Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

Tiermaps is a free online chart maker at tiermaps.com, operated by The Chart Maker ("we", "us", "our"). These Terms of Service (the "Terms") cover your use of the site, the editors, the charts you publish through them, and every other feature we offer at that address.

Four other pages are part of these Terms and are binding in the same way: the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, the Community Guidelines, and the Copyright and Takedown Policy.

By using the site you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.

2. Who may use the site

You must be at least 13 years old to use Tiermaps. If you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you must be at least 16 years old.

If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the site only with the agreement of a parent or guardian, who accepts these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of the site.

You also confirm that no law bars you from using the site, and that we have not previously suspended or banned you.

3. What the service does

Tiermaps lets you build charts (tier lists, alignment charts, maps, venn diagrams, compasses, brackets, freeform charts, and the other formats the site offers) in your browser, export them as image files, and optionally publish them to a public page on the site where other people can view, react to, and remix them.

Building a chart, editing it, exporting it as an image, and saving it so you can come back to it later all work without an account. Publishing does require one, whether you publish a chart or a template, because publishing is what puts your work on a public page under your name and gives other people the right to remix it. The service is free to use and is paid for by advertising.

We may change, add, or remove features at any time, and we may suspend or discontinue the service. Where a change materially reduces what you can do with charts you have already published, we will try to give reasonable notice.

4. Accounts, anonymous use, and edit links

You need an account to publish. Everything else, including building a chart, editing it, exporting an image, and saving it to come back to later, works without signing in.

You sign in with a Google account, and we never see or store a password.

You are responsible for keeping the third-party account you sign in with secure, and for everything done through your account here.

If you vote while signed in, we store your current choice with your site account. Those stored choices may later support aggregate or personalization features. The service does not currently predict or profile you from vote history. Anonymous votes use a site cookie only and are not an account history. How votes are handled when a chart is unpublished, a poll is removed, or an account is deleted is described in the Privacy Policy.

Why publishing needs an account

Publishing is the point at which your work becomes public, carries a creator name, and grants other people the licenses in sections 7 and 8, including the right to remix it that survives your deleting your own copy. Those are commitments a person should make deliberately and be able to be identified as having made, which is not something an anonymous browser session can carry. Requiring an account is also what lets us apply the repeat-infringer policy on the Copyright and Takedown Policy page to a person rather than to a browser.

The other half of the reason is the images. Anything you publish is hosted by us and served from our domain, and when an image has to be reviewed, removed, or defended, there has to be somebody behind it who can be told, can appeal, and can be stopped from doing it again. A browser session cannot do any of that.

Anonymous drafts and edit links

If you save a chart without signing in, the site issues a secret edit token and keeps it in your browser. That token is the only proof that the chart is yours. It can also be handed out as an edit link, which carries the token after the # in the address so you can pick the chart up on another device.

Anyone who has that link can edit the chart, so treat it like a password and share it only with people you want to give editing rights to.

If you clear your browser storage, switch device, or use private browsing, and you did not save the edit link, you may permanently lose the ability to edit or delete that chart yourself. You can still ask us to remove it using the contact details below, and we will remove it where we can reasonably confirm it is yours.

Saving without an account has one limit, and it is about the images rather than about you: if a chart uses an image that our automated check has already flagged (section 6), we will not store that chart on our servers while you are not signed in. Nothing you made is lost, because the copy in your browser is untouched. Take the image out, or sign in, and save again.

Claiming your charts later

When you sign in, the site attaches the charts you saved in that browser without an account to your account, using the edit tokens it finds there. It does this without asking, because the tokens are already in that browser and the alternative is work that stays orphaned. After that, your account is the proof of ownership, your public name is shown as the creator, and you can publish them. This is the normal route: work anonymously for as long as you like, then sign in when you want something to go public.

We may change or reclaim a public username that impersonates someone else, infringes a trademark, or is abusive.

Shared edit links and copy links

A shared edit link is a capability, not an account permission. Anyone who opens it can edit the same chart, including replacing its contents, with the authority of the link. Treat it like a password. Deleting the chart invalidates the link. Rotating the edit link issues a new secret and stops older links from working. No account is required to create or use a shared edit link. Publishing still requires an account (section 4).

A copy link is different. It points at a frozen snapshot, not at your working chart. A person who opens it sees a preview and creates nothing until they confirm making their own copy. That copy is a new chart that belongs to the recipient. They cannot edit your chart through the copy link, and later changes you make do not appear in their copy. Revoking or expiry of the snapshot stops new copies. Copies already made stay, even if you delete the original.

