Terms of Use

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and FloatingKey LLC, which operates BidBud AI (“BidBud,” “we,” “us”). They apply when you use bidbudai.com, the BidBud estimator embedded on partner websites, the contractor portal, the partner API and the hosted MCP server (together, the “Service”). By using the Service, you agree to these Terms and confirm that you are at least 18 years old. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you use the Service for a business, you agree to these Terms on behalf of that business and confirm that you can do so. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information.

BidBud provides:

• instant planning estimates for home improvement projects, with price ranges, cost breakdowns and permit guidance;
• Buddy, an AI assistant that answers questions about an estimate;
• a lead marketplace where homeowners who ask to be contacted are matched with contractors, who can claim those requests; and
• tools for contractors, partners and AI assistants to use our estimating engine.

BidBud is not a contractor and does not perform, supervise or guarantee any work. We are not a party to any agreement between a homeowner and a contractor.

Our estimates are planning numbers calculated from national cost data, adjusted with public wage and price data and the details you provide. They are not bids, quotes, offers, appraisals or professional advice. Actual prices depend on the condition of the home, the exact scope of work, materials, local rules, the contractor and other factors we cannot see. A contractor’s price may be higher or lower.

Permit guidance is general information and may be out of date. Check with your local building department before starting work.

Buddy and Contractor Buddy use artificial intelligence to generate answers. Buddy is designed to use prices from our estimating engine, but AI answers can be wrong, incomplete or out of date. Treat them as a starting point for your own research and for conversations with professionals, not as professional, legal, financial or safety advice. Do not type personal information that you do not want processed by our AI provider into the chat.

You agree not to use the AI features to create unlawful, harmful or misleading content, or to try to make them reveal information about other people or about how the Service is built.

• Getting an estimate and using Buddy are free. You do not have to ask to be contacted.
• If you ask to be contacted, you confirm that the contact details you give are your own (or that you are allowed to give them) and accurate, and that you are asking about a property you own or are authorized to make decisions about.
• Your consent to be contacted is described in the consent statement you agree to and in our Privacy Policy. You can withdraw it as described there.
• We do not check contractors’ licenses, insurance, qualifications or work, and we do not endorse any contractor. Before you hire anyone, check their license and insurance, get written quotes, and read any contract carefully. Your agreement for any work is with the contractor, not with BidBud.

Your account

• You must give accurate, current information about yourself and your business, including any license number you provide, and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for everything done through your account. Tell us at once if you think your account has been used without your permission.
• You must hold every license, registration and insurance that the law requires for the work you offer, in each place you offer it.

Claiming leads and fees

• A lead is a homeowner’s request to be contacted about one service. You can claim open leads that match the services you offer and fall within your service area. Only one contractor can hold a lead at a time.
• Unless your plan says otherwise, each lead you claim costs $5.00 (US dollars), or the fee shown in the portal when you claim it. By claiming a lead, you authorize us to charge that fee to the payment method on your account through our payment processor, Stripe. Fees do not include any taxes that may apply.
• We check that a lead is still open and inside your service area before charging you. If another contractor claims the same lead at the same moment and your claim fails, any fee charged for it is refunded automatically.
• If you claim a lead and do not update its status or prepare a quote within 14 days, we may return it to the queue so another contractor can claim it. The fee for your claim is not refunded in that case.
• Apart from the cases above, lead fees are non-refundable, except where the law requires a refund or where we decide, at our discretion, to issue one (for example, if a lead’s contact details are clearly false). To ask for a refund, email admin@floatingkey.com within 30 days of the claim.
• A lead is a request for contact, not a promise of work. We do not guarantee that a homeowner will answer, accept a quote, or hire you, and we do not verify the information homeowners provide.

Plans

We may offer subscription plans that change how lead fees apply. The price, billing period, renewal and cancellation terms of a plan will be shown to you before you subscribe, and you will not be billed for a plan until you agree to those terms. We may change our fees and plans in the future; changes will not apply to leads you have already claimed or to a billing period you have already paid for.

How you may use homeowner information

• Use a homeowner’s information only to contact that homeowner about the project and service in the lead, and to provide your quote and services for it.
• Do not sell, rent, share, transfer or resell leads or homeowner information to anyone else, and do not add homeowners to marketing lists or use their information for any other purpose.
• When you call, text or email homeowners, follow every law that applies, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, federal and state Do Not Call rules, state telemarketing and calling-hour laws, and the CAN-SPAM Act.
• Respect each homeowner’s preferred contact method where you can, and honor opt-outs promptly, including replies of STOP to a text message.
• Keep homeowner information secure, limit access to people in your business who need it, and delete it when you no longer need it for the project or when the homeowner asks you to, unless the law requires you to keep it.
• You are an independent business. You are responsible for your own compliance with privacy and consumer protection laws for the information you receive.

