The rules for using ReadYourDNA. Please read them alongside our Privacy Policy.
These Terms of Service govern your use of the ReadYourDNA website and services (the "Service"), operated by Martin Pechhacker ("we", "us"). By creating an account, uploading a DNA file, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
The Service analyzes a genotyping or sequencing file you provide and returns educational reports on genetic traits, drug-response markers, and carrier status.
The Service is for personal information and education only.
It is not a medical device, not a diagnostic test, and not a substitute for professional medical, genetic, or pharmacological advice.
Results are estimates based on published research and may be incomplete, uncertain, or not applicable to your ancestry or individual circumstances.
A consumer genotyping array is a screen, not a clinical test. It reads only a subset of positions and can miss or misread variants, so a result that is "not determined" or shows nothing is a limit of the data, not a clean or negative result. Any positive or risk-flagged result must be confirmed by clinical-grade testing before you rely on it.
Never start, stop, or change any medication or treatment based on a report from the Service. Talk to a qualified clinician first.
You must be at least 18 years old, resident in a country where we offer the Service, and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. We offer the Service in every country except Austria, and we may add or remove countries at any time. In Norway you must also be at least 16, which our 18+ requirement already exceeds. You may only upload genetic data that is your own, or data you are legally authorized to submit and have the necessary consent to process.
No minors. The Service is not intended for children and does not knowingly collect or analyze the genetic data of anyone under 18. You may not upload the genetic data of a minor, including your own child, even if you are their parent or guardian. This reflects long-standing medical guidance (the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Medical Genetics advise against predictive genetic testing of children for adult-onset conditions, so that the choice is preserved for the individual as an adult) and applicable law, including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which covers children's genetic data. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, or that data belonging to a minor has been uploaded, we will terminate the account and delete the genetic data and any results derived from it. To report such an upload, contact support@readyourdna.com.
You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure, including the Google account you sign in with if you choose Sign in with Google, and for all activity under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission. You may close your account at any time from Settings.
You agree to use the Service for educational, research, and personal-informational purposes only, and not to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
When using the Service you agree not to:
Upload data that is not yours or that you are not authorized to submit.
Reverse engineer, scrape, or attempt to disrupt or gain unauthorized access to the Service.
Use the Service to make clinical, employment, insurance, or other consequential decisions about any person.
Resell or commercially redistribute reports without our written permission.
You retain ownership of the genetic data you upload and the reports generated for you. You grant us the limited permission needed to store and process your data solely to provide the Service to you.
How we collect, store, secure, and delete your data, and the rights you have over it, are described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. You can delete your genomic data and your account at any time from Settings.
The Service, including its software, design, text, and analysis models, is owned by Martin Pechhacker and protected by intellectual property laws. These Terms do not grant you any right to our trademarks or to the Service beyond the personal use described here. Third-party names and trademarks (for example 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and MyHeritage) belong to their respective owners; ReadYourDNA is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them.
Genetic associations reported by the Service come from scientific literature and public databases and reflect population-level research, not a diagnosis. Effect sizes are often small, evidence changes over time, and many findings are less well established for non-European ancestries.
The Service does not provide medical advice, genetic counseling, or a clinical interpretation. For any health decision, consult a physician or a certified genetic counselor.
Carrier status results. The carrier status reports annotate your uploaded data against variants catalogued in public databases such as ClinVar. They are produced from a genotyping array that reads only a limited subset of the variants linked to each condition, and they are not a carrier screening test and are not clinically validated. A “not detected” or negative result does not mean you are not a carrier and does not rule out the condition, because the array cannot see variants it does not test; a reported match, in turn, can be a genotyping artifact and needs clinical confirmation. Do not use these results to make reproductive or family-planning decisions - including whether to conceive, to pursue IVF, preimplantation (PGT), or prenatal testing, or to forgo any of these. For carrier status relevant to family planning, obtain clinical-grade carrier screening and genetic counseling regardless of what the Service shows, and discuss any result with a physician or certified genetic counselor. You accept the risk of any decision made in reliance on these results.
