Terms of use

Last updated October 20, 2026

InternScout is a tool made by a UMass Amherst student. Search is free and needs no sign-in, AI features have a free monthly allowance, and optional paid plans raise that allowance. By using the dashboard or the extension, you agree to these terms. An employer that buys a paid listing agrees to them, and to the employer section, by ticking the box that accepts them when it orders on our site, by paying our invoice, or, for a free pilot arranged with us by email, by confirming its start date with us in writing.

Not affiliated with UMass Amherst

InternScout is an independent student project. It is not made, run or endorsed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sign-in uses your Google or Microsoft account; a verified .edu email only raises your AI allowance and does not mean any school approves this tool.

Listings may be stale or wrong

• Listings are collected automatically from public job boards and lists.
• A listing can be closed, out of date, or wrong. That includes its field tags, location, dates, pay and who can apply.
• Always check the posting on the employer's own site before you apply.
• We don't screen employers. Before a paid listing goes live, we check that it is an open role we already list and that it doesn't ask you to pay or for personal details before you can see it, but we can't guarantee that every posting is legitimate. A paid listing is an ad, not a recommendation. Never pay to apply, and be careful with any posting that asks for money or bank details.
• A paid listing never changes where any listing ranks, how it's scored, which filters it passes or what Auto-Apply does. The privacy policy explains how one is chosen.

Auto-Apply and AI

• Auto-Apply never submits an application for you. It fills in the form and stops at the submit button. You review everything and press Submit yourself.
• AI can make mistakes. It can get facts wrong or write things that aren't true about you. You are responsible for everything you send to an employer.
• Employer and application sites have their own terms. You are responsible for following them.
• Things like CAPTCHAs, email codes and two-step sign-in always need you.

Fair use and monthly caps

• Search is free and has no caps.
• AI features are free up to a monthly allowance per student, for example a set number of tailored resumes and Auto-Apply runs. The extension and dashboard show what you have left.
• There are also short-term limits on how fast you can make AI calls.
• If the project's total AI budget for the month runs out, AI features pause for everyone until the next month. Search keeps working.
• Caps, limits and features may change at any time.
• Optional paid plans raise the allowance for students who want more: Supporter at $4/month, Pro at $8/month. They are optional, and search stays free. See below.

Invite runs

You can share your own invite link from Invite classmates on the dashboard.

• When a classmate signs in through your link with a school (.edu) account in that account's first week on InternScout, they get 3 extra Auto-Apply runs, and so do you. You can earn them for up to 10 invites in total. Deleting your data and signing in again doesn't restart either the first week or the count of 10.
• Each account can join through an invite only once, ever.
• Extra runs are used only after your monthly allowance runs out. They don't expire, but they still count toward your account's AI limits.
• They have no cash value and can't be sold or transferred.
• We may change or end the invite program at any time. Runs you've already been given stay usable.
• Runs gained through abuse, such as fake or duplicate accounts or inviting yourself, may be removed.

Paid plans (optional)

This section only applies if you choose to subscribe. The plans are live: Supporter is $4/month and Pro is $8/month. Nothing charges you unless you subscribe, and you can use InternScout indefinitely without ever doing so.

• They exist to cover AI costs. A plan raises your monthly AI allowance; it does not change the listings, unlock search, or move you up any queue.
• The dashboard shows each plan's price and exactly how much AI use it buys before you pay. A school .edu email still doubles whatever your plan gives you.
• To move between paid plans, use Manage plan. Stripe handles the switch and the difference in price.
• Stripe takes the payment. You subscribe, change your card and cancel on Stripe's own pages. We never see your card details. Stripe's terms apply to the payment itself.
• Stripe is the seller of record. Paid plans are sold through Stripe Payments Company under its Managed Payments programme, so your receipt and invoice come from Stripe. Any sales tax or VAT for where you live is worked out and added at checkout, and Stripe pays it on. The price may be shown in your local currency.
• It renews monthly until you cancel. Cancel any time on the billing page; you keep the larger allowance until the end of the period you already paid for.
• No refunds by default, since the cost is already spent on AI calls. If something goes wrong on our side, get in touch and we'll try to sort it out. As seller of record, Stripe can also refund a charge itself where consumer law or its own rules require it, and it handles any card dispute.
• The price, the allowance it buys, and the plan itself can change or end at any time. If the plan ends, subscriptions are cancelled and the free allowance still applies.
• The global monthly AI budget and the anti-misuse rules still apply on a paid plan.
• To delete your data while subscribed, cancel first (see the privacy policy).

