Terms of Use

What these terms cover

This page is our agreement with you about using Hanzi Sprout (Chinese name: 芽芽学汉字; “we”, “us”). It works together with our privacy note and our pricing page: the privacy note says how we handle data, the pricing page says what you buy, for how much, and how refunds work, and this page says how you may and may not use the site.

By continuing to use the site or by completing a payment, you confirm that you have read and agree to this page. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

This page is the English rendering of our terms of use, provided for readers of English. Both say the same thing; the Chinese version is the original. If anything here reads as unclear, write to support@hanzisprout.com and we will explain it.

How you may use it (family licence)

• Watch it at home, as often as you like — play the character animations and pronunciation audio for your child and your household, with no limit on how many times.
• Keep using it on your next device — sign in and your progress follows the account, or use the recovery code from your purchase to restore the full version on a new device.
• Keep your own progress notes — mark “Recognized” on the page as a note to yourself while reading with your child.
• One parent, one household — this licence is for a single family. If you are a teacher, a school or a class and would like to use it, please write to us first.

How you may not use it

• No reselling, renting or redistributing — whether that is downloading the videos to give to someone else, sharing the recovery code, or re-uploading the whole set to cloud storage, a group chat, a video platform or another website.
• No republishing as your own content — do not edit, splice or re-voice our animations and publish or sell the result as your own work.
• No training AI models on it — do not feed our videos, audio or text into a model for training, fine-tuning or data distillation.
• No bypassing payment — do not crack or forge recovery codes or access, and do not use technical means to reach paid content you have not bought.
• No bulk scraping — do not use scripts or tools to download the content in bulk.

If we find any of the above, we may end the account or the access involved, without a refund. In serious cases we reserve the right to pursue the matter legally.

Who owns the content

The character animations, pronunciation audio, page copy and design on this site belong to us or to the relevant rights holders. Some of the content has been registered for copyright. What you pay for is a limited family licence to use it — not ownership, copyright or any trademark in it. Nothing in these terms transfers any copyright to you.

“Hanzi Sprout”, “芽芽学汉字” and the related marks belong to us.

What you are actually buying (scope of access)

The one-time payment unlocks the animation videos and pronunciation audio of this character library, including:

• every character already live at the time you order (currently 122);
• and characters added to this character library afterwards — those are included too, with no further payment, and buyers keep the price they paid even if the early-bird price rises later.

Not included are the following. They would be separate new products or services, priced and described on their own if they are ever released, and they are outside what this purchase commits us to:

• comics, picture books, stories and other formats;
• AI features such as interactive or question-answering tools;
• structured courses, teacher services or learning reports;
• a separate app or mini-program, or any other product line.

In one sentence: this purchase covers “the videos in this library, including characters added to it later”, not “everything Hanzi Sprout may ever release”.

Price and payment

The current price, what is included and how to pay are on the pricing page. Payment is a one-time PayPal payment, not a subscription, and nothing renews. What we receive from PayPal is the order number, the amount and your payment email; we never see or store your card number, bank account or PayPal password.

The price may change as the library grows. A change only affects orders placed after it, never the access and price you already bought.

Refunds

If it is not right for you, use the refund form on the pricing page within 14 days of payment. No reason needed. Once we have checked it, the full amount goes back through PayPal; how long it takes to appear is up to PayPal, usually a few working days.

When the refund is complete, the full-version access ends and the recovery code stops working. Misuse that has already happened (see “How you may not use it” above) is not covered by a refund.

Accounts and recovery codes

• Signing in is optional. The free part works without an account.
• Please keep your recovery code safe. It is shown once, and we also send it to your payment email. It is effectively the key to your access — treat it like a password and do not share it publicly.
• If the code leaks and someone else uses your access, or if you lose it, write to support@hanzisprout.com as soon as you can. Once we have checked your payment details, we will sort it out.
• Please do not lend or sell your account or recovery code to anyone else — that is one of the “may not” items above.

What we promise and what we do not

We promise to make the animations clear, keep the site usable, handle payments and refunds properly, and never collect information about your child.

We do not promise that your child will recognize a character after watching, or how many characters they will know in how long, or any particular literacy level, speed or outcome. These animations are a way of spending time together in which a character is seen before it is met — they are not an assessment tool, and they do not replace kindergarten, school or a structured Chinese course. The “Recognized” mark on the page is the parent’s own note, not a test result.

We also cannot promise the service will never be interrupted. Network problems, our hosting provider, or a third party such as PayPal or our mail service can occasionally make the site or the payment briefly unavailable; we will restore it as quickly as we can.

Children’s use

This site is designed to be used by a parent with their child. Please use it together with your child, and let the parent decide how long and which characters. We do not create child accounts, and we never collect a child’s name, birthday, photo, recording or school.

Changes to these terms

We may update this page — for example when the library grows, when a new feature arrives, or when the law requires it. If something material changes, we update the version number and effective date above. A change never applies retroactively to the scope of access you already bought.