Terms of Service

Last updated 6 September 2026

RunCloud9 is provided by its operator ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account, signing in (email and password, Google, GitHub, or another method we offer), or using RunCloud9, you agree to these terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old, or the minimum age required to use online services in your country, whichever is higher. If you use RunCloud9 on behalf of an organization, you confirm you have authority to bind that organization to these terms.

Accounts

Do not share credentials or create extra accounts to evade usage limits, multiply free sessions, or automate signups. We may require a verified email before you deploy labs.

You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your password secure. Tell us promptly through the contact method in the Contact section if you believe your account was accessed without permission.

We may suspend or close accounts that farm free capacity, evade limits, threaten cluster stability, or otherwise abuse the service.

The service

RunCloud9 is an educational and experimental platform for learning distributed systems. We provision short-lived lab environments on shared cloud infrastructure. Features, limits, and availability may change without notice.

Paid plans may be offered later. Today, use is subject to the session and feature limits shown in the product.

There is no service-level agreement. Sessions may fail, queue, or end early for capacity, maintenance, abuse, or technical problems.

RunCloud9 is not a general-purpose hosting provider. Do not rely on it for production, mission-critical, safety-critical, financial, healthcare, emergency-response, or other high-consequence workloads.

Your workloads

You are solely responsible for the designs, code, configurations, credentials, data, requests, network traffic, and other materials you introduce into or cause to be processed through the service.

We do not guarantee that your workloads will be secure, correct, available, durable, or fit for any particular purpose. You are responsible for reviewing what you deploy and for any outcomes in your lab sessions.

Acceptable use

Use RunCloud9 only for lawful learning and architecture experimentation. You must not use the service to:

Attack or probe: disrupt shared infrastructure, probe other users' sessions, scan or attack systems you do not own or control, or run denial-of-service attacks outside provided load tools.
Malware and abuse: upload or run malware, ransomware, credential harvesters, phishing pages, botnets, spam infrastructure, or tools intended to evade security controls.
Resource abuse: mine cryptocurrency, run persistent hosting, consume disproportionate resources, or use labs as a proxy or anonymization service.
Illegal or harmful content: store or distribute illegal content, infringe others' intellectual property, or process regulated data (such as health or payment card data) unless you have a lawful basis and we have agreed in writing.
Limit evasion: circumvent quotas, access controls, or technical restrictions.

Secrets and credentials

Do not place production secrets, live API keys, or credentials you are not authorized to use into lab workloads unless you accept the risk that they may be exposed in a shared learning environment.

You are responsible for rotating or revoking any credentials you expose. We do not guarantee confidentiality of secrets you choose to store in session configurations or designs.

Your content

You retain ownership of designs you create. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide license to host, store, transmit, display, and process your designs only as needed to operate, secure, and support the service. This license ends when we no longer need it to operate the service, subject to backup and legal retention requirements.

Template presets, platform software, and our branding remain our property or our licensors'. You may not copy, reverse engineer, or resell the service except as these terms allow.

Intellectual property complaints

If you believe content on RunCloud9 infringes your rights, contact us using the method in the Contact section with enough detail for us to locate the material and verify your claim. We may remove content or suspend accounts that repeatedly infringe others' rights.

Third-party services

RunCloud9 depends on third-party infrastructure and services (including cloud providers, authentication, analytics, and error monitoring). Those providers have their own terms and may experience outages or policy changes outside our control. We are not responsible for failures attributable solely to third parties.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you violate these terms, create a security risk, engage in fraud or illegal activity, receive a valid legal request, or if we must protect the service or other users.

When a session ends, live cluster resources are destroyed. When an account is closed, we may retain account and deployment history for a period described in our Privacy Policy, then delete or anonymize it subject to legal obligations.

Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

METRICS, SIMULATIONS, AND LAB BEHAVIOR ARE DIRECTIONAL AND FOR LEARNING ONLY. THEY ARE NOT CERTIFICATION-GRADE OR SUITABLE FOR PRODUCTION DECISIONS.

Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS (US

00).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations. In those cases, our liability is limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the operator of RunCloud9 from claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your content, your workloads, your use of the service, or your violation of these terms or applicable law.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws applicable to the operator of RunCloud9, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts with appropriate jurisdiction may hear disputes arising from these terms, except where mandatory law in your country requires otherwise.

Changes

We may update these terms. We will post the revised version on this page and update the "Last updated" date. For material changes, we may also notify you by email or in-product notice before the effective date. Continued use after changes take effect constitutes acceptance.

General

These terms and our Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the service. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not transfer your account without our consent. We may assign these terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, agency, or employment relationship.

Contact

For questions about these terms, privacy requests, account deletion, or intellectual property complaints, contact us through the Discord server linked in the website footer. Include the email address on your RunCloud9 account so we can verify your request.