Legal

Refund Policy

Ninetile is prepaid and pay-per-use. This page sets out exactly when we refund and, more often, when we do not — so you know before you top up.

Last updated 4 November 2026

• Used requests
• Deposited balance
• Failed requests
• Where we do refund
• How to ask
• Chargebacks

1. Requests that succeeded are not refundable

When a request returns a token or an answer, the service has done the work and delivered the result. That charge is final.

This applies even if you do not end up using the result:

• you changed your mind after sending the request;
• the target site rejected the token, or your own script crashed before using it;
• you sent the request by mistake, or your code retried too aggressively;
• a token expired before you used it — tokens are short-lived by design;
• an answer was wrong and you did not report it through the feedback endpoint.

We cannot know what happened on your side after we returned the result, so we cannot take your word for it that the result was unused. If you believe a specific answer was wrong, report it with the feedback endpoint and the request id; repeated verified errors are how you get credited (see section 4).

2. Deposited balance is not refundable

We cannot refund a top-up. Once balance is credited to your account, it is a prepayment against future use, not a deposit held for you.

• No cash-out. Balance cannot be withdrawn, transferred to another account, or paid out in any currency or crypto.
• It does not expire. Your balance stays on your account and works whenever you come back, so nothing is lost by topping up early.
• Unused balance is not refunded on closure. If you close your account with balance left, that balance is forfeited. Spend or plan around it — top up the amount you need, not more.
• Deposits are charged nothing extra. You get exactly what you pay for; we do not take a fee on the top-up itself.

This is why we ask you to start small. Top up what you will actually use in the next stretch of work, and add more as you go.

3. Failed requests are free — this is our refund mechanism

Rather than refunding after the fact, we simply do not charge for anything that did not work:

• No token, no charge. A solve that returns an error, times out, is cancelled, or draws a challenge we cannot solve costs nothing.
• No answer, no charge. A recognition that fails, or is refused as unsupported, costs nothing.
• Holds are released. Starting a request reserves its price; if it does not succeed the hold is released automatically, so it never silently eats your balance.
• Cancelling is free. You can cancel a request that is still open and you will not be charged.

If your balance is running out because of failures rather than successes, something on your side is misconfigured. Write to us before topping up again and we will help you find it.

4. Where we do refund or credit

We will make it right in these cases:

• You were charged for a request that did not return a result. This should never happen. Send the request id and we will credit it.
• You were charged twice for one request — a duplicate charge from a payment or retry bug.
• You paid but the balance never arrived. Common with crypto: after the network confirms, balance is credited automatically, usually within minutes. If it has not arrived after an hour, send the transaction hash.
• A verified bug on our side produced wrong output and you reported it with the request id and feedback.
• We had a prolonged outage during which you could not use the service at all, and you ask within 7 days.
• The law requires it. Nothing here removes a right you have under mandatory consumer law where you live.

Credits are applied to your Ninetile balance. We do not normally send money back out, except where the law requires it or where we choose to for a payment-level error.

5. How to ask

Write to support@ninetile.io from the address on your account, and include:

• the request id (solve_… or rec_…) or the payment transaction hash;
• the approximate time of the request or payment, in UTC;
• what you expected and what happened.

We aim to answer within 2 business days and to settle genuine billing errors within 7 days. Requests made more than 30 days after the charge are usually declined, because we no longer have the records to check them.

6. Chargebacks and abuse

Raising a chargeback instead of asking us first will get your account suspended while the dispute runs, because the amount is already reversed on our side. If you think a charge is wrong, contact us — it is faster for both of us.

We may decline a refund or suspend an account where the request pattern looks like abuse: repeated claims on requests that did succeed, a pattern of disputed payments, or accounts created to farm credits.

7. Prices

Current rates are $0.75 per 1,000 tokens and $0.30 per 1,000 recognitions, charged from your prepaid balance. Prices may change; a change never affects balance you already hold, and it is announced on the pricing section before it takes effect.

See also our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.