Version 2026-08-20-r2-draft
RateGrid is free while coverage is being built out. There is no paid plan on sale, no card is collected, and nothing here creates a payment obligation.
These terms have not been reviewed by a lawyer. Being free does not make the rest of this document decorative: everything the API returns is an estimate, not a bill, and sections 2 and 3 below set out what it does and does not account for. Read them before relying on any figure — particularly for solar payback, battery sizing, or a decision to switch rate plans.
RateGrid provides electricity tariff data and calculated bill estimates via an API. Tariff data is transcribed from rate schedules filed by utilities with their regulators, and each record carries a citation to its source and an effective date.
Every figure returned by the service is an estimate. It is not a bill, not a quotation, and not a statement of what any utility will charge. Actual bills depend on metering, billing-cycle timing, programs the customer is enrolled in, taxes and franchise fees, and rate changes that may take effect after a calculation is made.
The service does not provide financial, investment, engineering or legal advice. Decisions about purchasing equipment, changing rate plans, or representing savings to a third party are yours.
The service is pre-launch and its coverage is narrow relative to the roughly three thousand electric utilities in the United States: it currently carries 37 residential tariffs across 21 utilities. It does not model: medical baseline allowances, FERA, annual true-up, non-bypassable charges assessed on gross consumption, commercial or industrial tariffs, demand charges, or export compensation set by a Community Choice Aggregator. Baseline territories for twelve California counties are defined in the tariff by prose boundaries and cannot be resolved automatically; the API reports these as ambiguous rather than guessing.
Current limitations are published in the repository README and in API
responses via warnings fields. You are responsible for reading
them.
Reasonable effort is made to keep tariff data current: source documents are polled, changes are detected, and encoded rates are checked against the filed sheets automatically. No warranty is given that any figure is accurate, current, or fit for any purpose. Utilities publish inconsistent, superseded and occasionally erroneous documents; some such inconsistencies are documented in the data itself.
The service is provided on a best-effort basis with no uptime commitment. It may change, degrade or be discontinued. Reasonable notice will be given to paying subscribers where practical.
No fees are currently charged. If paid plans are introduced, existing accounts remain on the free tier unless they choose to subscribe; use of the service will not begin costing money without an explicit purchase.
The service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, and subject to the exceptions in section 9.1, the aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to:
Where an account has moved between tiers, the limit that applies is the one for the tier in effect at the time the claim arose.
Subject to the same exceptions, there is no liability for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits or lost business, including losses arising from reliance on any estimate produced by the service.
Nothing in section 9 limits or excludes liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud or intentional misrepresentation, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
These terms may be updated. Continued use after a change constitutes acceptance. Material changes will be notified to paying subscribers by email.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
Questions about these terms, privacy requests, and legal notices: support@rategrid.dev. What is collected and why is set out in the privacy notice.