Hotpot — Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-10-27 · Effective date: 2026-10-26

Version: terms-2026-10-20.7. We record your acceptance against the wording of the statement you agreed to, and against the version of these Terms in force on our servers at that moment.

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are the agreement between you and Hotpot Technologies Ltd about your use of the Hotpot app. Two documents together are the contract you agree to:

• these Terms; and
• the Community & Safety Guidelines — the rules for how members treat each other (incorporated into these Terms by reference, see Section 8).

Two further documents are notices we give you. They explain how we handle your data:

• the Privacy Policy; and
• the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice.

Table of contents

1. Acceptance and the parties
2. Definitions
3. Eligibility (18+)
4. Your account
5. How Hotpot works
6. Acceptable use
7. Your content and the licence you give us
8. Community & Safety Guidelines
9. Safety and moderation
10. Subscriptions and payments (future)
11. Your consumer rights
12. Disclaimers and our liability to you
13. Closing your account
14. Changes to the service and to these Terms
15. Governing law and jurisdiction
16. How to complain and how to contact us
17. Other important terms

1. Acceptance and the parties

1.1 These Terms are a legal agreement between:

• you, the person using the app ("you", "your", or a "member"); and
• Hotpot Technologies Ltd ("Hotpot", "we", "us", "our"), a company incorporated in England & Wales under company number 17388001, with its registered office at Suite RA01, 195-197 Wood Street, London, E17 3NU (the same company the Privacy Policy names in section 1, Who we are).

1.2 You accept these Terms in the app, on a screen we show you before your first recording: you turn on the statement that you agree to the Terms of Service and the Community & Safety Guidelines and confirm you have read the Privacy Policy, and Hotpot goes no further until it is on. Nothing is switched on for you, and holding an account is not by itself acceptance. By accepting you confirm that you meet the eligibility requirements in Section 3. If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not use Hotpot.

1.3 For any questions about these Terms, or to contact us for any of the reasons described below, email contact@hotpot.dating.

1.4 Who we are and who the data controller is are set out in the Privacy Policy, section 1 (Who we are), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information. How we handle your personal data — the lawful bases we rely on, how long we keep it, who we share it with, and your data-protection rights — is set out in full in the Privacy Policy. These Terms do not repeat that detail; where the two overlap, the Privacy Policy governs the handling of your personal data.

1.5 What you agree to, and what is a notice. When you accept these Terms, you agree to these Terms and to the Community & Safety Guidelines, which are incorporated by reference and form part of your agreement with us (see Section 8). The Privacy Policy and the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice are also incorporated by reference, but as notices that tell you how we handle your data — not as extra terms you have to agree to.

2. Definitions

In these Terms, the following words have the following meanings:

We use other defined terms (such as "you" and "Hotpot") as introduced in Section 1.

3. Eligibility (18+)

3.1 You must be 18 or older. Hotpot is a dating service for adults. You may only create an account and use the App if you are aged 18 or over. People under 18 are refused access.

3.2 How we check age. We use your date of birth to apply the 18+ age gate. You are responsible for giving us your true date of birth. At the last step of setting up, VerifyMy checks for us that you are 18 or over: first from your email address and, if that is not enough, in the way you choose on its page, which can be an estimate of your age from your face or an identity document matched to your face. If the check does not pass, Hotpot does not open for that account, and you can sign out or delete it; if you disagree with the result, what you can do, and what it can and cannot change, is in the Privacy Policy, section 3. A check that timed out before it finished can be started once more. What VerifyMy receives and keeps is in the Privacy Policy, sections 3 and 10.

3.3 Editing your date of birth. You can correct your date of birth once after signup, after which it is locked. If you believe your date of birth is recorded incorrectly and you have already used your one edit, contact us at contact@hotpot.dating.

3.4 If you are under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close and remove that account. Who can be here and how to report an account that may belong to a minor is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 2 (Who can be here), which forms part of these Terms.

3.5 Legal capacity. By accepting these Terms you confirm that you are legally able to enter into a binding contract with us.

3.6 Where you are when you sign up. Hotpot is open in London for now. After your email address is verified, the app asks to read your phone's location and our server checks that it is in Greater London, within a kilometre of its boundary. If it is not, or no usable reading is given, sign-up ends there. What is read, what is kept and what is deleted is set out in the Privacy Policy, section 3 (Your location at sign-up).

4. Your account

4.1 Registration. To use Hotpot you create an account. You will provide a phone number and an email address; both are needed to finish setting up. You will give your name, and you will record voice during onboarding as described in Section 5. You agree that the information you give us is accurate and that you will keep it up to date.

