Terms of use

About these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and DupeEats. By using DupeEats, you agree to them. If you don’t agree, please don’t use DupeEats.

In these terms, and in our other legal pages:

“DupeEats”, “we”, “us” and “our”

The owner and operator of DupeEats, identified in our Legal notice.

“You”

Anyone who uses the Services.

“Services”

The website at dupeeats.com, The Friday Drop newsletter and our other emails, and the DupeEats accounts and videos on social media.

“Content”

Anything that appears on the Services: text, recipes, photos, images, videos, debates, results, rankings and data.

“Community Content”

Content that people like you send us for publication: debates you start, recipes and photos you submit, and the display name and social account you choose for your credit. Your votes and ratings aren’t Community Content: we count them, we don’t publish them as yours.

Some features have extra rules that are part of these terms: our Community content license (for recipes and photos you send) and our Copyright and takedowns policy. Our Privacy policy explains how we handle personal data.

Who can use DupeEats

DupeEats is meant for people aged 16 and over. You must be 16 or older to vote, start a debate, send a recipe or photo or subscribe to our newsletter. This is the same everywhere in the world. Anyone, of any age, can report content, complain, or ask us to delete their data.

If we learn that someone under 16 has sent us personal data, we delete it. If you’re a parent or guardian and think your child has sent us something, write to dupeeats@gmail.com.

You may not use DupeEats if we’ve blocked you from it, or if the law where you live doesn’t allow you to.

What DupeEats offers

DupeEats is a free website about fast food. You can:

• vote in debates (“Settle It”) and start your own;
• see live rankings built from votes;
• find, cook, save and rate copycat (“dupe”) recipes, and send your own recipes and photos;
• take our quizzes, like Fast Food Wrapped;
• read about new menu drops;
• subscribe to The Friday Drop, our weekly email.

You don’t need an account. Some features remember your choices in your browser; our Cookie policy explains how.

We don’t offer paid plans yet. If we ever do, they’ll come with their own terms, shown before you pay.

DupeEats is paid for by advertising and affiliate links. How we make money explains how.

Your content

What you send stays yours. You keep ownership of your Community Content.

• Recipes and photos. When you send them, you accept our Community content license. It lets us publish, edit and adapt your submission on our website, in our emails and on our social media and videos, always with the credit you choose. You can ask us to take it down at any time.
• Debates. When you start a debate, you let us publish the question and its options on DupeEats, show the results, and share them, for example in result cards, rankings, our newsletter and our social posts. This permission is non-exclusive, worldwide and free, and lasts while the debate is on DupeEats (and in posts and emails already published). Debates aren’t credited to anyone.
• Votes and ratings. We count them, combine them with everyone else’s, and publish the totals, results and rankings. We never show who voted for what.

You’re responsible for what you send. Only send Content that you have the right to share and that follows the community rules.

Community rules

These rules apply to everything you send or do on DupeEats. They keep DupeEats useful, fair and safe, and they’re what our checks look for.

Food, not health

• No calories, nutrition facts, diets, weight loss or health claims.
• No dangerous methods, like undercooked chicken or risky frying.

Your own work only

• Only send recipes you wrote and photos you took of food you cooked.
• Nothing copied from another person, a restaurant, a cookbook, a website or social media. No screenshots.
• No restaurant logos, packaging, uniforms or official photos.

Respect people

• No photos of other people unless they agreed to be shown. No photos in which anyone under 18 can be identified.
• No personal information about anyone: no names of private people, addresses, phone numbers, emails or license plates.
• No harassment, bullying, threats, hate or discrimination, and nothing that encourages violence or self-harm.
• No sexual content, no graphic violence, nothing about drugs, weapons or gambling.
• Don’t pretend to be someone else, including a restaurant, a brand or DupeEats.

Be honest

• No false claims about restaurants, brands or people, like saying a chain did something it didn’t. Opinions about taste are fine.
• No spam, ads, promotions, links or affiliate codes.
• Vote honestly: one vote per person. Don’t use bots, scripts, multiple devices or browsers, or paid or organized voting to change a result.
• Don’t offer or accept anything in exchange for votes, ratings or reviews.

Respect the site

• Don’t break, overload or get around our security, rate limits or checks.
• Don’t send malware, or files that aren’t what they claim to be.
• Don’t misuse the “Report” links or our forms, for example by sending false reports.
• Don’t do anything illegal on or through DupeEats.

How we moderate

We check Community Content before it’s published and we act on reports after it’s published. This section explains how, including the automated tools we use. We apply these rules in the same way to everyone, carefully and in proportion to the problem.

