive notices from us electronically, in the app or by email.

Contact

Panic · [company address not set] · [email protected]