Refund & Cancellation

StoryHelm is an AI manuscript-intelligence platform for indie series authors. It reads and analyzes your work through a 61-pass analysis (61 analysis passes across 7 workflows, powered by Claude) and never writes your prose. Most of what you pay for is real AI processing. Running an analysis or a translation sends your manuscript to our servers and onward to Anthropic, PBC for processing, which consumes compute that we are billed for at the moment the work runs.

Because that work is consumed as it happens, this policy is built around honesty rather than blanket promises. We aim to be fair and generous when something has not yet been used or has genuinely failed, and clear about the cases where a charge reflects work already delivered. Nothing in this policy limits any non-waivable consumer rights you may have under the law that applies to you (see Section 8).

New accounts can start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. During the trial you can explore the product without being charged. We do not collect a card to start the trial, so there is nothing to refund if you simply let the trial lapse.

You are charged only if you choose a paid plan. The trial does not turn into a paid plan by itself: when it ends, your account moves to the free tier unless you have chosen one.

Studio, our plan for author teams, has no free trial. It is billed for a year up front when you subscribe, and Section 3's cancellation rules and Section 4's 30-day window for annual charges apply from that first payment.

You can cancel a paid plan (Writer, Author, Series, Studio) at any time from your billing settings, or by contacting [email protected]. Cancellation stops the next automatic renewal.

When you cancel, you keep access to your paid plan through the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not pro-rate or refund the unused remainder of a billing period solely because you cancelled partway through it. Your subscription then ends at the close of that period and does not renew.

If a recent subscription charge is not working out for you, contact us within the refund window for that charge and we will review a refund of the unused subscription time: 14 days for a monthly charge, and 30 days for an annual charge, because a year is a bigger decision and deserves more room to reconsider. A refund is generally available where the included analysis allotment for that period has not been substantially used, since unused subscription time has not yet consumed meaningful AI processing on our side.

Where the period's analysis has already been substantially consumed, a refund may be partial or unavailable, because the AI work those runs required has already been performed and billed to us. We handle these requests reasonably and at our discretion, and we will always tell you plainly why we reached the outcome we did.

One-time purchases include the $99 one-time Manuscript Audit and Translation Studio (one-time, per language). These are delivered services: ordering one starts real AI processing of your manuscript on our servers and through Anthropic, PBC's Claude models, which consumes compute we are charged for as the work runs.

For that reason, once the work has started or has been delivered, these purchases are generally non-refundable. We make exceptions where a refund is required by the law that applies to you, or where there has been a clear service failure on our side, for example the deliverable was never produced, was materially incomplete, or failed for a reason within our control. If something went wrong with an audit or a translation, reach out and we will make it right.

Some StoryHelm usage is metered in credits. Credits are consumed as analysis runs, and the AI processing they pay for is performed at that moment. Once a credit has been consumed by a completed run, it is non-refundable, because the work it funded has already been carried out.

Unused credits remain governed by the terms of your plan, including any expiry or carry-over rules described at purchase or in your billing settings. If a run fails for a reason within our control before it produces a result, contact [email protected] and we will restore the affected credits.

To cancel, use the billing settings in your StoryHelm account, which stops the next renewal while preserving access through the end of your paid period.

To request a refund, or if you need help cancelling, email [email protected] and tell us the account email, the charge or order in question, and a short note on what happened. We aim to respond promptly, and approved refunds are returned to the original payment method. A refund includes any tax that was part of the refunded amount, and it is returned in the currency you paid in. If your purchase was sold through Link, our reseller, you can also ask Link support for help with a charge.

Nothing in this policy reduces or removes any rights you have under the law that you cannot waive by agreement. In particular, where they apply, this includes consumer withdrawal and cancellation rights under European Union and United Kingdom law, and equivalent protections in other jurisdictions.

Where you have a statutory right to a refund or to withdraw from a purchase, that right prevails over the general rules above. This policy is governed by the State of Delaware, United States, without limiting those non-waivable protections. Questions about how a particular right applies to you can be sent to [email protected].