Fair Usage Policy

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Overview

9Pic is built for genuine event organisers who run real events for real participants. Our search limits and anti-abuse protections are designed around that use. This page explains what we consider fair use, how search activity is reviewed, and what to do if your event needs more headroom.

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Who This Applies To

This policy applies to every 9Pic plan: If you are unsure which plan you are on, contact support with your organisation name and we can confirm the correct limits for your account.

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What Counts as Fair Use

You are using 9Pic within fair use when you:

• Run real events you organise. Upload photos from races, weddings, conferences, or similar events you have permission to photograph and distribute.
• Let your participants search for their own photos. Selfie search (9Pic FaceFind), BIB search (9Pic BibTrack), and gallery browsing at event-day volume are exactly what 9Pic is built for.
• Share event links with the people who attended. This includes posting the event URL in your post-event email, on your race results page, on participant WhatsApp groups, or social channels.
• Create teammate accounts through Team instead of sharing one login.
• Integrate via the 9Pic API with the recommended request_id reuse pattern, so a single selfie powers pagination, sharing, and follow-up calls without re-running face matching.

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Photo Search Fair Usage

9Pic does not charge organisers for participant searches. When a participant searches by selfie or BIB number on your public event page, that search does not create an additional charge. Our fair-use expectation is based on normal event photography patterns: 9Pic BibTrack does not use the face-search fair-use ratio. There is no fixed BIB search limit for normal event-day traffic. Participants can keep searching by BIB number, and high BIB search activity on a genuine event is not a problem by itself. When search traffic looks unusual, our system reviews patterns across the account and the organisations connected to it. If we see repeated alerts that suggest abuse, we flag the organiser and work with them to understand the event, adjust the setup, or reduce automated traffic. In our operating history, we have not seen genuine organisers flagged by this check when they were running normal participant search for real events.

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Trial Domain Anti-Abuse

The trial domain (trial.9pic.ai) is a shared evaluation surface, not a per-organiser website. It is intentionally rate-limited. When you upgrade to Pay As You Go, Pro, or Enterprise, your organisation moves from trial.9pic.ai to app.9pic.ai (or your custom subdomain) and the rate limits drop to normal production levels. From that moment, your event link is safe to share with real participants. For the full trial domain rules, see Trial Guide → What’s Included and Trial Guide → Share with Team.

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API Fair Use

If you integrate with the 9Pic API, the same fair use principles apply.

• Reuse request_id for selfie searches. Selfie-driven endpoints follow a POST-once / GET-many pattern. Reusing the request_id keeps your traffic on cached GET calls instead of repeated face-matching calls. See Face Search and API Conventions for the full pattern.
• Cache event and photo listings on your side when you can, instead of polling them at high frequency.
• Stay on approved hosts. Production API calls must come from hosts on the 9Pic allowlist. Talk to support if you need an additional host enabled.
• Respect the documented page sizes. Defaults and maximums are listed on each endpoint page (most listings cap at 100).

For API integrations, search throughput is rate-limited so systems stay stable during large events. The lower FaceFind limit applies only when you start a fresh face search with a new selfie. Once you have a request_id, fetching cached results with GET /faces/{request_id} follows the same throughput class as BIB search. The fresh FaceFind limit is already enough to search about 3,000 users per minute, so even customer events with 20,000+ participants are easily managed at this scale. Pagination, sharing, and repeated result reads should use the returned request_id, which keeps those follow-up calls in the higher cached-results throughput class. BibTrack has the higher API allowance and is not subject to the face-search fair-use ratio described above. If you keep hitting these limits during legitimate integration work, contact support so we can help you size the event correctly.

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Things You Cannot Do

These uses fall outside fair use and are not allowed under either this policy or the 9Pic Terms and Conditions (Section 2.3 Acceptable Use):

• Violate any laws or regulations.
• Infringe on the rights of others.
• Upload malicious code or viruses.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to 9Pic systems or other organisations’ data.
• Use 9Pic to harass, abuse, or harm others.
• Use facial recognition features to identify people without their consent.
• Run scrapers or automated bots against the participant gallery, event pages, or search endpoints to bulk-export photos belonging to other organisations.
• Resell or redistribute another organisation’s event photos without their permission.
• Share trial event links with real participants or customers to bypass paid plans.
• Share a single 9Pic account between teammates instead of using Team invitations.

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What Happens If Usage Goes Beyond Fair Use

If your usage looks abusive or significantly exceeds normal event traffic, our anti-abuse system steps in. We try to be helpful first. You can resolve a fair-use alert quickly by replying to the support email with the event ID and a short description of what you are running. For genuine large events we almost always lift the cap or pre-provision capacity.

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Need Higher Limits?

We size 9Pic generously for normal events and we don’t publish hard per-plan ceilings, because real events vary a lot. If you are planning something out of the ordinary — a marathon with 50,000+ finishers, a multi-day sports festival, a corporate event with very fast post-event search demand, or a custom API integration with high read traffic — tell us before the event.

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Common Questions

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Related Guides