4.2 One account per person. Who can be here and how to report an account that may belong to a minor is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 2 (Who can be here), which forms part of these Terms.

4.3 Keeping your account secure. Your account is personal to you. You are responsible for keeping access to your phone number, sign-in method, and device secure, and for activity that takes place through your account. If you think someone else has accessed your account, contact us straight away at contact@hotpot.dating.

4.4 Your account is not transferable. You may not sell, rent, share, or transfer your account or your access to Hotpot to anyone else.

4.5 Accurate profile. Impersonation is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 4.7 (Impersonation), which forms part of these Terms.

5. How Hotpot works

Hotpot is a voice-first dating app: you hear people before you see them. This section describes the core experience so you know what you are agreeing to. It is a description of how the service works today, not a promise that every feature will always stay the same (see Section 14).

5.1 Voice comes first. You record your voice at several points: a short introduction, who you are, who you are hoping to meet, the ages you are hoping for, what else matters to you, and spoken answers to prompts. Other members hear these before they see you.

5.2 A like is a voice note. To express interest in someone, you send a like, which is a spoken voice note — not a swipe or a tap. If the person you liked passes on it, we do not tell you: from your side, a like someone has passed on looks the same as a like nobody has answered yet, and that quiet is deliberate.

5.3 A match is mutual voice notes. You reach a match with someone only when you have each sent the other a like with a voice note.

5.4 Chat is voice, and only after a match. Chat is voice messaging, and it is unlocked only on a match.

5.5 Photos come last. You provide a profile photo after the voice stage. It appears to someone once they have listened all the way through the voice note you sent them and your answers with it, and once you match. What data we collect, including the recordings, the transcripts, the device token, and the record kept of each consent is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 3 (What data we collect), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

5.6 You can hold up to six matches. Hotpot caps your active matches at six. This is a deliberate design choice — the app is built for holding a few connections well rather than collecting an unbounded pile — and it is not a paywall or an upsell. You will not be able to pay to raise this cap. When you are at six, the like control rests quietly until you have room again. A like you have already sent, or are in the middle of recording as your six fill, is not refused: it waits until you have room again. It is never lost: the moment a place frees, it is simply there. Room is not the only reason a like you send can wait: the other is in section 9.3. The moment a place frees, a pair that was waiting for it becomes a match at once, rather than the next time either of you opens the app. Both of you are told: a notification to your phone if you are out of the app and have them turned on; and the "It's a match" card when you open, or are already on, the Matches screen. We never interrupt you with it while you are listening to someone else's profile.

5.7 Availability. We work to keep Hotpot available and working well, but we do not guarantee it will always be available, uninterrupted, or error-free. See Section 12.

6. Acceptable use

6.1 When you use Hotpot, you agree that you will not attempt to break, disrupt, overload, reverse-engineer, scrape, or gain unauthorised access to the App or its systems, or bypass any security or rate-limiting measure. What is not allowed is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 4 (What is not allowed), which forms part of these Terms.

6.2 The Community & Safety Guidelines (Section 8) set out the fuller standard of behaviour, and they form part of these Terms.

7. Your content and the licence you give us

7.1 You keep ownership of your Content. Your recordings, your photo, and your words are yours. We do not claim ownership of your Content.

7.2 The licence you give us. So that we can actually run the service for you, you grant Hotpot a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, and revocable licence to host, store, transcribe, copy, transmit, process, and adapt and create derivative works from your Content. The right to adapt and create derivative works applies only to the limited extent needed to provide, personalise, and secure the service — for example, transcripts, reflection summaries, and internal representations of your recordings. We use this licence only to the extent needed to:

• a provide the App and its features to you and to the members you choose to share with (for example, playing your voice notes to a member you have liked or matched with);
• b transcribe your recordings and use artificial intelligence to understand what you say, to generate your prompts, and to help keep content safe, as described in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 3 (Where we use AI today);
• c keep the service, you, and other members safe and secure, and detect and prevent abuse; and
• d operate, maintain, back up, and support the App.

We may permit our service providers to exercise these rights strictly on our behalf. Every company that processes your data for us, what each receives, how they are bound, and when we disclose data to the authorities or to a successor is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 8 (Who we share your data with), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

7.3 The licence follows your control of the Content. This licence lasts only as long as we hold the relevant Content to provide the service. It is revocable: when you delete Content, or delete your account, the licence ends for the deleted Content, subject to the time it takes to remove copies from our systems and to any Content we must keep for legal or safety reasons.

7.4 Artificial intelligence processing. AI processing is part of providing the service, is covered by the licence above, and is explained in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice and the Privacy Policy.