Medication (pharmacogenomics) results. The medication reports are educational information about published gene-drug research and clinical guidelines. They are not prescribing, dosing, or medical advice, and not a prediction of how any medication will affect you, and must not be used to start, stop, change, or dose any medication. Any medication decision must be made only with a licensed prescriber or pharmacist, and you accept all risk of any decision made in reliance on these reports. These results are shown only after you separately opt in to the medication module, and that acknowledgement is recorded. Any “FDA-recognized” label refers only to a gene-drug association listed in the FDA Table of Pharmacogenetic Associations; it does not mean the Service, its reports, or any result is reviewed, cleared, approved, or endorsed by the FDA.
Assumption of risk. You acknowledge that genetic results can be upsetting and can reveal unexpected information about you and your biological relatives - for example unexpected health risks, ancestry, or family relationships (such as non-paternity or previously unknown relatives). You choose to access these results and accept these risks.
If you are a consumer, this section does not take away your statutory rights. Digital content and digital services come with quality rights under the law where you live that we cannot exclude by contract - in the European Economic Area under the rules implementing Directive (EU) 2019/770, which in Austria is the Verbrauchergewährleistungsgesetz. Those rights apply in full whatever the rest of this section says, and section 16 sets out how.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or uninterrupted availability, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that any result is accurate, complete, or clinically valid.
If you are a consumer, this section applies to you only as far as the law where you live allows. Section 16 says which parts do not reach you at all. Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for gross negligence or intent.
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, Martin Pechhacker WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY DECISION MADE IN RELIANCE ON A REPORT FROM THE SERVICE.
Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) EUR 100.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for injury caused by our gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Martin Pechhacker, its officers, employees, and service providers from and against any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your breach of these Terms; (b) your representation and warranty that you are authorized to upload any DNA file you submit, including another person's genetic data; (c) your use of the Service, or your reliance on any report, to make a clinical, employment, insurance, or other consequential decision about any person; and (d) your violation of any applicable law or the rights of any third party.
This obligation survives termination of your account and of these Terms.
We may update the Service or these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change we will update the date below and, where appropriate, notify you. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the updated Terms.
These Terms are governed by the laws of Austria, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules and excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). If you are a consumer, section 16 below overrides this, and the mandatory law of the country where you live applies to you instead.
If you are a consumer, your own country's law still protects you. Nothing in this section takes away rights you have under the mandatory consumer-protection law of the country where you live, and that law prevails over this section wherever the two conflict. In particular, if you live in the European Economic Area, the arbitration agreement and the class-action waiver below do not apply to you, you keep the right to bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and we will bring any claim against you only in those courts. Section 16 sets out how that works, and which parts of this section do not apply to you.
PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING YOUR RIGHT TO GO TO COURT AND TO HAVE A JURY TRIAL.
Binding individual arbitration. Except for the carve-outs below, any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration administered by JAMS under its Streamlined Arbitration Rules and Procedures and its Consumer Arbitration Minimum Standards, which apply to this agreement and prevail over anything in this section that conflicts with them, rather than in court. The arbitrator decides all issues, except that a court of competent jurisdiction decides the enforceability of the class-action waiver below.
Class-action waiver. You and Martin Pechhacker agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims or otherwise preside over any representative or class proceeding.
30-day opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@readyourdna.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating your name and that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out has no effect on any other part of these Terms.
Carve-outs. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in court to protect its intellectual property or confidential information. Any dispute not subject to arbitration will be brought exclusively in the courts of Vienna, Austria, and you consent to their jurisdiction. If you are a consumer outside the United States, section 16 replaces this and you may use the courts where you live. Details of the operator are on our Legal & Contact page.
Electronic records and signatures (E-SIGN). You consent to receive these Terms, the Privacy Policy, notices, and other communications from us electronically (by posting on the Service or by email), and you agree that your electronic acceptance - for example checking a consent box - has the same legal effect as a handwritten signature.
Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements on that subject.
Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect, and the unenforceable provision is modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable.
No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or successor (for example, in a merger or a sale of assets).
Survival. Provisions that by their nature should survive - including sections 7 (intellectual property), 8-10 (disclaimers, warranties, liability), 11 (indemnification), 13 (arbitration), 16 (consumers outside the United States), and 17 (price, payment, refunds and cancellation) - survive termination of your account and of these Terms.