Quotes and your own customers

• Quotes, prices and notes you prepare or send through BidBud are your own. You are responsible for them and for the work you perform. BidBud estimates in a quote are a starting point only.
• If you add your own customers to the portal, you confirm that you have the right to give us their information and to contact them, including by email through BidBud.

If you have a separate written agreement with us for the partner platform, that agreement controls where it conflicts with these Terms.

• API keys. Partner API keys are confidential and are for your own use only. Do not share them, publish them or put them in code that runs in a browser. Tell us at once if a key may have been exposed; we may revoke and replace keys at any time.
• Limits. Each partner, widget, API key and MCP user is subject to request limits that we set and may change. Do not try to get around them, for example by using several keys, accounts or IP addresses.
• Embedded estimator. Embed the estimator only on the websites we have approved for your account, and do not hide, change or remove its content, its “Estimates powered by BidBud AI” notice, or its links to our policies. Do not present our estimates as your own bid or quote.
• MCP server. Our hosted MCP server is offered free of charge for AI assistants and their users, subject to its published limits. We may change, limit or stop it at any time.
• No bulk extraction. Do not use the API, the MCP server or the website to copy our rates, estimates or other data in bulk, to build a competing database or service, or to train a machine learning model, without our written permission.
• End users. If you make our estimates available to your own users, you are responsible for your relationship with them, including your own terms and privacy notices.

When using the Service, you may not:

• give false information, or submit another person’s contact details without their permission;
• use the Service to harass, spam or defraud anyone, or for any unlawful purpose;
• scrape, crawl or download leads, estimates or rate data in bulk, or access the Service by automated means other than our published API and MCP server within their limits;
• probe, test or get around our security, authentication or usage limits, or access accounts, data or systems that are not yours;
• copy, modify or reverse engineer the Service or our estimating engine, except as the law allows;
• upload viruses or other harmful code, or disrupt or overload the Service; or
• pretend to be someone else, or misrepresent your connection with BidBud.

The Service, including its software, estimating engine, rate tables, text, graphics, the BidBud name, the Buddy character and our logos, belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by law. We give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable permission to use the Service as these Terms allow. You may save and share an estimate for your own project.

You keep ownership of the information you submit. You give us permission to use it to operate, protect and improve the Service as described in our Privacy Policy. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without any obligation to you.

The Service uses and links to services run by others, such as Stripe for payments and Google for address suggestions and maps. Your use of those services may be subject to their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for third-party services, or for contractors’ or partners’ websites, products or conduct.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND ACCURACY.

In particular, we do not promise that estimates, AI answers or permit guidance are accurate or complete, that leads will result in work, that the Service will always be available or free of errors, or that any contractor or homeowner will behave in any particular way. We are not responsible for work performed by contractors, or for agreements, payments or disputes between homeowners and contractors.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, BIDBUD, FLOATINGKEY LLC AND OUR OWNERS, EMPLOYEES AND SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD THEY WERE POSSIBLE.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM AND (B) $100.

Some places do not allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

If you use the Service as a contractor or partner, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless BidBud, FloatingKey LLC and our owners and employees from claims, losses and costs (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms or the law, your communications with homeowners, or the work, quotes and services you provide.

You can stop using the Service at any time, and contractors can ask us to close their account by emailing admin@floatingkey.com. We may suspend or end your access, revoke API keys or remove leads if you break these Terms, if we need to protect the Service or its users, or if we stop offering all or part of the Service. Fees for leads already claimed are not refunded when an account is suspended or closed for breaking these Terms. Sections that by their nature should continue (such as fees owed, use of homeowner information, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and disputes) continue after your access ends.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the state in which FloatingKey LLC is organized and by applicable federal law of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

If you have a dispute with us, please first email admin@floatingkey.com with a description of the problem. We will try to resolve it informally, and both of us agree to try for at least 30 days before starting a formal proceeding. If we cannot resolve it, the dispute will be decided by the state or federal courts located in that state, and both of us consent to their jurisdiction, except that either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will change the “Last updated” date above and, if a change is significant, give notice in a clear way, for example on the website or by email to contractors and partners. Changes apply from the date they are posted, unless the notice says otherwise. If you keep using the Service after a change, you accept the updated Terms.

• These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, any consent statement you agree to, and any separate written agreement with us, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
• If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• If we do not enforce a part of these Terms, that is not a waiver.
• You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our written permission. We may transfer ours, for example as part of a sale or reorganization of our business.
• You agree that we may send you notices and other communications electronically, including by email and on the website.
• The Service is offered for homes and businesses in the United States.

Questions about these Terms: email admin@floatingkey.com. BidBud AI is operated by FloatingKey LLC.