7.5 Training the matching model is separate. The licence in this section does not cover training a matching model on your Content; that needs the separate consent the Privacy Policy describes in section 7 (Matching-model training), which also sets out what withdrawing it does and what a withdrawal cannot undo, and which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information. Why we use each kind of data and the lawful basis for each use, including which uses rest on your consent, which rest on the contract, and which cannot be switched off is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 4 (How and why we use your data), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

7.6 Your responsibility for your Content. You are responsible for the Content you create and share. You confirm that you have the right to share it, that it is genuinely yours, and that sharing it through Hotpot does not break the law or infringe anyone else's rights.

7.7 Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about Hotpot, you agree we may use them to improve the service without any obligation to you.

8. Community & Safety Guidelines

8.1 The Community & Safety Guidelines set out how members are expected to behave, what is not allowed, how reporting and blocking work, and how we respond to harmful behaviour. The Guidelines are incorporated into these Terms by reference and form part of your agreement with us.

8.2 Breaking the Guidelines is a breach of these Terms and may lead to a recording being refused before anyone hears it, or to your account being closed, as described in Sections 9 and 13. We do not suspend accounts for a period and then restore them; a closure is undone only where the person who checks it at your request finds it was a mistake, as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 8 (Enforcement and appeals), which forms part of these Terms.

8.3 If the Guidelines and these Terms appear to conflict on a point of member conduct, read them together; where they cannot be reconciled, these Terms take precedence.

9. Safety and moderation

9.1 Keeping Hotpot safe. We use a mix of member-driven tools (such as reporting and blocking) and automated and human review to keep the service safe.

9.2 Reporting and blocking. How to report someone on any screen showing that person, what a report asks for and where it goes is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 6.2 (Reporting), which forms part of these Terms.

9.3 Content safety and crisis support. How the content-safety check and the self-harm signal work: what is checked, what can be withheld, what a check that cannot run does, and the support card is as set out in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 3.4 (Content-safety classification and crisis support), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information. What waits for a person after the self-harm signal, what the wait means for who can see you, and what the reviewer may do is as set out in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 3.4.1 (A recording that waits for a person), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

9.4 What we may do. What happens after a report, the actions we can take, when we act without warning and when we report a matter to the authorities is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, sections 7 (Reporting, and what happens next) and 8 (Enforcement and appeals), which form part of these Terms. When we may close your account is set out in Section 13.

9.5 Fairness. How enforcement decisions are weighed, how you are told, and how you appeal is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 8 (Enforcement and appeals), which forms part of these Terms. Nothing in this section requires us to monitor all Content, and we do not promise to detect every breach.

9.6 Profile photos. How your profile photo is checked: what the check can decide, when a person looks, what a refusal means, when you can ask for a person, who sees a photo while it waits, and when a photo may show someone under 18 is as set out in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 3.5 (Checking your profile photo), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information. The record kept of each photo decision, and the log kept when a person opens your photo, is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 6.1 (Your profile photo: the automatic check and human review), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

9.7 If someone in a photo may be under 18. What follows when a photo may show someone under 18 is part of the same statement in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 3.5 (Checking your profile photo), which Section 9.6 incorporates into these Terms by reference as information. This is separate from the 18+ requirement for using Hotpot at all (Section 3).

9.8 Child sexual abuse material: we report it, and the account is closed. What is kept when suspected child sexual abuse material is reported, for how long, and what happens if you ask to delete the account is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 6.4 (Reporting child sexual abuse material), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information. Nothing in these Terms limits that duty. Anything involving a person under 18, the zero tolerance it meets and the closure that follows is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 4.5 (Anything involving minors), which forms part of these Terms.

10. Subscriptions and payments (future)

Hotpot is currently free to use.

11. Your consumer rights

11.1 Nothing in these Terms affects your legal rights as a consumer that cannot be excluded or limited by agreement. In particular, you have rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 — for example, that services are provided with reasonable care and skill. Where these Terms conflict with a right you have that cannot be excluded, that right prevails.

11.2 For more information about your consumer rights, you can contact your local Citizens Advice service or the relevant consumer body.

12. Disclaimers and our liability to you

12.1 The service is provided "as is". We provide Hotpot with reasonable care and skill, but, except for the rights you have that cannot be excluded (see Section 11), the App is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that recordings will always upload or play perfectly, or that you will meet or match with anyone.

12.2 Members are responsible for their own conduct. Hotpot connects people; it does not vet, verify the identity of, or run background or criminal-record checks on members. We are not responsible for the conduct of any member, whether online or offline, and we are not a party to any interaction, communication, or meeting between members. Meeting people carries risk, and you are responsible for your own safety. Take sensible precautions when talking to or meeting anyone you meet through Hotpot. The Guidelines include safety advice.

