Pelyr API Terms of Use

Version 2.0 · Effective 23 October 2026

These terms govern your use of the interfaces through which we make AIS data available, and of the alerts we send based on it:

• Pelyr Stream — the interface at stream.pelyr.com through which we deliver live AIS data;
• the Pelyr HTTPS API — the query interface at api.pelyr.com;
• the Pelyr MCP server — the interface at api.pelyr.com/mcp through which AI assistants you connect query the Service on your behalf, under your account;
• Pelyr zone alerts — zones and alerts you set up in the portal at dashboard.pelyr.com or through the HTTPS API, and the messages we send about them to the channels you choose: webhooks and Telegram chats; and
• where your plan includes them, the data products we derive from AIS data and make available through these interfaces or the portal: route events, time slices, history and archive extracts, exports, and SAR and site imagery.

Together they are the “Service”. Where a provision applies to only one of them, it says so. By requesting an API key, by connecting to or querying the Service, or by confirming the alerts notice, you agree to these terms. For a paid plan, you accept these terms when ordering.

1. Who operates the Service

The Service is operated by:

Dr. Zürner GmbH
limited liability company, operating under the brand “Pelyr”
Gerichtsstraße 13, 9300 St. Veit an der Glan, Austria
FN 507663 p, Landesgericht Klagenfurt
Email: hello@pelyr.com

Full details are in the Imprint. How personal data is handled is set out in the Privacy Policy.

2. What the Service is — and is not

The Service makes available AIS vessel messages that are broadcast publicly by vessels and collected from third-party feeds and from community stations. It is offered as a Free plan and as paid plans, and at our discretion as Community access (section 9).

No availability commitment

On the Free plan, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, with the characteristics set out in section 2a. We may change, suspend or discontinue the Free plan, in whole or in part, at any time. For paid plans, section 2a describes what you receive, and sections 6.4, 8 and 12 govern changes, suspension and termination.

2a. Characteristics of every plan

Whichever plan you use, the Service has the following characteristics:

• coverage is limited to areas in which receivers deliver data, and differs from area to area;
• data may be incomplete, delayed or inaccurate, and may be missing for any vessel or area at any time;
• no plan, paid plans included, comes with an uptime commitment or a service level agreement;
• alerts are sent on a best-effort basis, without guaranteed delivery; and
• history is available within the retention periods in section 6.2; older history cannot be queried at present.

If you are a consumer, your statutory rights regarding the conformity of digital services remain unaffected. Before you order a paid plan as a consumer, we ask you to confirm these characteristics separately.

3. Not for navigation. Not a safety or compliance system.

4. Attribution — when you must pass it on

The source data is licensed, and those licences set the attribution they require. For data under CC BY 4.0, NLOD and NLOD 2.0, and for Copernicus Sentinel imagery, attribution is a condition set by the licence itself, and the licence decides when it applies — under CC BY 4.0, for example, when you share the data with others. For data bundled under the Pelyr entry, section 3.1 of the Pelyr Data Licence decides whether attribution is required.

The Service tells you, for every data frame and for every group of fields in an HTTPS response, which licence applies to it. Each of them carries a short identifier that resolves to an entry of our source directory, and that entry names the licence and the attribution that goes with it. The developer documentation describes how to read this information.

Data bundled under the Pelyr entry carries only that entry’s id.

Over the HTTPS API, attribution is collective. A single response can carry data from more than one source. Wherever you display or pass on data obtained through the HTTPS API, you must display the attribution required for every source represented in what you show, not only for one of them.

Zone alerts carry attribution per event. Each alert we send names the licence of the position it is based on, with its attribution text where one applies. If you show or pass on an alert, show that attribution with it: always for a third-party source, and for the Pelyr entry where section 3.1 of the Pelyr Data Licence requires it.

Satellite imagery carries the Copernicus attribution. SAR and site imagery is derived from Copernicus Sentinel data. Wherever you display or pass it on, show the attribution delivered with it, in the form “Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [year]”.

Where attribution is required, you must display it wherever the data is visible to end users — in the interface, on the map, in the exported document; for the Pelyr entry, in the form section 3.1 of the Pelyr Data Licence sets out. Placing it only in source code, in a configuration file or in internal documentation does not satisfy the third-party licences.