Before anything goes live

1. Automated filters check every debate, recipe and photo when it’s sent. They look for words and patterns that break our rules (for example insults, links, health claims, accusations against brands, and personal information), for duplicates, and for photos that aren’t real photos (for example screenshots or files that aren’t images). Some problems are rejected right away, with a message telling you what to change.
2. A review queue. What passes the filters waits until it’s checked against these rules. When in doubt, we don’t publish.
3. A person reviews a decision when you appeal it, and may review any decision at any time.

Nothing you send is published until it has passed these checks. We may also decide not to publish something that technically follows the rules, for example a recipe we already have.

After something goes live

• Anyone can use the “Report” link on a recipe, photo, debate, news item or cook page.
• A community photo is hidden automatically when people on several different devices and networks report it for copyright, for not being the cook’s own photo, or for being offensive. It then waits for review.
• When we receive a complete, sworn copyright notice about a community photo, a community recipe or a news item, we take it down right away as a precaution, then review it (see Copyright and takedowns). To prevent abuse, the number of automatic takedowns is limited; notices over the limit wait for review.
• Our votes are checked for fraud. We discard votes that look automated or duplicated, and we never remove votes because of the opinion they express.

Keeping under-18s safe

Some people who use DupeEats are 16 or 17. Nothing is published before it passes our checks, and our rules ban sexual content, anything that encourages suicide, self-harm or eating disorders (including diets, weight loss and calories), bullying, hate, violence and dangerous challenges. The same checks and reporting tools protect everyone, of any age.

What we can do

Depending on the problem, we can:

• not publish something, or ask you to change it first;
• remove it, or hide it while we review it;
• edit it to fix a problem, as the Community content license allows;
• limit where it appears, for example keep it out of search engines, the newsletter or social media;
• remove a credit or a social link;
• close or end a debate;
• discard votes that break the rules;
• stop a device or an email address from sending Content or starting debates, for a period or permanently, for serious or repeated breaches. We permanently block anyone with three confirmed copyright takedowns in a year (see repeat infringers).

Spam and automated abuse (for example bots) may be blocked or discarded silently, so the people behind them can’t learn how to get around our checks.

If we come across information suggesting a crime that threatens someone’s life or safety, we tell the police or other competent authorities.

The automated tools we use

We tell you this because the EU Digital Services Act and the UK Online Safety Act ask us to describe the technology we use to keep illegal and harmful content off DupeEats:

• Keyword and pattern matching on the text of debates, recipes, names and reports, when they’re sent.
• Photo checks when a photo is uploaded: file type and size, a check that it’s a real photo, removal of hidden data such as location, and fingerprints to spot the same photo sent again.
• Vote integrity checks that use signals such as a random device identifier and short-lived network fingerprints to spot duplicate or automated votes.
• Bot protection from Cloudflare Turnstile when you take a protected action.

Telling you why

If we reject, remove, hide or restrict your Content, or block you, and we have your email address, we email you a clear explanation: what we decided and how far it goes, the facts behind it (including whether it came from a report), whether automated tools were used, which rule or law it’s based on, and how to appeal. We don’t send this for spam.

Appeals and complaints

If you think we got a decision wrong, whether about your Content, a report you sent or a block, tell us within 6 months:

• reply to the email we sent you about it, or
• write to dupeeats@gmail.com with the link or reference and why you disagree.

A person reviews every appeal; it’s never decided by automated tools alone. We tell you the outcome, and if we got it wrong, we fix it.

You can also use this address to complain about anything in these terms, including if you’re in the UK and think we’re not meeting our duties under the Online Safety Act, or if you think content on DupeEats is illegal or harmful to children.

Appealing to us doesn’t affect your other rights. You can always go to court. If you’re in the EU, you can also complain to the national authority in charge of the Digital Services Act (in Spain, the CNMC).

Reporting illegal content

To report Content you think is illegal, including copyright infringement, use the “Report” link on the page or follow our Copyright and takedowns policy. If someone is in danger, contact the emergency services first.

Votes, results and rankings

• Results, Clone Scores and rankings show the opinions of the people who voted on DupeEats. They aren’t scientific surveys and they don’t represent all fast food fans, all Americans or all Brits.
• One vote per device. You can change your vote a few times while a debate is open.
• We discard votes that look fraudulent, and results can change as more people vote.
• Clone Scores come only from real ratings by people who say they made the recipe. Nobody verifies purchases or cooking.
• Our ranking method explains how rankings are calculated.

Recipes and cooking

Our recipes are home versions inspired by fast food items. They aren’t the restaurants’ recipes, and they won’t taste exactly the same. Each recipe says where it comes from: community recipes come from other home cooks, and “Untested” recipes haven’t been cooked by anyone yet.

