These API Terms of Use govern programmatic access to the every.film catalogue — our database of film and television metadata assembled from public sources and community contributions. By querying the API or holding an API key, you accept the terms below. every.film is operated by an individual maintainer as an open-data project; we have kept these terms short, and we expect the same good faith in return.
Data License and Attribution
Metadata served through the API is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-SA 4.0). Read access is open: no key, registration, or payment is required to fetch records, subject to the fair-use rules below.
- Credit every.film as your source in a reasonable manner suited to the medium — a visible attribution with a link back to every.film satisfies this.
- If you share adapted versions of the data, release the adapted material under CC-BY-SA 4.0 or a compatible license.
- The grant extends only to the rights every.film actually holds: it covers the metadata itself and does not cover, or lift, rights that upstream providers may retain in their material (including certain images).
Fair Use and Rate Limits
The API runs on modest, personally funded infrastructure. Anonymous read access is rate-limited per client; limits may be tuned over time, and when you exceed them the API answers HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header — please back off accordingly.
- Honor HTTP 429 responses and any Retry-After header instead of retrying immediately.
- Cache responses for a reasonable period rather than re-fetching records that have not changed.
- Do not issue high-concurrency floods, spread requests across clients to evade limits, or scrape the site HTML in place of the API.
API Keys and Write Access
Reading the API requires no credential. Write access through the API — submitting edits, ratings, marks, or comments — and the TMDB-compatible surface (/3) require an approved credential: an API key, or an account (OIDC) binding approved by an administrator. Signed-in users writing through the site itself need only their session. Keys and bindings are approved manually and are not granted automatically.
- Keep your key confidential and use it only for the application it was approved for.
- Do not share, sell, or lend the key, or embed it where others can extract it; you are responsible for requests made with your key.
- Keys may be suspended or revoked at any time — for abuse, breach of these terms, or operational reasons.
Upstream Sources and Required Notices
every.film aggregates records from TMDB, IMDb, and Douban alongside community contributions. This product uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB. Portions of the metadata and images available through our API originate from these upstream services. Where your use of such material falls within an upstream provider's own terms, you are responsible for complying with those terms in addition to ours; where practical, we identify the source of a record so you can make that judgement.
Prohibited Uses
In addition to the license conditions above, the following are not permitted:
- Presenting your application as official — implying that it is operated, endorsed, or certified by every.film.
- Redistributing the data with attribution stripped, or otherwise obscuring that every.film and its upstream sources are the origin.
- Using the API in connection with unlawful activity, or in any way that damages, overloads, or interferes with the service or its other users.
No Warranty, No SLA
The API and all data are provided "as is", without warranties of any kind. Records are compiled from external sources and volunteer edits and may be incomplete, outdated, or simply wrong; verify independently before relying on them for anything that matters. every.film is a personal project: there is no service-level agreement, no uptime guarantee, and no commitment to support. Endpoints, response shapes, and limits may change; we will make a reasonable effort to announce breaking changes in advance, but cannot promise to.
These API terms apply in addition to our general Terms of Use — including its liability and termination provisions, which also govern API use: Terms of Use
Changes and Termination
We may block clients, revoke keys, or restrict access where these terms are breached or the service is put at risk, and we may update these terms by publishing a revised version on this page. Continued use of the API after a revision takes effect constitutes acceptance. Rights already granted under CC-BY-SA 4.0 for data you lawfully obtained are not affected by termination.
Contact
For questions about the API, key requests, or reports of abuse, email us at: [email protected]
Last updated: August 8, 2026