Free Terms and Conditions Generator

What is a terms and conditions generator?

A terms and conditions generator is a free tool that builds a complete T&C document from a few facts about your business - your name, URL, contact email, governing law, and what you actually do. Instead of copying another site's terms and hoping the clauses fit, this free terms and conditions generator assembles only the sections that apply to you: a store that ships physical products gets shipping and returns clauses, a SaaS with recurring billing gets a subscriptions clause, a blog with comments gets a user content clause.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, there is no signup, and the output is plain text you can paste straight into a Shopify page, a WordPress page, or wherever your legal pages live.

The document you are actually required to publish is the other one

Terms and conditions and a privacy policy get mentioned in the same breath, but they have completely different legal status. Terms are a contract you choose to offer. A privacy notice is compelled by statute the moment you collect personal data.

Under GDPR Article 13 you must tell people, at the time their data is obtained, who the controller is, the purposes of processing and the legal basis for it, any legitimate interests relied on, the recipients, third-country transfers, retention period, their rights of access, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, the right to withdraw consent, and the right to complain to a supervisory authority. California requires disclosure at or before the point of collection of the categories collected, the purposes, whether data is sold or shared, and the retention period for each category.

There is no general US federal law requiring a website to publish terms and conditions at all. So the document most businesses generate first is the optional one, and the mandatory one is a different document with a different content list.

Selling into the EU adds a separate set of duties that also live outside your terms. Before a consumer is bound by a distance contract you must supply the main characteristics of the goods, your identity, geographical address, telephone number and email address, the total price including taxes and delivery, and the conditions and procedure for withdrawal along with the model withdrawal form.

Terms and conditions for an ecommerce store

An online store's terms carry more weight than most, because money changes hands. The sections that matter most are the ones that settle disputes before they start: when exactly an order becomes a binding contract (after your confirmation, not the moment someone clicks Buy - this is what lets you cancel a mispriced order), who pays return shipping, when risk in the goods passes to the buyer, and what happens when a package is delayed in customs.

Shopify and WooCommerce stores get a checkout, but neither platform writes your terms for you - the default theme just links to a page you are expected to fill. This generator produces that page. Select "Online store", tick physical or digital products (or both), and the ordering, pricing, shipping and refund clauses are built in with your business name and governing law already inserted.

Terms for a website, blog or SaaS

Sites that don't sell physical goods still need terms - they just need different ones. For a SaaS or web app, the load-bearing clauses are accounts, subscriptions and cancellation, the disclaimer that the service is provided "as is", and the limitation of liability that caps what a customer can claim if the service goes down. For a blog or content site, the core is simpler: intellectual property (your content is yours), a disclaimer that articles are information rather than professional advice, and rules for comments if you allow them.

The generator adjusts to this. Choose "SaaS / web app" or "Blog / content site" and the commerce clauses drop out; what remains is a shorter document that still covers the parts that actually get tested.

Enforceability is decided by your checkout page, not your document

You can generate immaculate terms and still have them held unenforceable, because US courts ask how the user agreed rather than what the document said.

In 2014 the Ninth Circuit refused to enforce Barnes & Noble’s terms in Nguyen, holding that where a site makes its terms available via a conspicuous hyperlink on every page but gives no other notice and prompts no affirmative action, even placing that link close to the button the user must click is not enough to create constructive notice. The court put the burden squarely on the site owner to put users on notice.

Compare Meyer v. Uber in 2017, where the Second Circuit enforced the terms. What made the difference was interface design: an uncluttered screen visible all at once, hyperlinks directly below the registration button, and the wording “By creating an Uber account, you agree to the Terms of Service” acting as a clear prompt to read them. The test is reasonably conspicuous notice plus an unambiguous manifestation of assent, judged from the perspective of a reasonably prudent user.

The EU regulates the button itself. Where an online order places a consumer under an obligation to pay, the button must be labelled “order with obligation to pay” or an equally unambiguous formulation - and if it is not, the consumer is not bound by the contract at all.

Clauses that do not survive consumer law

One structural point first, and it applies directly to anything a generator produces. The EU unfair terms directive treats a term as not individually negotiated whenever it was drafted in advance in a pre-formulated standard contract. Generated terms are the textbook case, so the fairness test applies to them in full.