Exporting an image from Share is a download on the device. It does not save the chart to the site. See Privacy: Local drafts, sharing and uploads for what is stored, and for how long.

5. Acceptable use

You are responsible for everything you upload, publish, or link to. This section is the binding list; our Community Guidelines explain the same rules in more detail, including the rules for charts about real people. Where the two differ, this section governs.

Do not use Tiermaps to create, upload, publish, or share:

• content you do not have the rights to, including images, logos, and artwork that belong to someone else, unless your use is permitted by law or by the rights holder;
• any sexual content involving minors. This is an absolute prohibition. We remove such content, ban the uploader, and report it to the appropriate authorities and reporting organizations;
• sexually explicit imagery, intimate images shared without the subject's consent, or graphically violent imagery;
• content that harasses, bullies, threatens, or incites violence against a person or a group, or that attacks people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or a serious disease;
• private information about another person (home address, phone number, identity documents, login details) or content that identifies a private individual in order to expose them to harassment;
• charts that rank, grade, or compare identifiable private individuals without their agreement, labels that state or imply something untrue about a real person, and any ranking of real people by sexual attractiveness or appearance. Public figures may be ranked and criticized in connection with their public role: see the Community Guidelines for where that line sits;
• content that is illegal where you are or where we operate, that promotes terrorism or serious crime, or that sells regulated goods illegally;
• malware, phishing pages, deceptive links, spam, advertising dressed up as a chart, or content whose purpose is to drive traffic to a scam;
• content that impersonates another person, brand, or the site itself.

Do not abuse the service itself. In particular, do not:

• scrape, crawl, or bulk-download the site or its images beyond ordinary use, or systematically retrieve data or content from the site in order to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database, or directory, without our written permission. Ordinary search-engine crawling is fine, and so is copying charts by hand the way any visitor can;
• circumvent rate limits, moderation, bans, or the edit-token system, or attempt to access charts, drafts, or accounts that are not yours;
• probe, overload, or interfere with the site, our servers, or our providers, or reverse engineer parts of the service we have not published as open source;
• click your own ads or ask others to click them, or otherwise manipulate advertising metrics;
• create multiple identities or reset your browser identity to evade a ban, a rate limit, or a hearts limit;
• make false statements of fact about us or the service, impersonate us, or send messages or publish pages designed to look as though they came from us.

To be explicit about the last one, because many sites are not: you are free to criticize Tiermaps as harshly as you like, anywhere, including in reviews, posts, and charts published here. Nothing in these Terms restricts an honest review or opinion about us, and we will never ask you to take one down as a condition of anything.

6. Reports, moderation, and enforcement

Every published chart has a Report button. Reports go to a moderation queue that we review. You can also email us at [email protected], and copyright owners should use the process on our Copyright and Takedown Policy page.

We run an automated image scan when a chart is published. A chart whose images trip that scan is hidden from public pages until a human reviews it, and a chart reported by three different visitors is hidden pending review in the same way. Sexual content involving minors is handled under section 5: it is removed, the uploader is banned, and it is reported to the appropriate authorities and reporting organizations, whether an automated check or a person found it.

We are not obliged to monitor everything published on the site, and automated scanning is imperfect in both directions. Where we decide that content breaks these Terms, creates legal risk, or harms the site, we may unpublish it, delete it, restrict the creator's account, or block the browser or device it came from, with or without prior notice.

If you believe we removed or hid something by mistake, reply to the notice we sent you or write to [email protected] and a person will look at it again. The appeal route is free, is open to whoever reported the content as well as to whoever published it, and is the same wherever you live.

7. Your content and the license you give us

You keep ownership of the charts, images, text, and other material you create or upload ("your content"). We do not claim it, and publishing on the site does not transfer it to us.

For the content you upload or publish, you grant us an unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, fully paid, worldwide right and license to host, use, copy, reproduce, disclose, sell, resell, publish, broadcast, retitle, archive, store, cache, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, transmit, excerpt (in whole or in part), and distribute your content, to prepare derivative works of it or incorporate it into other works, and to grant and authorise sublicenses of any of the foregoing, for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise. The use and distribution may occur in any media format and through any media channel, now known or developed later.