Sources and licences may be added or changed. The authoritative list is the source directory described above, as it is currently served to you, not this page. The third-party sources are also listed on the Data Sources page.

5. Your API key

Access requires an API key.

• Your key is personal to you and must not be shared, sub-licensed, resold or otherwise made available to third parties.
• Where your plan allows it, you may issue keys to your employees and contractors, up to the number of keys your plan includes. You, as the account holder, are responsible for their use of those keys and for their compliance with these terms. Beyond that, the preceding point applies.
• The key belongs on a server you control. Do not embed it in browser or app code, in a URL, in a public repository, or anywhere else it can be read by third parties.
• You are responsible for all use made through your key. Tell us immediately at hello@pelyr.com if you believe it has been exposed, so that we can revoke it.
• We may revoke a key — see section 8.

6. Limits, and what happens when you reach them

Every key and every account is subject to limits. The limits of every plan are listed at dashboard.pelyr.com/pricing as in force when you order. For the Free plan, they are current values, not a guaranteed entitlement, and may change (section 6.4).

When you reach a limit, we may reject the request or withhold or combine data. Where the limit concerns the connection itself, where you exceed a limit repeatedly, or where a connection loses too much data (section 6.1), we may also close the connection. The developer documentation describes how each limit is enforced.

6.1 Pelyr Stream

Where you subscribe to more than your connection can carry, we do not throttle you silently: where the protocol you use supports it, we tell you when data was lost, and we may close a connection that loses too much data within a short time, as the developer documentation describes.

6.2 History

History can be queried directly for at least the periods listed on the pricing page (section 6), counted back from the time of the request. Your plan may limit this further. Older history is held in our archive, which cannot be queried at present; once it can, access to it is enabled per key on request.

6.3 Pelyr zone alerts

The limits apply per account, whether you use the portal or the HTTPS API. Zones are the exception: a zone counts against the plan of the place where you created it, and the two limits add up. Zones created through the HTTPS API count against your developer plan, zones created in the portal against your map plan. Where a limit is reached, you may ask us at hello@pelyr.com for a higher one; we are not obliged to grant it.

Each channel receives a limited number of messages per hour, shown on the pricing page. Beyond that number, we do not send the further alerts of that hour, but one notice with the number of alerts not sent.

We switch a channel off after 20 failed delivery attempts in a row. We also switch it off at once if a webhook tells us that its address no longer exists, or if a Telegram chat unsubscribes from or blocks our bot. You can switch the channel on again at any time in the portal or through the HTTPS API.

6.4 Scope of your plan, fair use and changes to limits

The scope of a paid plan — your developer plan and your map plan, with the limits shown at dashboard.pelyr.com/pricing — is fixed when you order. You may change it with effect from the next billing period, or at once by upgrading.

Route events are a beta and can be incomplete (sections 2a and 3). Each developer plan includes them in the window shown at dashboard.pelyr.com/pricing: in the portal for your account, and through the HTTPS API for each of your keys that we enable on request to hello@pelyr.com. On the Free plan, these are the events of the last 3 days. Older events are not delivered; this is not a fault.

We may adjust the limits of the Free plan at any time, including for individual keys, in particular to keep the Service available to everyone.

For paid plans, we change content or limits only for a valid reason — legal or upstream-licence requirements, security, or protecting the Service — and without extra cost to you. If you are a consumer, we tell you about such a change by email reasonably in advance. If it affects you adversely more than marginally, you may cancel your plan free of charge within 30 days of that email or of the change, whichever is later, and receive a pro-rata refund of the prepaid amount via Paddle.

Do not attempt to circumvent these limits, including by opening additional accounts to obtain additional keys.

7. What you may do with the data

7.1 The data itself

Part of the AIS data you receive remains subject to the licences of its sources — CC BY 4.0, NLOD and NLOD 2.0 (section 4). Those licences permit further use and redistribution, and these terms do not restrict the rights they grant you. Where anything on this page could be read as limiting those rights, the licence prevails.