In the UK an unfair term simply is not binding on the consumer, and Schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives an indicative, non-exhaustive list of suspect terms. Four appear in almost every generated document:

Excluding liability for death or personal injury. Not merely suspect - a trader cannot exclude or restrict liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence, full stop.

“Provided as is, no warranties of any kind.” For digital content supplied to UK consumers, a term is not binding to the extent it excludes the statutory rights to satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and matching the description.

“We may modify these Terms at any time.” Listed as potentially unfair where it lets the supplier alter the contract unilaterally without a valid reason specified in the contract itself.

Forcing every dispute to arbitration. Also on the list, as excluding or hindering the consumer’s right to take legal action.

Affiliate sites, contests and the clauses people forget

Two clauses get left out of homemade terms more than any others. The first is the affiliate disclosure: if you earn commission from links, advertising rules in most countries require you to say so, and burying it in a page nobody linked to doesn't count. The second is contest rules - a giveaway run without stated rules is a small legal mess waiting for its first disgruntled entrant, and in some jurisdictions an unlicensed lottery.

Both are checkboxes here. Tick "Affiliate links" and the document discloses the commission relationship plainly. Tick "Contests or giveaways" and it establishes that each promotion has its own rules, is void where prohibited, and can be cancelled if fraud or technical failure compromises it - the baseline that keeps a $50 giveaway from becoming a problem.

The clauses that actually protect you

Most of a terms page is housekeeping. Three sections do the real protective work. The limitation of liability caps what you can be sued for - without it, a $29 sale can theoretically expose you to an unlimited claim. The disclaimer of warranties establishes that your site and products are provided "as is", so an outage or a typo in a product description is not a broken promise. And the governing law clause decides whose courts and whose rules apply, which matters the moment a customer on another continent disagrees with you.

The generator includes all three in every document, adapted to what you sell and the country you enter. They are not exotic - they are the same clauses you'll find at the bottom of every large company's terms - but they only work if they exist on your site before the dispute does.

When a free generator is enough - and when it isn't

For a small store, a blog, a course, or an early-stage SaaS, a well-built template covers the ground: the clauses above are standard for a reason, and having a complete, honest terms page beats having none or a copied one that mentions products you don't sell. That is the case this tool is built for.

It stops being enough when the stakes or the regulation rise: medical or financial products, alcohol, CBD, children's products or services aimed at minors, businesses handling sensitive personal data at scale, or anything where a single dispute could be existential. At that point a template is a first draft for a lawyer, not a substitute for one. A cheaper middle step is to have an AI review what you generated - the Legal & HR skills on KissMySkills include a document reviewer built exactly for that pass.

What this generator can't do

It can't give legal advice. The output is a template assembled from standard clauses, conditioned on what you ticked. It has not read your contracts, your privacy practices, or the regulations of your industry, and it doesn't know what you didn't tell it.

It can't make anyone agree. Everything in the section above about notice and assent is a property of your signup flow. No generated document can compensate for a link buried in a footer.

It can't localise the law. The governing law clause inserts the country you type, but consumer protection rules differ sharply between jurisdictions - EU consumers have a mandatory 14-day withdrawal right for most distance sales, some US states restrict liability caps, and several countries limit what an "all sales final" clause can actually do. The document notes where statutory rights override it, but it cannot enumerate them for your country.

It can't handle the digital-content cancellation trap. EU consumers normally get 14 days to withdraw without reason. Losing that right for digital content delivered immediately now requires three things together: the consumer's prior express consent to begin performance, their acknowledgement that they thereby lose the right, and your confirmation of the contract. Plenty of published templates still carry the older two-part version.

It isn't a privacy policy. Terms and conditions govern the deal between you and your users; a privacy policy governs what you do with their data, and laws like the GDPR and CCPA require one separately. Publishing terms does not satisfy that requirement.

It can't take responsibility. No generator can. If your business is regulated, if real money rides on a clause holding up, or if you are being asked to sign the terms rather than publish them - have a lawyer review the document first. Use this output as a solid starting point and an honest first draft, not as the final word.