The license includes our use of your public name and of any trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, and images you choose to put into your content. You waive all moral rights in your content to the extent the law allows, you warrant that no moral rights have otherwise been asserted in it, and you waive any right to inspect or approve how we use it.

In practice, this is what that license is used for:

• hosting, storing, and backing up your content;
• reproducing and adapting it for technical purposes: resizing, converting formats, generating preview images, thumbnails, and social sharing (Open Graph) images;
• publicly displaying and distributing the content you publish, on its own page, in browse and trending feeds, in search results, and in link previews on other sites;
• using published charts to promote the service, for example in screenshots, sample galleries, advertising, and posts about the site, naming you as the creator where we show a creator name.

Two things we will not do with it

The license above is deliberately broad, so these two limits are promises we are making on top of it, not gaps in it. We keep them because they are the reason people are willing to publish here.

• No AI training. We do not use your charts, drafts, or uploaded images to train AI or machine learning models, and we do not license or sell them to anyone else for that purpose. This is stated again in Privacy Policy section 4 and it binds us despite anything in the license above.
• Drafts are not published for you. A chart you keep as a draft is never listed, indexed, or shown in a feed, and the promotional uses above apply only to charts you chose to publish. A draft is not secret, though: anyone holding its link can open it read-only, which is what makes sending a draft for feedback work.

You promise you have the rights

By uploading or publishing content, you confirm that you own it or otherwise have the rights and permissions needed to use it and to grant the licenses in these Terms, and that publishing it does not break any law or anyone else's rights, including copyright, trademark, privacy, and publicity rights.

You also confirm that you have the consent, release, or permission of every identifiable individual appearing in your content to use their name or likeness in the ways these Terms contemplate. Where that person is not a public figure being discussed in connection with their public role, that consent has to be real: see the Community Guidelines.

When you delete something

You can delete your charts at any time, and deleting one really removes it: the chart, every version of it we stored, the hearts on it and its view history are deleted from our database, and the images it used are released for deletion. It is permanent, and we cannot undo it for you. The two situations where we keep the record instead, an open report and a chart other people have voted on, are named in Privacy Policy section 9, together with what survives in a backup and for how long. That section is a commitment we hold ourselves to, and it describes what the delete button does rather than what we would like it to do.

The license above is perpetual, so deleting a chart does not end the license itself. That matters for what other people already made from it, not for our own copy: what we hold, we delete.

Practical consequences worth stating plainly:

• copies that other users already made under the remix and template license in the next section stay theirs and stay online. They keep working; what they lose is the recorded link back to your original, because the original no longer exists to link to;
• copies may persist for a limited period in database backups and in server logs before they are overwritten;
• image files that other people already downloaded or shared elsewhere are outside our control and cannot be recalled;
• we may keep a record of a removal where we need it to comply with the law or to enforce these Terms, and when it is we who remove a chart under section 6, we keep the chart record itself, because moderation has to know what it acted on.

Feedback

If you send us ideas, bug reports, or suggestions, we may use them without restriction and without owing you anything. Sending one is always optional, whether you use the forms in the site or write to us, and Privacy section 3.8 sets out exactly what a submission from one of those forms contains.

8. Templates and remixes

Remixing is a core feature of the site. Every published chart carries a Remix button that copies the chart into the remixer's own editor so they can change it and publish their own version. Publishing a chart as a template is the same idea made explicit: templates exist to be used, and their pages lead with a "Use this template" button.

So, when you publish a chart, and additionally when you publish it as a template, you grant every other user of Tiermaps a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to copy, modify, remix, republish, and export images of that chart on the service, and you allow us to provide the copy that makes this possible.

This license to other users is irrevocable and survives the deletion of your original chart. Remix chains depend on it: a chart that was remixed from yours, and every chart remixed from that one, must keep working after you delete yours. If you delete your chart or template, your copy is gone (section 7), but the versions other people already created remain theirs and stay online. They simply stop showing that they came from you, since there is no longer an original to point at.

The license covers use on Tiermaps. It does not give other users your images to use in unrelated projects, and it does not transfer ownership of anything.

You can only license what you actually hold rights to. If your chart contains third-party material, the grant above applies to your own contribution; other people who remix your chart are responsible for their own use of any third-party material in it.

We may show that one chart was remixed from another, including the original title and creator name, on the pages of both charts.

9. Charts you send us from another platform

We do not bulk-import charts made by other people on other platforms. If a chart made elsewhere appears here, either its creator sent it, or we made it ourselves.

