Cadence Reader · End User License Agreement
The terms under which Cadence Reader is licensed to you, including the free plan and the Cadence Plus subscription.
These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a legal agreement between you and SUBVERTING COMPLEXITY (PTY) LTD, registered in South Africa (registration 2026/180066/07), at 301 Turin Street, Lombardy Estate, Paradiso, Pretoria 0081, South Africa ("Subverting Complexity", "we", "us", "our"), governing your use of the Cadence Reader application ("the app"). They incorporate, and should be read together with, our Privacy Policy.
We grant you a personal, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to download and use Cadence Reader on devices you own or control, in accordance with these Terms and with the usage rules of the app store from which you obtained it. This is a licence, not a sale. We retain all rights in the app.
Cadence Reader contains no advertising. It offers one optional in-app purchase, the Cadence Plus subscription described in section 4. We do not supply books. There is no store and no catalogue inside Cadence. Everything you read in it is something you brought.
Cadence is free to use and stays free. The free plan is not a trial and it does not expire.
On the free plan you keep one book or audio item at a time, and you can replace it as often as you like. Nothing counts the replacements. That one item gets nearly everything the app can do: every supported format, every voice on your device, the speed, the pitch, the sentence pause, the skip interval, the sleep timer, both highlight modes, the themes, the type settings and per-book overrides. You also keep up to three bookmarks in a book, with notes.
Accessibility features are never restricted, on any plan, for any reason.
Cadence Plus is an optional auto-renewing subscription, offered on a monthly and a yearly term. The price is shown in your local currency by the App Store or Google Play at the point of purchase, and the amount you are charged is the one the store shows you. There is no free trial and no introductory offer. The free plan is the trial, and it never ends.
Cadence Plus adds:
We do not sell Cadence Plus and we do not take your payment. Apple sells it on iOS and Google sells it on Android. Your payment, your billing details and your receipt are theirs, not ours. We never see your card.
If a payment fails, Apple's billing grace period gives you 16 days while it retries, and Cadence Plus keeps working through it. If your device is offline, Cadence Plus keeps working: once the date you have paid through has passed with no confirmed renewal, it continues for a further 16 days, after which the library freeze in section 5 applies.
Cadence Plus can be shared through Apple Family Sharing. Where it reaches you that way, the person who bought it is the only one who can cancel it, and the app will tell you so. Google Play does not allow in-app purchases to be shared through Family Library, so there is no equivalent on Android.
Nothing is ever deleted from your device. Every book you imported stays where it is. All but one of them freeze.
Bookmarks work the same way. If you lapse holding ten bookmarks in a book, you keep all ten and can use them. Only the eleventh is refused.
You agree that you will not:
We may suspend an account that does any of the above, and we will say why if we do.
Cadence Reader lets you import your own documents, eBooks, and recordings for personal reading and listening. You are solely responsible for the files you import and must ensure you have the legal right to use them. You agree to import only content that you own, have created, or are otherwise authorised to use, and to use it in a manner consistent with the rights of the copyright holder. The files themselves stay on your device: we do not receive, host, or distribute them. Where you subscribe to Cadence Plus, we sync information about your books between your devices, as described in the Privacy Policy, and never the files.
The app is designed for DRM-free files. It does not remove or bypass DRM, and DRM-protected titles from stores such as Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo cannot be opened.
Cadence Reader reads text aloud using the text-to-speech voices provided by your operating system. Those voices, their availability, their quality, and their own licence terms are supplied and controlled by Apple, Google, or your device manufacturer, not by us. Spoken audio generated on your device is for your personal use; you are responsible for ensuring that any further use complies with the rights in the underlying work and with the voice provider's terms.
The app, including its design, code, branding, and all related intellectual property, is owned by Subverting Complexity and is protected by copyright and other laws. These Terms do not grant you any rights in our trademarks or branding.
We try to keep the service up and we do not promise that it always will be. The reading itself happens on your device, so Cadence keeps working without a connection. Sync and subscription checks need one. Where the service is unavailable, an existing subscription is unaffected for the period described in section 4.
We may change, add or remove features. Where a change removes something you are paying for, we will say so in advance.
The app is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the app will be uninterrupted, error-free, that every file will import or parse correctly, or that defects will be corrected. You use the app at your own risk. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any rights you may have as a consumer under the Consumer Protection Act, 2008 or other applicable law that cannot lawfully be excluded.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Subverting Complexity will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, arising out of or in connection with your use of, or inability to use, the app. Because Cadence Reader stores your library locally, we strongly recommend you keep your own backups of any important files; we are not responsible for data lost through device failure, deletion, or uninstalling the app.
Your use of the app is also subject to the terms of the platform from which you downloaded it.
These Terms are between you and Subverting Complexity only, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content. To the extent these Terms provide a licence, that licence is subject to Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement (Standard EULA); where these Terms conflict with that EULA, the Apple Standard EULA governs for App Store downloads. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.
Your use of the app obtained through Google Play is also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service.
This licence remains in effect until terminated. It terminates automatically if you breach these Terms. You may terminate it at any time by uninstalling the app and deleting all copies. Uninstalling the app does not cancel a Cadence Plus subscription, which has to be cancelled through the store as described in section 4.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, including the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. You agree to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the South African courts, subject to any mandatory consumer-protection rights in your country of residence.
We may revise these Terms from time to time. The current version will always be posted at this URL with an updated date. Continued use of the app after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
Questions about these Terms? Contact us at:
SUBVERTING COMPLEXITY (PTY) LTD
301 Turin Street, Lombardy Estate, Paradiso
Pretoria 0081, South Africa
Email: [email protected]
Web: subvertingcomplexity.com