• Cook safely. Follow basic food safety: cook meat, poultry, eggs and fish thoroughly, keep raw and cooked food apart, and take care with hot oil, knives and appliances. Follow the instructions for your equipment.
• Check for allergens. Recipes may not list every allergen, and brands of the same ingredient differ. Always read the labels of what you buy. A dupe can contain allergens the original doesn’t, and the other way round.
• Results vary with ingredients, equipment and skill. Times and quantities are guides.
• Prices and savings are estimates, based on typical prices where you live. They aren’t offers, and real prices change.
• No health advice. We don’t provide nutrition, diet or health information. If you have a medical condition or dietary need, ask a professional.

Brands and trademarks

DupeEats isn’t affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of the restaurants or brands we mention. We use their names only to say which item a recipe, debate or ranking is about. Their names and trademarks belong to them. See Trademarks and non-affiliation.

Our content

The DupeEats name and logo, the design of the site, and the Content we create (for example our text, “Untested” recipes, result cards, rankings and the way we organize them) belong to DupeEats or to the people who license them to us. Community Content belongs to the people who sent it. Some photos come from free photo libraries; see Photo credits.

You can read, save, print and share links to our pages for your own personal, non-commercial use. You can share our result cards and quiz cards on social media as they are.

• Ranking data. Our ranking data is free to reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, with credit to DupeEats. That license doesn’t cover the brands’ names and trademarks.
• No scraping or bulk copying. Don’t copy large parts of DupeEats, or rebuild our recipes, votes, results or rankings as your own collection or database, except as the law allows and except our ranking data, which you may reuse under CC BY 4.0. Automated access is only allowed to the extent our robots.txt file allows it.
• Text and data mining. Beyond what our robots.txt file allows, we expressly reserve our rights to text and data mining, including under Article 4(3) of EU Directive 2019/790 and the national laws that implement it. We also reserve our database rights, except for our ranking data, which you may reuse under CC BY 4.0.

Links and ads

• DupeEats links to other websites, like restaurants, news sources, social media and stores. We don’t control them and we’re not responsible for them. Their own terms and privacy policies apply.
• Some links are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you buy something, at no extra cost to you. We label them, and they never change our recipes, votes or rankings. See How we make money.
• When we show ads, they’ll be labeled “Advertisements”. They’ll be chosen by our ad partners, not by us, and showing an ad won’t mean we recommend what it advertises.
• If you buy something through a link, your purchase is between you and the seller.

Changes to DupeEats

DupeEats is free, and we keep improving it. That means we may change, add or remove features, pause a feature for safety (for example voting or new debates), close debates, or stop offering DupeEats altogether. When a change matters to you, we’ll try to tell you in advance, for example in the newsletter. We aim to keep DupeEats running smoothly, but we can’t promise it will always be available or free of errors.

Our responsibility to you

If you live in the EU or the UK: we’re 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. We’re not responsible for loss or damage that isn’t foreseeable. DupeEats is free and for personal use, so we’re not responsible for any business losses. Nothing in these terms limits your legal rights as a consumer.

If you live anywhere else: to the extent the law allows, DupeEats is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the extent the law allows, we’re not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, and our total liability to you for all claims about DupeEats is limited to 100 US dollars.

For everyone: nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability where the law doesn’t allow it, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for damage we cause intentionally or through gross negligence. We’re not responsible for Community Content, for other websites, or for how you use a recipe, beyond what the law requires.

If you use DupeEats for business purposes, and you break these terms or the law, you’re responsible for the claims and costs that causes us, to the extent the law allows.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by Spanish law. If you’re a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live, and you can bring a claim in the courts of that country. If you live in the UK, you can bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, depending on where you live. Otherwise, the courts of Spain have jurisdiction.

We don’t use arbitration, and nothing in these terms stops you from going to court individually or as part of a group where the law allows it.

General

• If a court finds part of these terms invalid, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• We may transfer these terms to someone who takes over DupeEats. If we do, your rights won’t be reduced, and we’ll tell you on this page.
• These terms, with the Community content license and the policies they link to, are the whole agreement between you and us about DupeEats.

Contact

Questions about these terms, appeals and complaints: dupeeats@gmail.com. We answer in English or Spanish.

Our points of contact for authorities and for users under the EU Digital Services Act are in our Legal notice.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when DupeEats changes or the law does. The version and date are at the top of this page, and when we update them, earlier versions are listed at the bottom. When we make an important change, we’ll say so on DupeEats and in the next edition of our newsletter before it applies. Changes apply from their effective date and don’t affect anything that happened before. If you don’t agree with a change, please stop using DupeEats.