Terms of service for an app on Google Play

What your terms need to cover for Google Play, including the clauses Google requires you to carry.

Updated 2026-09-18 · Written from the same rules terms.gg uses to generate documents

What terms are for

Terms are the agreement between you and the person using the app. They matter on the day something goes wrong, which is the day nobody reads them for the first time. Short and specific beats long and borrowed.

What Google adds on top

Google Play is the seller for in-app purchases, and cancellation happens in the Play account rather than in your app. Terms that describe a cancel button you do not control are terms that will be quoted back at you.

• That Google is not a party to the agreement.
• Where purchases are actually made, and who can refund them.
• What happens to purchased content if the app leaves the store.

What has to be in them

• Who is contracting: a person or a company, named, with an address.
• What the service is, and what it is not.
• How someone pays, what renews, and how they stop it.
• What you are liable for, capped in a way your local law actually permits.
• Which law governs the agreement and where a dispute goes.
• A statement that the store is not a party to the agreement.

Keeping it true after launch

A legal page stops being true the moment the product moves past it, usually by adding a payment provider, an analytics SDK or a sign-in. No store re-checks your pages against your build, so the drift is yours to notice.

• Re-read it whenever you add a dependency that sees user data.
• Re-open the Google console after any change to what the app collects: the listing and the policy have to agree.
• Keep the URL stable. Changing where a policy lives breaks every listing that points at it.