Questions about these Terms? Email support@readyourdna.com. The operator and contact details are on our Legal & Contact page.
This section applies if you are a consumer resident anywhere we serve other than the United States. Where it conflicts with anything earlier in these Terms, this section wins. Nothing in these Terms takes away a right that the law of the country where you live does not allow us to take away.
No arbitration, no class-action waiver, and your own courts. Section 13 does not apply to you. The binding arbitration agreement, the class-action waiver, the exclusive forum and the choice of law have no effect on a consumer resident anywhere outside the United States, and we will not seek to rely on any of them against you. You may bring a claim in the courts of the country, province or state where you live, and we will bring a claim against you only there.
What we are responsible for. Sections 9 and 10 apply to you only as far as your own law allows, and section 11 does not apply to you at all as a consumer. Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, for gross negligence, or for anything else your law does not permit us to limit. Your statutory guarantees stand whatever sections 9 and 10 say, including the Australian Consumer Law, whose section 64 makes any term excluding them void, the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, Brazil’s Código de Defesa do Consumidor (Arts. 25 and 51), the United Kingdom’s Consumer Rights Act 2015, whose sections 31 and 47 make any term excluding the digital-content quality rights void, Singapore’s Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, and in Quebec articles 1474 and 3149 of the Civil Code and article 11.1 of the Consumer Protection Act. In India you keep your right to take a consumer dispute to the consumer commissions, and in Canada you keep every right your provincial consumer-protection law gives you.
What we supply, and what we do not. We supply no test anywhere. We sell and ship no kit, we never handle a biological sample, we operate and contract no laboratory, and we accept no input from a laboratory instrument. We read a data file you already hold and return educational information. ReadYourDNA carries no CE mark, is not in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods, and is not registered with, reviewed by or approved by the FDA, the TGA, Medsafe, Health Canada, ANVISA, the CDSCO, the HSA, or any other medicines or medical-device regulator. Genetic self-tests for disease are not available for supply in Australia. In Germany we carry out no genetic examination within the meaning of the Gendiagnostikgesetz, which reserves examinations for medical purposes to doctors, because we take no sample and pursue no medical purpose. If you want genetic testing for a health purpose, arrange it where you live through a doctor, who can also arrange genetic counselling.
Price, cancellation and language. Where we take no payment from you, the part of section 10 that refers to amounts you have paid us has nothing to bite on. Before we charge, we will first give you the pre-contract information and the cancellation right your own law requires, before you pay anything. ReadYourDNA, these Terms and everything we send you are in English only, and we do not advertise the Service in any other language. That is a limit on what we can deliver, not a limit on your rights, and it does not affect which courts you may use or which consumer rules protect you.
Complaints and electronic acceptance. Please write to us first at support@readyourdna.com. We are not a member of an alternative dispute resolution scheme and are not obliged to use one, so if we cannot settle the matter we will tell you in writing and you are then free to go to the courts described above. For complaints about your personal data, our Privacy Policy names your own regulator. Your electronic acceptance of these Terms has the same effect as a signature, under section 10 of the Australian Electronic Transactions Act 1999 and the equivalent rule where you live, alongside section 14 above.
This section applies to every purchase. We have charged for the Service since 31 August 2026. The price and these terms are shown on the pricing page and at checkout before you pay anything. When we published this section in advance we promised that nothing already uploaded would be put behind a paywall, and that promise stands: accounts created before 31 August 2026 are not charged.
The free start. You can use part of the Service without paying. After you upload a file you can choose a free start instead of the full report: we run the same analysis on your file, and you choose up to 5 health traits and 10 lifestyle traits whose results you can see. Your choices are final: a trait you unlock stays unlocked and cannot be swapped for another. Each account has one free analysis. If it stops or fails before it finishes, you can run it again; once it has finished, it is not repeated for that account, including by deleting the file and uploading another. Medications, carrier status, the variant explorer, how unusual your genome is and the genome assistant come with the full report. If you order the full report later, it opens on the analysis that has already run, without a second analysis. The free start is not a purchase and no payment is taken, so the paragraphs below on refunds and withdrawal apply from the moment you order. We may change the free start for future uploads; results you have already unlocked stay available for as long as your account and your data do. Everything else in these Terms, including sections 6 and 8, applies to the free start in the same way.
