Terms of service

Last updated October 1, 2026. Written in plain language; ask us if anything is unclear.

What HARBOR Port is

HARBOR Port is a hosted gateway that proxies public United States government APIs and exposes them as Model Context Protocol servers. HARBOR Port is operated by HARBOR Initiative LLC. It is not a government website and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting on behalf of any federal agency.

Your account and keys

You are responsible for the security of your API keys and for all activity under them. Keys belong to your organization rather than to the person who created them, and must not be resold or shared outside it. Tell us promptly if a key is exposed and we will revoke it.

Acceptable use

Do not use HARBOR Port to break the law, to attempt to re-identify individuals from public records, to circumvent the rate limits or terms of an upstream source, or to place load on the service that degrades it for other customers. We throttle or suspend accounts that do.

Data and its licenses

The data belongs to the source. We do not claim ownership of it. Each source carries its own license and attribution requirements, and those conditions are enforced at the gateway before a response leaves it. Attribution notices that a source mandates are included in the responses we return and must be preserved when you display the data. Retention is not set out here: metering records are kept for a period your plan determines, and the audit log is kept for the same period on every plan. Both are stated in full in the privacy policy.

Availability

We publish live status. We do not currently publish an uptime commitment on the free tier. Where a plan states a support response time, that is a commitment about support and not about availability.

Payment, changes and cancellation

The free tier is the only plan on sale today. This section states the terms that will apply when paid plans open.

When paid plans open, they will be billed monthly in advance and will renew automatically until canceled. We will give notice before a price change takes effect.

You may cancel at any time before your next renewal. Access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not refund partial months. The free tier exists so you can evaluate the service for as long as you like before paying, so a paid month is a month you chose to buy.

Bringing your own upstream key

For some sources you may supply your own API key instead of using ours. When paid plans open you will be able to attach your own SAM.gov key, and calls to that source will then be made with it, drawing on your own allowance under SAM.gov's terms rather than a shared one.

That key is yours and you are responsible for it. We check it against the source before saving it, store it encrypted, use it only to make calls on your behalf, never display it back to you, and never include it in a response. Removing it stops us using it immediately.

Where we supply access to a source instead, it is subject to that source's limits as well, and for some sources those limits are shared across all customers and may be reached before your plan quota is.

Ending the agreement

You may stop using the service at any time. We may suspend or end access if these terms are breached, if an upstream source requires it, or if we discontinue the service. If we discontinue a paid plan mid period, we refund the unused portion. That is the only circumstance in which we refund unused time.

Liability

The service is provided as is. Government data can be incomplete, delayed or wrong, and it is not legal, financial or procurement advice. To the extent the law allows, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before a claim.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to our contact page.