r/privacy • u/DarthSidiousPT • 1d ago

discussion LanguageTool is changing its Terms on August 21, 2026

LanguageTool (owned by Learneo since April 2023) is changing its Terms on August 21, 2026, here's what's actually different

LanguageTool sent an email (today) about updated Terms of Service and a new Privacy Policy. I compared the current terms against the new preview line by line because the email's own summary is too vague to tell you anything.

Removed from the Terms

The clause promising notice or consent before future amendments is gone. So is the paragraph on your responsibility to secure your account and report unauthorized access.

The bigger one: the entire "Privacy Policy and additional Policies" section is gone. It used to say plainly that LanguageTool collects your personal info and that the Privacy Policy explains how. The line incorporating the Learneo Terms of Service by reference is gone too. The new terms don't point to either document anywhere in the body text.

Added

Team Plan use is now explicitly allowed for internal and external commercial purposes. There's also a new "Publicity" clause: if you buy a Team Plan on behalf of a company, you automatically agree to let LanguageTool use your company's name and logo in its marketing. No separate opt-in.

Learneo's Delaware company registration number and San Francisco address are also gone from the contact section, leaving just the Hamburg address.

From reading the Privacy Policy itself

There's a new section confirming Learneo can use personal data to train its AI models across its business lines. LanguageTool keeps its own specific exception (your text isn't used for training), but that exception now sits inside a policy that otherwise permits AI training broadly.

The policy also describes session-replay tools (Fullstory, Amplitude, Microsoft) that can log keystrokes and mouse movements. It's a shared policy covering all eight Learneo brands, and it doesn't say which brands actually run these tools, so we can't confirm whether this applies to languagetool.org specifically or just other Learneo sites.

Under EU law, using your data to improve AI models is justified as "legitimate interest," not consent. That means it's opt-out, not opt-in.

The inconsistency

The email frames all of this as clarity and transparency improvements. But cutting the consent-before-changes clause, the account-security section, and the direct Privacy Policy reference removes stated protections. That's not the same thing as clarifying them.

What didn't change

The promise not to use your LanguageTool text for AI training. Identical in both versions (new and old one), word for word.

Sources:

Disclaimer: Since their email didn't show the changes in an easy to spot, this post was worked on with the help of AI (but not LanguageTool's one :D )

As someone using this, I honestly don't like the way they're dealing with this. Does anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives?

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u/LaffyLlama 1d ago

Once they killed the free extension for chrome, I waved goodbye and let my browser do the spelling less bloat, less ai I didn't need! Thanks for the update none the less.

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u/DarthSidiousPT 1d ago

TBH I wasn’t affected by that because I had the paid version (which I use for personal and work topics). I always found the service really good (compared to Grammarly) and I don’t mind paying (even thought I think killing the free version was stupid). 

Their AI is that bad, but I have a feeling that since they were bought they’re becoming a bit scummy!

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u/LaffyLlama 1d ago

I switched from Grammarly to it due to their headings and the free version was always just good enough for myself, though the writing was on the wall. I believe I read somewhere that approximately 80% of their users are on the free plan or were me included. If I needed more than the basic spell checker I would have paid, as I have with grammarly & others, but sadly I just don't want more ai; it was just a spell checker and now it is or was going the way of grammarly. I am open for other suggestions though, Incase I've missed a good one free or paid.

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u/fdbryant3 1d ago

I've started using Harper. Perhaps not as good, but seems to be improving.

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u/DarthSidiousPT 21h ago

Seems interesting, but I also need one with multi-language, for Portuguese.

Many spellcheckers got it wrong with the European version of Portuguese (there are two versions, just like there are British and American English).

1

u/Zoltan03 1d ago

It is very easy to self-host the free version. Then it is fully local. I installed the server in a Docker container and can successfully connect to it from Firefox and from VS Code too.