For employers: paid listings

This section applies only to an employer that buys a paid listing, including a free pilot. Students don't need to read it. You accept it, with the rest of these terms that apply to you, when you tick the box that accepts them as you order on our site, when you pay our invoice, or, for a free pilot arranged with us by email, when you confirm its start date with us in writing. If you accept for a company, you confirm you may do so on its behalf. Changes to these terms, including this section, don't apply to a paid listing already paid for, or a pilot already confirmed; the whole version you accepted governs that run. If our invoice or written confirmation states different dates or a different price from this section or our employers page, the invoice or confirmation wins. If the email approving your order gives different dates from the ones you chose, for example because we approved it after your start day, the dates in that email win.

• What you buy. One of your open roles shown in a separate box headed "Paid listing", with "Ad" before your company name, for the dates we agree. It shows on the dashboard only to a student whose search or chosen field the role already matches, and on our internship pages only on a page whose own list already includes the role. There is at most one paid listing on a page, and if several fit, each has the same chance. At most five paid listings in any one of our fields (such as Software or Finance) run at the same time, and a role in more than one field counts in each. When a field is full, we tell you the first day yours fits, and nobody can pay more to go first. A student can turn paid listings off, and a student's own saved profile can hide yours when the role doesn't fit them (class year, citizenship, eligibility or season), so not every student who searches for your field will see it.
• What it never does. It doesn't change where any of your listings, or anyone else's, rank, how they are scored, which filters they pass, how many results a student sees, or what Auto-Apply does. Your role also stays in the results at its usual place. It isn't aimed at students by profile, school, major, age or any other trait, and we won't agree to aim it that way. A student's own settings or saved profile can only hide it, as described above.
• Which roles qualify. The role has to be one InternScout already lists from your public job board, open, and still taking applications. Paying never adds a listing. Before it goes live we check that the role is open on your own careers site, that you write from your company's domain, that the role says it is paid (or you are a nonprofit or public body), that it charges no fee and asks for no personal details before showing the posting, and that you don't ask for targeting. These checks are for our own decision to run the listing; they don't make us responsible for your posting (see "Your promises"). We may refuse any paid listing.
• Your promises. You promise that the role and its posting are real, accurate and lawful, including the laws on pay transparency (a pay range where one is required), wages and hours, child labor (no hazardous work for anyone under 18, and a minimum age stated if high school students can apply) and non-discrimination; that the role doesn't charge applicants anything; and that you may let us show it.
• Your name. You let us show your company's name, the role's title and its link in the paid listing and in our normal listings while the paid listing runs, and in the monthly counts we send you. This doesn't limit how we show your public listings, as we do for every employer.
• No promised results. We don't promise views, clicks or applicants. After each calendar month you can ask for how often the box was shown and opened, rounded down to the nearest 10 ("fewer than 10" below that). The counts are estimates, not audited figures: they can include the same person more than once and automated traffic our filters miss, since anyone can send a count to our server. We don't see applications, so we can't count them.
• Timing. Our pages are rebuilt several times a day, so a paid listing can start a few hours after its first day begins. It stops showing on its end date. If the role closes, its posting changes or it leaves InternScout, the paid listing stops showing, and you get the unused days back. You choose whether that is credit toward another paid listing or a refund of those days' share of the price; a free pilot has nothing to refund. A credit code doesn't expire. If you ordered on our site, we email you the choice, and if you haven't chosen within 30 days of that email, we refund. If we approve an order after the start day you chose, it runs for its full number of days from the day we approve it, and its end date moves to match. If we pause or stop paid listings for a reason other than your breaking these terms, or InternScout shuts down, you get the unused days back the same way.
• Payment and review. You pay in US dollars through Stripe when you order on our site, or we send you an invoice through Stripe. A pilot code makes the order free. We review every paid listing, paid or pilot, before it goes live. Until we approve your order, you can cancel it by email for a full refund. If we approve it, it runs from its start day, or from the day we approve it if that is later. If we don't, we tell you why and refund what you paid in full. The price is what you paid at checkout, after any code, or what is on your invoice; internscout.org/employers shows our current prices.
• Free either way. Your listings, adding your job board and correcting your details stay free whether or not you buy a paid listing.
• We can pause or end a paid listing that breaks these terms or the law, and refund the unused days unless it was ended for breaking them. If you dispute a payment with your bank, we may pause the paid listing until the dispute is settled.
• Claims about your posting. You will defend InternScout and its operator against, and pay the losses and reasonable costs (including lawyers' fees) of, any claim by someone else that arises from your posting, the role or how you hire for it, except to the extent the claim is caused by our own fault (for example, showing the role after the paid listing ended). We will tell you about the claim promptly, you run the defense, we may take part with our own lawyer at our own cost, we will help where we reasonably can, and neither of us will settle it without the other's consent, which neither will unreasonably refuse.
• Limit on our liability. As far as the law allows, our total liability to you for anything to do with paid listings is limited to what you paid us for them in the 12 months before the claim, or $100, whichever is more. We are not liable to you for lost profits, lost hires or indirect losses.

