Does your app need terms of service?
If your app is free, has no user accounts, and sells nothing, you do not need to write terms of service. Apple applies its own standard license agreement when you leave that field blank, and Google Play does not ask for one at all. You can publish without writing a word of it.
If your app sells an auto-renewing subscription, the answer flips completely. Apple requires a working Terms of Use link in two separate places, and a missing link is a routine App Review rejection. The gap between those two situations is where most app owners get caught, because nobody tells them which situation they are in until the rejection email arrives.
The three documents people keep mixing up
There are three separate legal documents in play, and they are not interchangeable.
- A privacy policy describes what data you collect and what you do with it. Both stores require one from every app, with no exceptions. We covered that in detail in what a privacy policy actually has to say.
- An EULA, or end user license agreement, is the license to use the software itself. Apple supplies a standard one so that every app on the store has one whether the developer wrote it or not.
- Terms of service are the contract for your service — accounts, acceptable use, user content, payment, cancellation, and what happens when there is a dispute.
On the App Store the last two collapse into one field. The document you upload as your custom license agreement is the same document the store surfaces as your Terms of Use link. So when a reviewer says your Terms of Use link is missing, they are pointing at the license agreement field.
What Apple does if you write nothing at all
Apple's App Store Connect documentation is unusually clear on this. Per Apple's own help page on providing a custom license agreement, "If you don't provide a custom EULA, the standard EULA is applied to your app and the license agreement link isn't shown on your App Store product page."
That is a real answer, not a loophole. A free utility app with no login inherits Apple's standard EULA, the product page simply shows no license link, and review does not object. Writing your own terms in that situation adds legal surface area and buys you nothing.
The subscription rule that causes the rejection
The moment you add an auto-renewing subscription, Apple's requirements change. Apple's subscriptions documentation states plainly: "Please note that your app and App Store metadata must include links to your Terms of Use and Privacy Policy."
Read and carefully. Two places, both required, as of September 2026:
- Inside the app itself, reachable by a user who has not paid yet — usually on the paywall screen or in a settings row.
- In your App Store Connect metadata, which for the Terms of Use means filling in the custom license agreement field rather than leaving the standard EULA in place.
The same Apple page lists what else has to appear on the subscription sign-up screen: the subscription name and duration, the content or service provided during the period, the full renewal price shown clearly and localized, and a way for existing subscribers to sign in or restore their purchase. Rejections for this cluster land under the subscriptions section of the App Review Guidelines, which points at Schedule 2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement for the underlying disclosure requirements.
This is cheap to fix before submission and expensive to fix after. A rejection costs you a review cycle, and review cycles are the least predictable part of any App Store submission timeline.
If you write your own, Apple sets a floor
You are free to write a custom license agreement with extra terms, but it cannot contradict or undercut Apple's baseline. Apple publishes that baseline as the minimum terms of a developer's EULA — ten required clauses. The ones that surprise app owners most:
- The agreement is between you and the user only, not with Apple, and you have to say so.
- You are solely responsible for all maintenance and support. Apple has no obligation to help your users.
- You carry all warranty and product liability. Apple will refund a purchase price, and everything past that is yours.
- Your name, address, and contact details have to be in the document.
- Apple is named as a third-party beneficiary and can enforce the terms against your users directly.
Apple takes the custom agreement as plain text, and you choose which countries and regions it applies to.
Google Play is looser than most people expect
Play requires a privacy policy in two places — Google's user data policy says "All apps must post a privacy policy link in the designated field within Play Console, and a privacy policy link or text within the app itself." That page does not require terms of service anywhere.
So for Play alone, terms of service are optional. That does not make them pointless. Terms of service are what give you the standing to suspend an abusive account, remove content someone uploaded, or refuse service to a user who is costing you money. Without them you are relying on goodwill.
When you genuinely need a custom document
Skip the standard EULA and write real terms if any of these are true:
- Users create accounts you might need to suspend or delete.
- Users upload content, in which case you need a license to host and display it plus a takedown path.
- You charge money outside the store, or you promise a service level, an integration, or physical fulfilment.
- You operate in a regulated category — health, lending, payments, insurance, or anything aimed at children.
If none of those apply, the standard EULA plus a solid privacy policy is genuinely enough.
What our free generator does
The app terms of service generator asks for your app name, company or developer name, contact email, website, effective date, and governing law. Then it asks the questions that change the document: which platforms you ship on, your minimum age tier, whether you have user accounts, whether users upload content, whether you are free or one-time-purchase or subscription, whether there is a free trial, and whether disputes go to court or to binding arbitration with a class-action waiver.
It writes the document live as you answer. You can copy it as text or HTML, or download it as an .html or .md file, then host it at a stable public URL. A second tab gives you the Apple minimum-terms checklist with all ten clauses in plain language and a pointer to the matching section in your document, so you can check the floor is covered before you paste anything into App Store Connect. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Where this is the wrong tool
A generated document is a reasonable floor for a straightforward app. It is not legal advice and it is not a lawyer. If you handle health records, move money, lend, serve children under 13, or have GDPR obligations in the EU or UK, pay an attorney to draft it. The generator will produce something plausible for those cases and plausible is exactly the wrong outcome when the stakes are regulatory.
US APP Team builds and ships apps. We do not draft your legal documents and we do not review the generator's output for you — that is a line we hold on purpose, because reviewing it would be practising law.
The order that avoids a rejection
Decide your pricing model first, because it determines whether you need anything beyond the standard EULA. Generate the privacy policy and, if you need them, the terms. Host both at public URLs that will not move. Put the links inside the app and into App Store Connect and the Play listing. Then run the pre-submission checklist and submit.
If you would rather hand the whole submission over, our pricing page lists what a fixed-price build covers, store setup included.
Your app. In the stores. Done for you. US APP Team designs, builds, and launches your iOS and Android app for a fixed price. Start your app brief or book a free intro call — both are free.
Want to poke around first? Every tool in our free tool library runs in your browser with no signup: an app cost calculator, an app name generator, and a privacy policy generator.