Our apps on other platforms may offer an action that posts one of your own charts to Tiermaps. That action is opt-in and only you can trigger it. When you use it:

• you are the person publishing that chart on this site;
• you confirm, at the moment you consent, that you created the chart and hold the rights needed to publish it here (or have permission from the people who do);
• you grant the licenses in sections 7 and 8, exactly as if you had published the chart here directly;
• you agree that we may show an attribution line naming the platform, the community, and your username there.

You can ask us to remove a chart you contributed this way at any time by writing to [email protected]. Section 8 still applies to versions other users already remixed.

10. Copyright complaints

We respond to notices of claimed copyright infringement. If you own a copyright and believe content on the site infringes it, follow the process on our Copyright and Takedown Policy page, which sets out what a notice must contain, how to file a counter-notice, and how to reach our designated agent.

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances, as described on that page.

11. Our content and brand

The site itself, including its code, layout, editor tools, sample content, and the charts and templates we create ourselves, belongs to us or to our licensors and is protected by copyright and other laws. These Terms do not give you any right to our name, logo, or branding. Not everything here is ours: the map boundary data and the typefaces come from other people under open licenses, which are named on our credits page and are not changed by these Terms.

Images you export from the editor are yours to use, subject to the rights in any material you put into them. The map data underneath them carries nothing onto the picture. Every boundary set on this site is either public domain or under a license whose attribution is satisfied by our credits page, and none of them require a credit, a notice or a license statement on an exported image. You do not have to credit us or anybody else when you publish one, you are not passing a license on to whoever you give it to, and you may sell it. We name every source on the credits page because those licenses ask us to, not because your picture does.

What you put into a map is a different question. If you drop somebody else's image, logo or text onto a chart, the rights in that material are unchanged by exporting it, and section 5 and section 7 are what govern it. Images you download carry a small tiermaps.com credit in a corner. That credit is our branding, not a condition of any license: nothing above obliges you to keep it, and removing it does not make your use of the picture unlawful. What you may not do is present the site as your own product, or strip the credit in order to pass the tool off as yours.

12. Advertising

No advertising is running on this site yet. This section describes what happens once it is. Until then no ad script loads, no advertising cookies are set, and nothing about your visit reaches Google through advertising at all. This notice disappears by itself on the deploy that switches advertising on, and the "Last updated" date above moves with it.

The site is free and is paid for by advertising. We show ads served by Google AdSense on public pages. We choose where ad units go; we do not choose the individual ads Google serves in them, and showing an ad is not an endorsement of the advertiser. We check every map source against this before we ship it: a boundary set is only on this site if its license permits commercial use, including advertising, and if crediting it on one page is enough.

Do not click ads on your own pages or ask other people to click them. That breaks Google's program policies and can get the site removed from the program.

How advertising cookies work is described in the Cookie Policy. You can turn off personalised advertising, or check that we received your browser's Global Privacy Control signal, on Your privacy choices.

13. Privacy

The Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and what rights you have over it, including as an anonymous visitor with no account. The Cookie Policy lists every cookie and browser-storage key by name.

14. No warranty

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, and non-infringement.

We do not promise that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, that charts, drafts, or uploaded images will be preserved, or that exported images will be pixel-identical to what you see on screen. Drafts held in your browser can be lost if you clear browsing data, use private browsing, or switch device, and we cannot recover them. Export or otherwise back up anything you care about.

Charts published by other users are their content, not ours. We do not endorse them and we do not verify that they are accurate.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or lost charts, arising out of or connected with your use of the service.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (for most users this is zero) and 100 US dollars.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence and for fraud. If you use the site as a consumer, you keep every mandatory right your local law gives you, and the limits above apply only as far as that law allows.

16. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of content you published, your use of the service, or your breach of these Terms, you agree to defend us against it and to cover the resulting losses, damages, and reasonable legal costs. We may take over the defense of any such claim, and you agree to cooperate with us if we do. This section does not apply where your local consumer law prevents it.

17. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the site at any time, delete individual charts, or ask us to delete your account and its charts.

We may suspend or end your access, remove or unpublish content, or block the browser or device identifier associated with abuse, if you break these Terms, if the law requires it, or if your use creates risk for the site or its users. Where it is reasonable, we will tell you why.

After termination, the following survive: licenses other users already received under section 8, the rights and obligations that arose before termination, and sections 7, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 19.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Disputes that we cannot resolve informally will be heard by the state and federal courts located in Denton County, Texas.

