Donations & Refunds, Bufin Is Free

Last updated 2026-08-18

Bufin is free. Nothing is sold, so there is nothing to refund, and that changes what this page has to be. It is no longer a refund policy for a product; it explains how voluntary donations work, and it is deliberately blunt about the fact that a donation may not be refundable at all. Your statutory consumer rights always come first: nothing here removes a right the law gives you.

1. The short version

• Bufin costs nothing. Every feature is available to everyone, with no plans, no tiers, no trial period that ends, and no card ever requested. There is no purchase, no subscription and no invoice.

• Donations are voluntary gifts. They pay for servers, the domain and developer accounts. They buy no features, no priority and no status, because there is nothing behind a paywall to buy.

• Donation refunds are not guaranteed and may be impossible. Donations are processed by an external donation platform, not by us. Whether a refund can happen at all is that platform's decision under its own terms and its payment processor's rules: not something Bufin controls or can promise. Please only give what you are comfortable giving away.

• Nothing is withheld if you do not donate, and nothing is taken away if a donation is reversed. Your access does not depend on money in either direction.

• Previously purchased licences: Bufin used to be sold (one-time Lifetime licences, and for a period a monthly plan). Everyone now has the full app for free, so a paid licence no longer grants anything a free account lacks: see section 5.

2. Why there is no refund process for the app

A refund returns money paid for something. Nobody pays for Bufin, so there is no transaction to reverse, no billing portal, no cancellation and nothing to expire. If you stop using Bufin, nothing is charged and nothing lapses; your files stay in your own Google Drive or OneDrive, or in your browser, and you can export them at any time from Settings.

3. Donations: what they are, and what they are not

A donation is a gift toward running costs. It is not a purchase of software, a licence fee, a subscription, or a payment for any service, and no goods or services are provided in exchange for it. We do not issue tax receipts: Bufin is not a registered charity, and a donation to it is not a charitable donation for tax purposes in any jurisdiction.

Donations grant no extra features, no supporter tier, no badge, no priority support and no additional weight in roadmap voting. This is a deliberate design rule, not an oversight: the moment a donation bought something, the promise that Bufin is free for everyone would stop being true.

4. Donation refunds

Assume a donation cannot be refunded, and decide on that basis before giving.

Donations are handled entirely by an external donation platform (currently Buy Me a Coffee). We never see or store your full card details, and we are not the merchant of record for a donation. Because the money is collected and held by that platform under its own terms, any request to reverse a donation is a matter between you and that platform: and its terms, and the card network's rules, may not allow a reversal at all. We cannot promise a refund we have no ability to perform.

What we will do: if you donated by genuine mistake, the wrong amount, a duplicate, a payment you did not intend, or someone else using your card, email us and we will help. That means we will tell you exactly how to raise it with the platform, and where the platform gives us the ability to return a specific donation, we will do so on request and without argument. What we cannot do is guarantee an outcome that a third party controls.

Where a non-waivable law in your country gives you a right to withdraw from or reverse a payment, that right applies regardless of anything on this page, and we will not stand in its way.

5. If you paid for Bufin in the past

Bufin was previously a paid app. If you bought a licence, you have lost nothing: the whole app is now free for everybody, so your licence grants exactly what a new free account grants, everything. Nothing you paid for has been removed, restricted, downgraded or moved behind a new price.

Subscriptions are no longer sold or billed. If you believe you are still being charged for Bufin by any means, that is a billing error and we want to know immediately, email us and we will help you stop it and recover it. Payments taken in error are not covered by the "no refunds" position above; that position is about gifts, not mistakes.

Purchases made in the Bufin Android app were sold by Google Play, which is the seller of record for them. Refund requests for those still go through Google Play (play.google.com/store/account → Order history), because Google holds the transaction, but contact us and we will help you sort it out.

6. Chargebacks

If something is wrong, please email us before opening a bank dispute. There is nothing being withheld from you and no leverage anyone needs, a chargeback on a donation mostly just costs the project a fee, and everything can normally be sorted in a day or two by writing to us. Your access to Bufin is never affected either way: it is free, and a payment dispute does not change that.

7. Changes to this policy

If we change how donations work in a way that matters, we will update this page and, for anything important, show a clear notice in the app. If Bufin ever stopped being free, which is not the plan, anyone using it would be told plainly and in advance, and their data would remain theirs and exportable regardless.

8. Contact

Questions about donations, or a payment you did not expect: [email protected]. General questions: [email protected].