Terms of Use

These terms are an agreement between you and Sovereign Media LLC (“we”, “us”), which runs the Sovereign licensing service and publishes the official Sovereign client applications. They cover your use of the client applications for web, Roku, Android, Google TV and Fire TV, and of the licensing service at account.sovereign.watch, including any trial or license you obtain from it.

Last updated: 31 October 2026

Accepting These Terms

Installing or using a Sovereign client application, or starting a trial or buying a license from the licensing service, means you accept these terms. If you don’t accept them, don’t install or use the applications, and don’t start a trial or buy a license.

What You’re Getting

Sovereign is self-hosted software. The client applications are viewers: they connect to a media server that you run, or that someone else runs and has invited you onto. The applications are supplied free of charge. There’s no hosting, no storage and no streaming infrastructure behind them, and whether they work at all depends on a server and a network you control.

What we do sell is licenses for Sovereign servers, through the licensing service. A license is described under Licenses and Subscriptions below. It affects the licensing notice and whether user backups are available, and nothing else about how the software works.

Use of the Sovereign source code is governed by the licence published in its repositories at https://github.com/sovereign-media. These terms govern your use of the built client applications and of the licensing service, and don’t restrict any rights that licence grants you.

Your Server, Your Responsibility

You’re responsible for the server you connect to and everything on it. That includes:

The media. You must hold the rights to the files you store and play, or otherwise have permission to use them. Sovereign doesn’t supply, host, index or distribute any media, and downloading or sharing content you have no right to isn’t something these applications sanction.
Access. Deciding who gets an account on your server, what they can see, and what content ratings apply to them is yours to manage.
Security. Exposing a server to the internet, choosing credentials, configuring TLS and keeping the software updated are your decisions. The Production Hardening guide covers what’s recommended.
The data on it. Your server holds account details, viewing history and activity logs for everyone using it, as described in the Privacy Policy. If other people use your server, you’re the one answerable to them for it.

If you’re connecting to a server that belongs to somebody else, your relationship over accounts, content and data is with them. These terms don’t create any obligation between you and us.

Licenses and Subscriptions

A Sovereign server runs whether or not it holds a license. A server without a valid license shows a licensing notice: a bar across the top of the screen in the client applications, and a ten-second video at the start of each title on clients that can play one. The video can be paused but not skipped, and plays once per viewing. A license removes the notice. A server without one plays everything a licensed server plays. The one feature it lacks is exporting and restoring user backups, which needs a purchased license and isn’t part of a free trial. The Licensing pages describe the notice and backups in full.

No accounts. There’s no account on the licensing service. A server starts a trial, buys a license and moves one from its own License page. You’re responsible for everything done from the servers you administer, and for keeping access to the email address you pay with, because it’s how a license is recovered when its server is gone.

Free trials. Each server can currently start one free trial, which runs for 30 days from when it’s started. A trial belongs to the server it was started on and can’t be moved to another. The length and availability of trials may change.

Subscriptions. Each license covers one server and is bought from that server’s License page, as described in Getting a License. Payment is taken by Stripe when you buy, and again each time the subscription renews at the end of a billing period, until you cancel. The license takes hold on the server it was bought from as soon as the payment goes through. Each license’s term runs to the end of the billing period it was issued in, and a server that checks in picks up the next term by itself when the subscription renews. Prices and plans are listed on the Pricing page, and shown again on the License page before you buy.

One server per license. A license is bound to one server at a time. Moving it to another server, as described in Moving a License, takes it away from the server it left, which shows the notice again. Each license allows 10 server changes in any rolling 30 days; past that, a move is refused until the oldest change ages out, and the refusal says when that will be. The limit exists to stop one license being shared between households, and you mustn’t use a license, or copy a licensed server, to avoid paying for another one.

Two servers on one license. If more than one server is found checking in with the same license, every copy shows the notice, and none can use user backups, until only one is left. Nothing else is restricted.

Support. We may adjust a license’s term, release it from a server, issue a code to move it, or revoke it, for example to correct a billing error, to help somebody who has lost access to their server and their email, or where these terms have been broken. Every such change is recorded against the license.

Cancelling, Refunds and Chargebacks

You can cancel a subscription at any time with Manage Billing on the License page of the server that holds the license, or through Stripe’s customer portal with the email you paid with. Cancelling stops the next renewal and takes nothing away mid-term: each license runs to the date it already carries, and once that date passes the server carries on running with the notice back.