If you are a consumer resident in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory law of your country of residence, and you may also bring proceedings there.

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, the Community Guidelines, and the Copyright and Takedown Policy, are the whole agreement between us about the service.

19. Disputes, arbitration, and class action waiver

This section applies only if you live in the United States. If you are a consumer resident in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, none of it applies to you, and section 18 governs your disputes instead.

Read it carefully. It affects how claims between us are decided: most disputes go to an individual arbitrator rather than a judge or jury, and you give up the right to take part in a class action. You can opt out within 30 days and keep every right this section would otherwise change.

19.1 Talk to us first

Before starting an arbitration, send a written description of the dispute and what you want to [email protected], with enough detail for us to identify the account or charts involved. We will do the same before starting one against you. Most problems end here, and neither side may begin an arbitration until 60 days after that notice. This is a genuine precondition, not a formality.

19.2 Agreement to arbitrate

If we cannot resolve it, you and we agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be settled by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator. The arbitrator decides all issues except those in section 19.4, including whether this section applies to a given claim.

The arbitration takes place in the county where you live, or by telephone, video, or written submissions if you prefer, so that you never have to travel to bring a claim. The arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could, and the award can be entered as a judgment in any court with jurisdiction. AAA's rules and fee schedules are at adr.org. Where the AAA rules require us to pay the fees of a consumer arbitration, we pay them.

19.3 No class actions

You and we may bring claims only on an individual basis, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. An arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding, unless both sides agree in writing after the dispute arises.

If a court decides this paragraph is unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim, and only that claim, is separated out and goes to the courts in section 18; the rest of this section still governs everything else.

19.4 What is not covered

• either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead, if it qualifies;
• either of us may ask a court for an injunction or other equitable relief over intellectual property, unauthorised access to the service, or ongoing harm that money cannot fix;
• disputes seeking to enforce, protect, or determine the validity of either side's intellectual property rights, and disputes arising from allegations of theft, piracy, invasion of privacy, or unauthorised use, are not arbitrated;
• nothing here stops you from reporting a concern to a government agency, and no agency proceeding is a "dispute" for this section.

19.5 Coordinated mass filings

If 25 or more people bring similar arbitrations against us represented by the same or coordinated counsel, the claims are grouped into batches of no more than 50, each batch is decided by one arbitrator, and the results guide settlement of the rest. This exists so that filing fees cannot be used as leverage independently of the merits, in either direction. It never reduces what an individual can recover, and the 60-day notice in section 19.1 applies to each claim.

19.6 How to opt out

You can reject this whole section by emailing [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, with the subject line "Arbitration opt-out" and your name and the email address or account you use here. That is all it takes. Opting out costs you nothing else: it does not affect your account, and we will not treat you differently for it. If you opt out, section 18 governs your disputes.

This section survives the end of your use of the service. If we change it later, the change does not apply to a dispute we already knew about, and you get a fresh 30-day opt-out window.

20. Electronic communications and notices

You agree that we may communicate with you electronically, and that notices, agreements, disclosures, and other communications we provide electronically satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing. Typing your name in an email or clicking a button that says you agree counts as your signature.

We give notice by email to the address on your account, or by posting on the site where you have no account or no working address. Notice to us goes to [email protected], except copyright notices, which must go to the designated agent on the Copyright and Takedown Policy page to be effective.

21. California residents

Under California Civil Code section 1789.3, California users are entitled to this notice: the service is provided by The Chart Maker, at the address in section 23, and is free to use. To file a complaint about the service, or to receive further information about using it, contact us at [email protected], or write to the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or telephone (800) 952-5210.

California privacy rights, including the right to stop the sharing of personal information for advertising, are covered in Privacy Policy section 13 and Your privacy choices.

22. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the site changes or the law requires. When we do, we update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For a change that materially affects your rights, we post a notice on the site at least 14 days before it takes effect, and we email account holders where we have a working address.

If you keep using the site after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the site; you can delete your charts and your account first. A change to section 19 comes with its own opt-out window and never applies to a dispute that already exists.

23. Contact

Questions about these Terms, content removal, or anything else: [email protected].

Copyright notices must go to the designated agent listed on the Copyright and Takedown Policy page. Privacy requests go to [email protected] (see the Privacy Policy).

Ads on the site are served by Google. Google's advertising policies and controls are described at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.