Legal

Terms of Service

Version 2026-10-24 · Draft

Draft pending legal review. Atom Interactive, LLC is still reviewing this text with counsel, and it may change before it's final. Questions: support@firmsapi.com.

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and Atom Interactive, LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company (“FIRMSapi”, “we”, “us”). They cover the FIRMSapi API, the developer portal at app.firmsapi.com, the docs at docs.firmsapi.com and this website (together, the “Service”).

You accept these Terms when you create an account, or when you use an API key or the Service. If you use the Service for a company or other organization, you accept them for that organization and confirm you have authority to do so; “you” then means the organization. The Service is for businesses and professionals. You must be at least 18 to use it.

1. The Service

FIRMSapi provides lookup, search, nearby search and pre-filing validation for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) FIRMS codes, which identify facilities such as piers, container freight stations, bonded warehouses, foreign-trade zones and exam stations. We may add, change or remove features. When a change removes a feature from a paid plan, we’ll tell you in advance by email or in the portal.

2. FIRMS data: provided as-is, confirm in ACE

The data comes from CBP. FIRMS codes, names, addresses, statuses, types and ports come from CBP’s FIRMS list. We add our own normalization, coordinates, aliases and validation checks. FIRMSapi is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for CBP or any government agency.
It may be wrong or out of date. CBP data can contain errors, and our copy can lag CBP’s list. Every response says how current its data is (meta.data_as_of). Coordinates are geocoded and may be approximate.
Validation is a pre-filing check, not a determination. A passing result means the checks we can run passed. It doesn’t mean CBP will accept a filing. Some checks aren’t possible from the FIRMS list (bond status, FTZ zone IDs, direct delivery and port clusters, for example), and responses list them under checks_not_possible.
Confirm in ACE. Before you file, confirm FIRMS codes and filing details in CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) or with your customs broker. You are responsible for your filings and for any penalties, holds, fees or delays that follow from them.
No legal or customs advice. We are not a customs broker, and nothing in the Service is legal, regulatory or customs advice.

3. Accounts and API keys

Give us a working email address and keep it current. We send sign-in codes and account notices to it.
Keep your API keys secret. You are responsible for all use of your account and keys. If a key may be exposed, roll or revoke it in the portal right away and tell us at support@firmsapi.com.
Test keys (fapi_test_…) return fixture data and don’t count toward your quota. Live keys (fapi_live_…) return live data and count as described in the docs.
One person or organization, one free account. Don’t create extra accounts to get more free calls.

4. Plans, quotas and limits

Each plan includes a monthly quota of live calls and the features listed on the pricing page. What counts as a call is described in the docs. Quotas reset on the first day of each calendar month (UTC).
When you have used your quota, any call-pack balance and any metered overage you opted into, the API returns 429 quota_exceeded until the next month.
We apply rate limits to keep the Service reliable. We may change quotas, limits and features. For a paid plan, we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice of a change that reduces what you get, and the change applies from your next billing period.

5. Acceptable use

You may use FIRMSapi results in your own products, services and filings, including showing individual results to your own users as part of something you built. You must not:

Resell or redistribute the dataset. Don’t sell, license, publish or give away the FIRMS data, or a substantial part of it, as a dataset, file, feed or API, whether it comes from our responses or our website.
Bulk-copy the data. Don’t scrape the website or iterate through the API to build a copy of the dataset, or to build a competing product.
Get around limits. Don’t share keys outside your organization, rotate accounts or keys to avoid quotas or rate limits, or get around plan restrictions in any other way.
Abuse the Service. Don’t overload it, load-test it, probe or attack its security, reverse engineer it, or interfere with other customers’ use.
Break the law or mislead. Don’t use the Service for anything unlawful or fraudulent. Don’t suggest that we or CBP endorse you, or that FIRMSapi output is an official CBP record.
Ignore trade controls. Don’t use the Service if you’re located in, or acting for someone in, a country or on a list subject to U.S. sanctions or export restrictions.

We may suspend keys or accounts that break these rules, generally after notice when that’s practical.

6. Payments through Link

Who sells to you. Paid plans, call packs and metered overage are sold through Link, Stripe’s checkout and payment service, which is the merchant of record for your purchase. Your checkout page and receipt show the sale as “Sold through Link”. Link’s own terms apply to the payment.
Receipts, taxes, refunds and payment support. Link calculates and collects any sales tax, VAT or GST and sends your receipts and invoices. Link handles refund requests, disputes and payment questions. Its contact details are on your receipt. For questions about the Service itself, write to us at support@firmsapi.com.
Subscriptions. Paid plans are billed monthly in advance and renew automatically until you cancel. If you change plans mid-period, the price difference is prorated.
Cancellation. You can cancel any time from the developer portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. You keep your paid plan until then, and the account then moves to the free plan. We don’t refund partial periods unless Link’s refund policy or the law requires it.
Call packs. A call pack is a one-time purchase of extra live calls. Pack calls are used after your monthly quota, and any balance stays available while your account is open.
Metered overage. On a paid plan you can opt in to metered overage, which bills calls past your quota and pack balance at the per-call price on the pricing page. You set a monthly cap in the portal. We stop serving overage calls when the cap is reached, and overage is billed with your subscription.
Price changes. We’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice of a price increase, which applies from your next billing period after the notice.

7. Your data

We use what you send to the Service (queries, addresses, codes, watchlists, webhook URLs) to run the Service, keep it secure and improve it, as described in our Privacy Policy. You confirm you have the right to send it. If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

8. Our property

We own the Service, including its software, docs, website, and our normalization, coordinates, aliases and search index. We don’t claim ownership of CBP’s underlying public data. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service while your account is in good standing. They don’t transfer any intellectual property to you.

9. Suspension and closing an account

You can stop using the Service at any time, and you can ask us to close your account by writing to support@firmsapi.com. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms, doesn’t pay, or puts the Service or other customers at risk. When an account is closed, its keys stop working. Sections 2, 5, 7, 8 and 10 to 14 continue to apply after it closes.

10. Disclaimer

The Service and all data in it are provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We don’t offer a service-level agreement unless we agree to one with you in writing.

11. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows:

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill. This includes losses from rejected or delayed filings, penalties, storage, demurrage, detention or other customs or logistics costs, even if we were told they were possible.
Our total liability for all claims about the Service is limited to the greater of the amounts you paid for the Service in the 12 months before the claim and US$100.

12. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify Atom Interactive, LLC against third-party claims, and the losses and costs that follow from them, that arise from your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or the law, or from your filings.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. Each version has the date shown at the top of this page. For a material change, we’ll email you or tell you in the portal at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you keep using the Service after that, you accept the new Terms. If you don’t accept them, stop using the Service and cancel any paid plan.

14. Governing law and general terms

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute about them or the Service is decided only in the state or federal courts located in Pennsylvania, and you and we consent to those courts’ jurisdiction.
Entire agreement. These Terms and the documents they link to, including the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement about the Service.
Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in a merger, acquisition or sale of the Service.
Other terms. If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a right, we haven’t waived it. Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events outside its reasonable control.
Notices. We send notices to your account email. Send notices to us at support@firmsapi.com.

Contact

Atom Interactive, LLC · support@firmsapi.com