Terms of Service

1. Your account

You need to be at least 18 and able to hold a payment card to use Wake Up Early. One account per person. Keep your login details to yourself; anything done with your account is treated as done by you.

You can close your account at any time by emailing [email protected]. Closing it stops any future membership charges. A commitment that has already locked still stands until it resolves (see section 5).

2. Membership and the free trial

Every new account starts with a 7-day free trial with full access, so you can see whether it works for you. After the trial, membership is a small monthly fee in your currency, currently US$5, AU$8, NZ$9, CA$7, £4 or €5 a month. The price is shown before you sign up and on the pricing page, and it is charged automatically to your saved card each month.

If you haven't saved a card by the end of the trial, you can't create new commitments until you subscribe. A commitment already running carries on to its deadline, and you can always check in.

You can cancel your membership at any time from Settings. Cancelling stops future charges, and your access continues to the end of the month you've already paid for. We don't refund part of a month, except where the law requires it.

If we change the price, we'll email you before the new price takes effect. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your full card number.

3. Commitments and stakes

When you create a commitment, you choose a wake-up time, a proof deadline, a proof task and a stake amount, and you authorise us to charge your saved card that amount if you don't check in before the deadline. You confirm the exact amount, the exact deadline and the proof task every single time you commit. Nothing is charged when you create a commitment, and checking in on time never costs you anything beyond your membership.

Stakes work the same way during the free trial: the trial waives the membership fee only. A missed check-in during the trial charges the stake like any other.

A multi-day commitment is a separate commitment for each morning, each with the same wake-up time and stake. Each morning is checked in, kept or charged on its own.

4. Your alarm and your proof task are your job

Wake Up Early does not wake you up. You set your own alarm; we hold you to getting up. To check in you enter words or characters from a proof task you printed earlier (a word list or a code grid). You're responsible for having that sheet somewhere you can reach it, a working device, an internet connection, and the correct timezone in your settings at check-in time. All deadlines are enforced in the timezone shown in your account.

5. Locking and cancelling a commitment

Every commitment can be cancelled until it locks. It locks at your auto-lock time the evening before (10:00 PM unless you change it in Settings) or after the minimum window from when you created it (10 minutes unless you change it), whichever is later. Your dashboard shows the time it locks. Cancel before then and your stake is never charged.

Once locked, a commitment can't be cancelled: the only way to keep your stake is to check in on time. If something exceptional comes up, use Get Help in the app and tell us what happened. We may cancel a locked commitment at our discretion, but we're not obliged to.

6. When you're charged, and where the money goes

If you don't check in before your proof deadline, your stake is charged to your saved card, normally within a few minutes of the deadline passing.

Every forfeited stake is donated to charity, currently Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). We retain 10% of each forfeited stake to cover administration and transaction fees, and we don't profit from anyone missing a check-in. Donations are made monthly. Refunded or disputed stakes are excluded.

If a charge fails, we may retry it, and the amount remains owing. We may stop you creating new commitments until it's paid.

7. Disputes and refunds

If you miss a check-in because of something outside your control, such as an app fault or our service being unavailable, open Get Help in the app and choose "My commitment failed but it wasn't my fault". If the failure wasn't your fault, we refund your stake in full. We look at every dispute individually, usually within a day or two.

Outside of disputes, stake charges are final. Sleeping through your alarm is the product working as intended.

8. Playing fair

The product only works if checking in means you're really up. Don't keep a copy of your word list or code grid within reach of your bed, don't share your account, and don't use automation to check in. Don't misuse the dispute process. We may suspend or close accounts used unfairly, and reverse refunds obtained that way.

9. What we're not

Wake Up Early is a motivation tool, not a medical, health or financial service, and we make no promises about outcomes. You're responsible for deciding that the sleep schedule you commit to is right for you, and that the stake you choose is one you can afford to lose.

10. The service, changes and liability

We provide the service as it is today and work hard to keep it reliable, but we can't promise it will always be available or fault-free. Where something on our side causes you to lose a stake, section 7 applies.

If we make material changes to these terms, to the membership or to how stakes work, we'll email you before they take effect. Changes never apply retroactively to a commitment you've already made.

To the extent permitted by law, our total liability to you is limited to the amounts you've paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing in these terms removes rights you have under the consumer law where you live, including the Australian Consumer Law.

11. The legal home

Wake Up Early is operated from Queensland, Australia, and these terms are governed by the laws of Queensland. Questions, problems, or anything that feels unfair: [email protected]. A real person reads every email.