Data bundled under the Pelyr entry is different. It is not third-party open data: it is licensed to you by us, under the Pelyr Data Licence 2.0, and that licence is more restrictive than CC BY 4.0 and NLOD. Commercial use is permitted only for the data a plan delivers: data received through Pelyr Stream, the HTTPS API or the MCP server while your account holds a paid developer plan, and data received through the map of the Pelyr portal while it holds the Premium Plus map plan; you may sell what you build from that data. Other data under the Pelyr Data Licence, in particular data received under the Free developer plan or through the map on Map Free or Premium, whatever other plan the account holds, is for non-commercial use only, unless the transition for accounts created before 23 October 2026 (section 9) or a written permission from us allows it. Alert messages follow the place where their zone was created: those of a zone created through the HTTPS API are for commercial use while your account holds a paid developer plan, those of a zone created in the portal while it holds Premium Plus. Section 2.2 of the Pelyr Data Licence sets this out in full. Unless we have agreed otherwise in a separate written agreement, you may not pass that data, or a substantial part of it, on to others, whether for payment or free of charge, or relay the Service. The first paragraph of this section does not apply to that data. This does not affect rights you have under mandatory law, including exceptions and limitations to the maker's database right (section 9.3 of the Pelyr Data Licence).

Section 4 explains how to tell, for each data frame and each HTTPS response, which licence it is delivered under.

If you pass on data from a third-party source, its licence requires that the attribution set out in section 4, a reference to the licence and any note that the data has been changed (ours, and yours where you change it) go with it, so that the recipient can see them. For data under the Pelyr Data Licence, section 3.1 of that licence decides whether attribution must be shown.

7.2 Access to the Service

This is separate from the data. You may not:

• share, resell or sub-licence access to the Service, or operate a proxy that offers third parties access through your key, unless we have agreed to it in a separate written agreement;
• use the Service in a way that impairs its availability, security or integrity, or that interferes with other users;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service or its infrastructure;
• use the public map on pelyr.com, or the interfaces behind it, as a source of data, in particular by extracting data from it systematically; or attempt to resolve the pseudonymous identifiers it shows to a vessel, or to link an identifier to the one that replaces it;
• use the data in a manner prohibited by section 3, or unlawfully — in particular for the surveillance, harassment or tracking of individuals.

This section governs access to the Service, not the data you receive. It does not restrict what you do with data under CC BY 4.0, NLOD or NLOD 2.0 once you have received it, including passing it on in real time under its licence. What you may not do is let third parties use your key, or send their own requests to the Service through it.

7.3 End users

If you make data obtained through the Service, or any product or output based on it, available to third parties, you must (a) not market or present it as suitable for navigation, collision avoidance, safety-of-life or compliance purposes; (b) display to those third parties a clear notice that the data may be incomplete, delayed or inaccurate and must not be used for such purposes; and (c) bind them to restrictions no less protective than section 3. Points (b) and (c) do not apply to data under CC BY 4.0, NLOD or NLOD 2.0 that you pass on.

7.4 AI assistants and the MCP server

Using the Service through an AI assistant, including via the Pelyr MCP server, is permitted. Transmitting data to the provider of the language model you use, solely to answer your interactive requests, is not passing it on under section 7.1, provided that provider does not use it to train its models.

8. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time and ask us to delete your account and keys. How you cancel a paid plan is set out in section 9 and on our Refunds and Withdrawal page.

On the Free plan, we may suspend or revoke your access, in whole or in part, at any time and at our discretion, in particular if you breach these terms, if your use endangers the availability or security of the Service, if we are required to do so by law or by an upstream data provider, or if we discontinue the Service. We may act first and inform you afterwards.

We may suspend or end a paid plan for good cause, in particular a material breach of these terms, non-payment, a threat to the security of the Service, or a legal or upstream requirement. If we end a paid plan for a reason not attributable to you, the unused prepaid portion is refunded via Paddle.

A revocation takes effect immediately on the HTTPS API and for every MCP tool call that reads vessel data, and on Pelyr Stream usually within seconds and normally within about a minute, including for connections that are already open.

8a. Sanctions

You represent that you are not, and are not owned or controlled by, a person subject to EU, UN, UK or US sanctions. You may not use the Service in or from Russia, Belarus, Iran or North Korea, or in or from the regions of Ukraine not controlled by its government, or for persons established there. We may refuse or end access where providing it would breach sanctions law.