Refunds. You can have a full refund of a payment, a first purchase or a renewal, within 30 days of making it. Use Request Refund on the License page of the server that has the license. Each server can be refunded this way once, ever. A refund ends the license’s term straight away, not at the end of the billing period, and cancels the subscription, so nothing renews. For anything else, write to support@sovereign.watch.

A partial refund, such as a credit we give for a problem, doesn’t change the license or the subscription.

Chargebacks. If you dispute a payment with your bank or card issuer, the term ends from the day the dispute opens. If the dispute is settled in our favour, the term comes back. If it’s settled in yours, the subscription is cancelled.

A server that’s online learns of a refund or a dispute at its next check-in, within about 12 hours, and shows the notice from then on.

Acceptable Use

Don’t use the applications or the licensing service to break the law, to infringe anyone’s copyright, to gain unauthorised access to a server or an account that isn’t yours, or to interfere with the operation of a server or of the licensing service. Don’t remove or obscure attribution notices in the software.

Don’t tamper with a license. A license is signed, so an altered one no longer verifies, and once the server detects that, it shows the licensing notice.

You may modify and redistribute the software as the source licence allows. A modified build isn’t the official application, and shouldn’t be presented as one.

Third-Party Services

Sovereign draws film and television information from The Movie Database and TheTVDB, and can read your library from Radarr and Sonarr. We supply your server’s access to The Movie Database, through Sovereign’s metadata service; your server administrator supplies the API keys for Radarr and Sonarr. Each is governed by its own terms, and we have no control over their availability, accuracy or pricing.

This product uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.

If your administrator enables social sign-in, Google’s or Microsoft’s terms apply to that sign-in.

Payments and subscriptions on the licensing service are handled by Stripe. Stripe’s terms apply to that part of the service alongside these terms.

App Stores

Where a client is distributed through an application store, that store’s own terms apply to the download alongside these terms. The store isn’t a party to these terms, isn’t responsible for the applications, and isn’t responsible for supporting them. Any claim about an application is between you and us, not the store.

The Roku channel and the Android applications may also be installed by sideloading. A sideloaded build is yours to verify.

No Warranty

The applications and the licensing service are provided as is and as available, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

Nobody warrants that the applications will run without interruption or error, that they’ll work with any particular device, server configuration, media file or codec, or that playback will succeed. Transcoding and hardware acceleration depend on your hardware and drivers, and results vary. Nor does anyone warrant that the licensing service will always be reachable. A server that can’t reach it keeps the license it already holds until that license’s term ends.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither we nor Sovereign’s contributors and maintainers are liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, or for any loss of data, media files, revenue, profit or goodwill, arising out of your use of the applications or the licensing service, whether the claim is in contract, tort or otherwise, and even if the possibility of such loss was known.

Keep backups of your media and your server data. The applications can’t recover files your server has lost.

Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain warranties to be excluded or liability to be limited. Where that’s the case, the exclusions above apply only as far as that jurisdiction permits.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us and Sovereign’s contributors and maintainers against claims arising from the content you store or play, from how you operate your server, or from your breach of these terms.

Updates and Availability

Updates may be released at any time, and features may change or be removed. Nobody is obliged to keep publishing the applications, to keep them compatible with older servers, or to support any particular device generation. Distribution through any given store may end.

The plans offered on the licensing service, and their prices, may change. A change to the price of your subscription takes effect from a renewal, not during a term you’ve already paid for.

Ending Your Use

You can stop using the applications at any time by signing out and uninstalling. Your server administrator can suspend or delete your account on their server independently of these terms.

You can cancel your subscription at any time, as described above, and ask for what the licensing service holds about your license to be deleted at privacy@sovereign.watch. Deleting it ends the license. We may revoke a license that’s been used to break these terms.

Changes to These Terms

Updated terms will be published here with a new date. Continuing to use the applications or the licensing service after that means you accept the update.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, United States, without regard to conflict of law rules.

Contact

Send questions about these terms, a license or a refund to support@sovereign.watch. For anything about your data, write to privacy@sovereign.watch, as the Privacy Policy describes.

Titles, artwork, people and descriptions shown in screenshots are fictional and were created for illustration. Sovereign doesn't include or supply any media: it plays the library you bring.