Acceptable Use and API Terms

You may use GDELT Cloud for research, dashboards, monitoring, agent workflows, alerts, briefs, and internal analytical tools that respect plan limits and applicable law.

You may use API and MCP access to integrate generated GDELT Cloud Events, Stories, Entities, summaries, and geo discovery into your own workflows.

Respect plan limits, rate limits, pagination, and usage guidance. Do not scrape, parallelize, or retry in ways that degrade service availability.

If you need higher-volume access, contact hello@gdeltcloud.com so we can plan the workflow together.

Priority support or a support-response target describes when we respond to a request. It is not an uptime guarantee, a commitment to resolve an issue within that time, or a service-credit entitlement. Any binding availability, resolution, or service-credit commitment must be expressly stated in a signed agreement.

Do not attempt unauthorized access, credential sharing, security probing, denial-of-service activity, data exfiltration, reverse engineering of private systems, or use designed to harm people or organizations.

Do not present GDELT Cloud output as guaranteed fact without appropriate review and context.

You may reuse source-native records and facts returned by GDELT Cloud, including in CSV or through your own API, and may create customer-authored analysis based solely on those source-native records, subject to the original publisher's terms, license, attribution, share-alike and commercial-use conditions and applicable law. This source-only reuse does not require an additional GDELT Cloud redistribution or data-license fee. Your ordinary subscription, plan limits, API access and security obligations still apply; this permission does not give you rights beyond those available from the source.

A source-native record stays source-native when we mechanically normalize field names, filter or sort it, convert units without changing its meaning, or attach a technical transport ID. Those operations alone do not turn the source fact into proprietary GDELT Cloud intelligence. Some responses mix such records with generated fields; rights apply by field and by source. A GDELT Cloud-created entity match, canonical-site merge, substantive model extraction, or analytical join is generated output, even when it points to an upstream record.

Your subscription allows internal business, research, and product use of GDELT Cloud-generated output within the plan and any applicable written license. This output includes the Events we code, Stories we cluster, generated titles and summaries, entity identity bridges, model-extracted relations, matching and deduplication decisions, GDELT Cloud-generated scores and composite indices, and substantive analytical joins. Calculations made solely from source-native facts remain subject to the source terms and do not become proprietary merely because GDELT Cloud calculated them. Customer-facing redistribution of GDELT Cloud-generated fields or a GDELT Cloud-generated dataset, API, feed, or service requires a separate written license for the agreed scope. Do not share or proxy your GDELT Cloud API key, re-serve the GDELT Cloud API, or reconstruct our generated index or enriched database as a substitute for GDELT Cloud. API documentation, generic usage metadata, customer-authored monitor or query configurations, and customer-owned code are not GDELT Cloud-generated datasets under this section; any results those tools show remain classified by the fields included. This does not restrict direct reuse of upstream material under its own terms or independently licensed open data.

A customer-authored analysis based solely on source-native records remains governed by those source terms. If an analysis uses GDELT Cloud-generated classifications, clusters, identity matches, model extractions, scores, or other generated output, the separate license requirement applies to those GDELT Cloud-generated parts. A mixed response can be separated field by field; the source-origin facts do not become proprietary merely because they share a row or response with a generated field.

For GDELT Cloud-generated output, any separate written license specifies the permitted product, recipients, delivery methods, and data scope. Those permissions do not extend to source material beyond the rights granted by its publisher:

Generated insights: sharing GDELT Cloud scores, classifications, model extractions, or other generated fields requires the agreed written scope, even when displayed inside a customer report or application.

Generated record display or export: displaying or exporting selected GDELT Cloud-generated Events, Story clusters, entity matches, or other generated records to customers requires express written permission for that use. Permission to display does not by itself permit downloads or onward redistribution.

Source-only reuse: sharing source-native facts or records, or customer-authored analysis based solely on them, does not require a separate GDELT Cloud redistribution license or fee. The original source terms decide whether the material may be used commercially, displayed, exported, or redistributed.

Broader use of generated output: a downstream API, feed, bulk dataset, sublicense, resale, or requeryable service containing GDELT Cloud-generated output requires express written permission for that delivery model and scope. Ordinary subscription access does not authorize sharing API credentials or proxying GDELT Cloud itself.

You may store and cache GDELT Cloud-generated output as reasonably needed for permitted queries, internal analyses, application operation, and recovery within your plan and written-license scope. Lawful copies of source-native records may be stored for as long as the applicable source terms allow; GDELT Cloud imposes no additional storage-duration or end-of-access restriction on that source-only material. Licensed bulk delivery of generated output may be stored and used within its agreed scope. This does not permit systematic extraction or caching to reconstruct the GDELT Cloud-generated database, evade plan limits, or build a competing data product or substitute for GDELT Cloud.

Permitted applications may retrieve source-native records or GDELT Cloud-generated output as context for an AI agent or model inference, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Source-only answers remain subject to the original source terms; answers that include GDELT Cloud-generated output follow the redistribution rules above. Use of an agent or model does not expand the rights in the data it receives.

Inference and retrieval are different from training or fine-tuning a model on a dataset. These terms do not grant model-training rights in GDELT Cloud-generated output. GDELT Cloud does not require a separate training license for lawful source-native records; any such use remains subject to the original source terms. No GDELT Cloud-specific storage duration or end-of-access restriction applies to lawful source-only copies.

GDELT Cloud does not claim ownership of source facts, publisher material, or original records merely because they are returned through our service or mechanically normalized. Third-party articles, reference data, and other source material retain the rights and licenses provided by their publishers. Public availability alone does not make material public domain or grant a reuse license.

Preserve source credits, license notices, evidence links, and non-endorsement notices where required by the applicable source terms. A link to an original publisher is provenance; it is not permission to reproduce the article's text, headline, photograph, or other protected content. Do not imply endorsement by GDELT Project, GDELT Cloud, or an underlying publisher. The source inventory links to published terms and flags cases where permission or commercial scope needs confirmation.

No GDELT Cloud credit is required merely for linking to a public GDELT Cloud page, linking to an original publisher URL, or reusing source-native records under their own terms, unless a particular written agreement expressly says otherwise. Attribution duties imposed by the upstream source continue to apply. GDELT Cloud branding or white-label display can be agreed separately for generated output.

A signed enterprise agreement, order form, redistribution license, or statement of work overrides these Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use and API Terms only to the extent it expressly grants different rights or obligations for its stated scope. The remaining terms continue to apply. A plan name, bulk-access entitlement, technical capability, sales presentation, or pricing proposal alone does not grant additional redistribution rights.

Subscription access or payment for integration or development work does not transfer ownership of GDELT Cloud's platform, generated datasets, methods, pipelines, schemas, or pre-existing and reusable tools. Rights in separately commissioned deliverables, customer-specific materials, or exclusive outputs must be stated in the signed statement of work; an integration or customization alone does not make the shared platform exclusive to a customer.

The written license governs whether recipients may retain reports already lawfully delivered after service access ends. Ending service access does not itself expand rights or permit new deliveries, refreshes, sublicensing, or further redistribution.

Retention of underlying records, operational caches, archives, and previously delivered outputs must follow the applicable written license and source requirements. Do not treat retention of an already permitted report as continuing access to the service or permission to build a standalone data archive for others.