Terms of service

These terms apply when you use Oscar’s website, conversation and search service (together, “Oscar”). By using Oscar you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use Oscar.

Our privacy policy explains how we handle your personal information, and forms part of these terms.

You must be at least 18 and use Oscar for your own property search, or for a search you are making on behalf of someone who has asked you to. Oscar is designed for property in the United Kingdom. If you use Oscar as part of a business, the terms in section 13 that apply to business users also apply to you.

Oscar helps you describe the home you want in a brief you keep, finds homes that match it and explains how each one fits. Where agents choose to share homes that are not publicly advertised, Oscar can show you a summary of them and, when you ask, help you request an introduction.

Oscar is not:

• An estate or letting agent. We do not act for sellers or landlords and do not market, negotiate or sell property.
• A buying agent or adviser. We do not act for you in a purchase and do not negotiate on your behalf.
• A source of professional advice. Nothing Oscar says is legal, financial, mortgage, tax, investment or survey advice. Please get independent professional advice before making a decision.

We are building Oscar carefully and it may not yet cover every area, property type or listing source. We do not promise that Oscar will find every home that suits you.

Oscar is free for people searching. There is no subscription and no fee if you buy. If we ever introduce a paid feature for people searching, we will make the price clear and you will only pay if you choose to. Oscar may earn from agents for the tools they use, but no payment ever changes where a home appears in your matches.

You can start a search without an account. To save your brief and return to it, you sign in with your email address. You agree to:

• Give accurate information and keep your email address up to date.
• Keep access to your email account secure, as it is how you sign in to Oscar.
• Not share one-time sign-in codes with anyone.
• Tell us promptly if you think someone else has used your account.

You are responsible for activity on your account unless it happened without your fault.

The brief and messages you give Oscar remain yours. You allow us to store and use them to provide Oscar to you, to keep the service running and secure, and to improve it in the ways set out in our privacy policy. This permission ends when you delete them, except where we need to keep information for legal reasons.

Please make sure what you share is accurate, and only share information about other people, such as the people you will live with, where you are entitled to.

Oscar uses AI to understand your brief and write its replies. AI can misunderstand what you meant or state something that is not correct. Please check your brief when Oscar reads it back, and treat Oscar’s explanations as a helpful starting point rather than a confirmed fact. Before relying on anything important, such as a price, tenure, boundary, planning position or the condition of a home, confirm it with the agent and your own advisers.

Details of homes come from the agents who market them and from other sources we are allowed to use. We check what we reasonably can, but we do not own or inspect these homes, and we cannot guarantee that details, photos, prices or availability are accurate, complete or current.

While Oscar is being developed, some homes shown in conversations are illustrative examples rather than real homes on the market. Do not rely on them as available homes.

A home appearing on Oscar is not an offer to sell or let it. Homes can be withdrawn, change price or go under offer at any time. Any agreement to buy or rent a home is made between you and the seller or landlord, usually through their agent, and not with Oscar.

Some homes are shared with Oscar privately, before or instead of public advertising. For these homes, the selling agent stays in charge. They decide:

• Which details are shown and when the full address is revealed.
• What they need to know about you before sharing more, such as your buying position.
• Whether to offer you a viewing, and how any offer is handled.

Asking for an introduction does not guarantee access, a viewing or a sale. Oscar will only share your details with an agent when you ask it to, as described in our privacy policy.

Information about private homes is shared with you in confidence. Please do not publish it or pass it on, except to people helping you with your move, such as your partner, solicitor or mortgage broker.

When you use Oscar, you must not:

• Break the law, or use Oscar for fraud, harassment or discrimination.
• Pretend to be someone else, or give false information to agents through Oscar.
• Copy, scrape, harvest or republish property information or other content from Oscar, whether manually or by automated means.
• Try to access accounts, conversations or data that are not yours.
• Interfere with Oscar’s security or operation, including by overloading it, probing for weaknesses or introducing malicious code.
• Try to make Oscar produce harmful, unlawful or misleading content.
• Use Oscar to build a competing service or database.

Oscar’s design, software, text, illustrations and brand belong to us or the people who license them to us. Property photos and descriptions belong to the agents or others who provided them. You may use Oscar for your own property search, but you may not otherwise copy, adapt or reuse any of this content without permission.

Oscar is free and still developing. We will try to keep it available and working well, but we may need to pause it for maintenance, and we may change, add or remove features. If we plan to close Oscar or remove a feature that you rely on, we will give you reasonable notice where we can and help you get a copy of your information.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or puts others at risk. Where it is appropriate, we will explain why. You can stop using Oscar at any time and ask us to delete your account.

If you are a consumer

We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it was obvious it would happen, or if we both knew it might happen when you started using Oscar.

We are not responsible for:

• Loss or damage that was not foreseeable.
• Decisions made by sellers, landlords or agents, or the outcome of any purchase or tenancy.
• Loss caused by relying on property details or AI answers without checking them, as section 7 and section 8 ask you to.
• Events outside our reasonable control.

Oscar is provided for domestic and private use. We are not responsible for any loss of profit, loss of business or loss of business opportunity.

If you are a business user

To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data. Because Oscar is provided free of charge, our total liability to a business user in connection with Oscar is limited to £100.

What we never limit

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law. Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

Oscar may link to agents’ websites and other services. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content or how they handle your information. Their own terms and privacy policies apply.

We may update these terms as Oscar develops or the law changes. The date at the top shows when they last changed. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not agree to the change, you can stop using Oscar and ask us to delete your account.

• If a court decides that part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we do not enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation, for example if Oscar is sold. Your rights will not be reduced as a result.
• Only you and we have rights under these terms.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales can hear any dispute. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in the courts where you live, and the mandatory consumer protections of that country apply.

If you have a question or a complaint about Oscar, please tell us so we can put it right. A dedicated contact address will be published on this page shortly.