12.3 Liability we do not exclude. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law of England & Wales, including your non-excludable consumer rights (Section 11).

12.4 Liability we do limit. Subject to Section 12.3:

• a we are not liable for loss or damage that was not reasonably foreseeable at the time you accepted these Terms;
• b we are not liable for the acts, omissions, or Content of other members, or for anything that happens as a result of a connection you make through Hotpot; and
• c because Hotpot is provided to you for personal, non-commercial use, we are not liable for business losses (such as loss of profit, business, revenue, goodwill, or business opportunity).

13. Closing your account

13.1 You can leave at any time. How long each kind of data is kept, what account deletion removes and what survives it is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 10 (How long we keep your data), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

13.2 When we may close your account. We may close your account, or restrict your access to Hotpot, if:

• a you break these Terms or the Guidelines, or use Hotpot unlawfully;
• b you are, or we reasonably believe you are, under 18;
• c your behaviour puts other members, our staff, or the service at risk; or
• d we are required to do so by law.

13.3 Proportionate action and notice. How enforcement decisions are weighed, how you are told, and how you appeal is as set out in the Community & Safety Guidelines on hotpot.dating, section 8 (Enforcement and appeals), which forms part of these Terms.

13.4 Ending the service or a part of it. We may also stop providing Hotpot, or a part of it, or close accounts generally, giving you reasonable notice where we can — for example if we decide to discontinue the service.

13.5 What happens when your account ends. When your account is closed or terminated:

• a your right to use Hotpot ends immediately; where you deleted the account yourself it closes at once and is deleted fourteen days later, and inside those days you can ask us to recover it, as the Privacy Policy, section 10 explains; where we closed it, the closure stands;
• b your matches, conversations, and profile stop being available to you and to other members; and
• c your Content is deleted in line with the Privacy Policy, except for anything we are required or permitted to keep for legal, safety, or security reasons.

13.6 Terms that survive. The sections that by their nature should continue after your account ends — including Sections 7.6 (your responsibility for Content), 11 (consumer rights), 12 (liability), 15 (governing law), 16 (complaints and contact), and 17 (other terms) — continue to apply.

14. Changes to the service and to these Terms

14.1 Changes to the service. Hotpot will keep changing. We may add, remove, or change features to improve the App, keep it safe, or reflect legal or technical needs.

14.2 Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms from time to time — for example to reflect new features, changes in the law, or feedback. When we make a change:

• a we will update the "Last updated" date at the top; and
• b where a change materially affects your rights or obligations, we will give you reasonable notice in the App or by another appropriate means before it takes effect.

14.3 Your choice. If you do not agree to a change, you can close your account.

14.4 How the people you browse are chosen. How the people you browse each day are chosen, and the safeguards around it, are set out in the AI & Matching-Model Transparency Notice, section 7 (Profiling to choose who you browse), which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

15. Governing law and jurisdiction

15.1 These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter (including non-contractual disputes or claims), are governed by the law of England & Wales.

15.2 You and we agree that the courts of England & Wales have jurisdiction to settle any such dispute. If you live in another part of the United Kingdom, you may also be able to bring proceedings in your home courts; this Section does not take away any protection the law gives you as a consumer.

16. How to complain and how to contact us

16.1 Contact us. For any question, concern, or complaint about Hotpot or these Terms, email us at contact@hotpot.dating.

16.2 Complaints about your personal data. Your data-protection rights, how to exercise them, and how to complain to us or to the Information Commissioner's Office is as set out in the Privacy Policy, section 11 (Your rights), under "Your other rights", which is incorporated into these Terms by reference as information.

17. Other important terms

17.1 Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to a successor without affecting your rights; what happens to your personal data in that case is in the Privacy Policy, section 8 (Who we share your data with).

17.2 Severability. If any part of these Terms is found by a court to be unlawful or unenforceable, the rest of the Terms stay in force. Where possible, the offending part will be read down to the extent needed to make it valid rather than removed entirely.

17.3 No waiver. If we do not enforce a right under these Terms straight away, or at all, that does not mean we have given up that right.

17.4 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Community & Safety Guidelines, are the whole agreement between you and us about your use of Hotpot, and replace any earlier agreement on the same subject. Nothing in this section limits your non-excludable consumer rights, or your remedies for anything we have told you that was untrue.

17.5 No third-party rights. These Terms are between you and us. No one else has any right to enforce them, except that a member you have harmed may have their own separate legal rights against you.

17.6 Events beyond our control. We are not responsible for any failure or delay in providing Hotpot caused by something beyond our reasonable control.