Don't misuse it

You agree not to:

• Send automated or scripted requests to our server, or use it to scrape anything.
• Use our server as a general AI service for things unrelated to InternScout.
• Share, sell or lend your account, sign-in or tokens.
• Get around the caps, for example with extra accounts.
• Use InternScout to send spam or mass, low-effort applications.
• Send false information to employers.
• Try to break, overload or attack InternScout or any site it connects to.
• Break the law or another site's terms.

We may limit or block access for anyone who misuses the service.

Who can use InternScout

• You need to be at least 13 to use InternScout.
• If you're under 18, a parent or guardian must read and agree to these terms with you before you start a paid plan, and the card used has to be theirs or used with their permission.
• If you're under 18, don't start a paid plan without that permission. Tell us through the contact details below and we'll cancel the plan and refund the payments still outstanding.

Your data

The privacy policy explains what we store and how to delete it.

• Staying signed in. Once you sign in, that browser or extension stays signed in until you sign out, you press Delete my data, or it goes a year unused. Anyone using that device can use your sign-in and your AI allowance, so sign out on a shared or public computer.
• Your Deep Dive is saved to your account by default, encrypted, so it's there on your other devices. Your files, your demographic answers, your saved employer-site logins and your API keys are never saved to it. You can turn saving off in the extension, which deletes our copy, and Delete my data deletes it too.
• The saved copy is a convenience, not a guaranteed backup. Keep your own copy of anything you can't afford to lose, such as your resume.

Provided as-is

InternScout is provided "as is" and "as available", with no warranties of any kind. As far as the law allows, we are not responsible for any loss or harm from using it. That includes missed deadlines, wrong or missing listings, rejected or incomplete applications, AI mistakes, downtime or lost data.

Changes and shutdown

• We may change, pause or shut down any part of InternScout at any time, with or without notice.
• We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the latest version. If you keep using InternScout after a change, you accept the new terms.
• If InternScout shuts down, the data kept in your browser and extension stays on your device until you delete it. A Deep Dive saved to your account may stop being available when the server does, so keep the copy on your device.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA, and any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts of Massachusetts. If you live somewhere whose consumer protection law gives you rights you can't sign away, you keep those rights and this section doesn't take them from you.

Contact

InternScout is run by Bruce McGinley, an independent student project in Massachusetts, USA. Email brucepmcginley@gmail.com.

Questions about these terms, a subscription or a refund: use the InternScout feedback form. It needs no account and only the person running InternScout reads it. Expect a reply within a few days; this is a one-student project, not a support desk.

For bugs you don't mind discussing in the open, you can also open a GitHub issue. Issues are public, so please don't put personal details in them.