Price. Any price we show will be a single total figure, in one currency, including every tax and charge you have to pay. There are no fees revealed at the last step. If a price ever depends on something we cannot show up front, we will say so before you order rather than after.
Ordering. Before you pay, you will get a summary page showing what you are buying, the full price and these Terms, with a way to go back and correct anything or abandon the order. The button that commits you to pay will say so in words. No box that costs you money will ever be ticked for you in advance.
Your right to change your mind. If you live in the European Economic Area, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a purchase of digital content and get your money back, without giving a reason. Reports are produced as soon as you pay, so at checkout we will ask you to confirm two separate things: that you want us to start straight away, and that you understand you lose that right once your reports have been produced. If you confirm both and we produce your reports, the right ends at that point, and we will send you written confirmation of what you agreed, by email, so you have your own copy. If you do not confirm, we will not start until the 14 days have passed or until you tell us to start. If your file has already been analysed on the free start, or is still being analysed on it when you order, the full report opens as soon as you pay or as soon as that analysis finishes, and the two confirmations at checkout are about unlocking it straight away and about losing the right once it is unlocked. If you withdraw after we have started but before your reports are finished, the law would let us keep a proportionate amount for the work already done. We do not: we refund the full amount. Throughout the withdrawal period there is a plain control in your account to withdraw, not an email you have to compose.
Countries with their own rule. In Brazil you have 7 days from purchase to change your mind under Art. 49 of the Código de Defesa do Consumidor. There is no way to sign that away and we will not try: ask within 7 days and we refund you, no reason needed. In the United Kingdom, regulation 29 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 gives a 14-day right, and regulation 37 removes it once the service has been fully performed with your express request and your acknowledgement that the right would be lost, which is what the checkout confirmation records. That is not a waiver; it is the limit the Regulations themselves draw. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, India and the United States there is no general change-of-mind right for an immediately-delivered digital service, and we do not pretend to give one we would not honour.
What we refund regardless. Separately from anything above, and wherever you live: if we cannot read your file, if we cannot produce your reports, if the reports are materially wrong, or if the service is unavailable for more than 72 hours, tell us and we will refund you in full. If you think what we delivered fell short of what you were entitled to expect, tell us and we will put it right or refund a fair part of what you paid. Ask at support@readyourdna.com. We will confirm we have your message within 48 hours and resolve it within 30 days.
Rights we cannot take away. Nothing in this section limits a right you have under the law where you live. If you are in Australia, our services come with consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded, and section 64 of that law makes void any term that tries. Whatever sections 9 and 10 say, we do not limit our liability for gross negligence, and where your law gives you a better right than this section, that law applies.
If we ever offer a subscription. We would tell you the amount, how often it is charged and the date of each charge, prominently and before you agree; ask you to consent to the recurring charge separately, in a box you tick yourself; email you at least 7 days before each renewal; and give you a cancel button in your account that works immediately, with no retention offers, no survey and no need to contact us. Cancelling stops the next payment and leaves your access running to the end of the period you already paid for.
Last updated: October 2026
Raw DNA Data Reports for 23andMe & AncestryDNA · About ReadYourDNA · FAQ · Methodology & Science · Pricing · Support and complaints · Legal & Contact · Health Traits · Pharmacogenomics · Carrier Status · Variant Explorer · The Human Karyotype · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Accessibility · Consumer Health Data Privacy · Your Privacy Choices · Editorial Standards · Your Data, Checkable · Sample Report · ReadYourDNA and Promethease compared · What is inside a 23andMe raw data file · What is inside an AncestryDNA raw data file · What a chatbot can and cannot do with your raw DNA file · Where a raw DNA file can still be uploaded in 2026
Written, maintained and operated by Martin Pechhacker, sole proprietor, Vienna, Austria. Trade register GISA 40064420. support@readyourdna.com