9. Plans, prices and payment

We offer a Free plan and paid plans; their scope and limits are set out in section 6. Contributing a station is governed by the Contributor Terms. At our discretion we may also give an account Community access: free access with higher limits, for non-commercial use only, described at dashboard.pelyr.com/pricing. It is voluntary, creates no claim, and we may change or end it at any time. What these terms say about the Free plan applies to it, apart from its limits. When it ends, the account continues on the plans it holds without it. Paid plans are open to consumers and to businesses.

The pricing page at dashboard.pelyr.com/pricing and the purchase dialog show each price including VAT, as Paddle calculates it for the country it determines for you, and the price without VAT. The VAT of your place of residence or business applies; Paddle calculates it at checkout and shows the total before you pay. The amount you pay is the net price plus that VAT.

Paid plans are sold by our reseller and merchant of record, Paddle.com Market Limited, under its buyer terms, which govern payment, the processing of refunds and consent to price changes. Our Refunds and Withdrawal page explains how you withdraw or cancel and what is refunded. You can cancel with the “Cancel contracts here” link and withdraw with the “Withdraw from contract here” link at the foot of every page of pelyr.com and dashboard.pelyr.com, without signing in. Paddle sends you the receipts and the payment and renewal emails; we tell you by email about changes we make to a paid plan (section 6.4). Your right to use the Service is granted by us under these terms. When a paid plan ends, your account continues on the Free and Map Free plans or, while they last for your account, on Legacy Free (see below) or Community access.

A payment obligation only ever arises if you actively accept a paid plan. Nothing you do or fail to do — including continuing to use the Service — turns free use into a paid arrangement, and you will never be charged for use that has already taken place.

If we stop offering free access, your free access ends. We will announce this in advance on this page, by a notice on Pelyr Stream and by email to the verified email address of your account. For an account without an email address, the announcement on this page and the notice on Pelyr Stream are the ones we rely on. This does not apply to the end of Community access.

Accounts created before 23 October 2026 keep, until 23 December 2026, the scope the Free plan had before 23 October 2026 (“Legacy Free”): its limits, track history and route events, the time slice, and commercial use under section 2.2(e) of the Pelyr Data Licence. Booking a paid plan never reduces this scope: while such an account holds a paid developer plan (Fleet, Horizon, Global or Enterprise), each limit, the track history and the route events are the more generous of Legacy Free and that plan until 23 December 2026; for saved vessels, the account's map plan counts as well. Neither Legacy Free nor this rule applies to zones created in the portal: they always count against the map plan alone (section 6.3). After 23 December 2026, only the account's own plans apply; without a paid developer plan the account continues on the Free plan.

10. Liability

Within the Free plan, the Service is provided free of charge. The following applies to every plan:

• We are liable without limitation for damages arising from injury to life, body or health, and for damages caused intentionally or by gross negligence.
• We are not liable for slight negligence, except where an essential contractual obligation is breached (an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose fulfilment you regularly rely and may rely); in that case liability is limited to the damage that, at the time of contracting, was objectively foreseeable as typical of a contract of this kind.
• If you are not a consumer, our total liability, except in the cases of the first item, is limited to the fees you paid for the Service in the one month before the event giving rise to the claim.
• If you are not a consumer and we are liable for slight negligence only, we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of data, business interruption, or any damage arising from the unavailability, incompleteness, delay or inaccuracy of the data.
• Where we are liable for slight negligence only, we are not liable for any consequence of use contrary to section 3.

Nothing in these terms limits liability under product liability law, including under the Austrian Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz).

11. Indemnity

If you use the Service in the course of a business, you will indemnify us against all third-party claims, damages and reasonable costs, including legal fees, arising from your breach of section 3 or section 7 (including 7.3), or from any product or service you provide to third parties using data obtained through the Service.

12. Changes to these terms

We may amend these terms. The current version is always published here with its version number and date. Where reasonably practicable we will announce changes that materially affect your rights or obligations before they take effect, by the same means as in section 9. On the Free plan, if you do not accept a change, stop using the Service; that is the only consequence. Changes that adversely affect a paid plan apply only from your next renewal and, for consumers, only if you accept them; otherwise your plan ends at the end of the billing period.

13. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by Austrian law, excluding its conflict-of-law rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

If you are a consumer — a natural person acting for purposes outside their trade or profession — this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence. If you are not a consumer, the courts competent for St. Veit an der Glan, Austria, have exclusive jurisdiction.

14. Severability

If any provision of these terms is or becomes invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions is unaffected.