Methodology

How we analyze your contract — and where we stop.

We would rather be trusted for the right reasons. This page explains how the analysis actually works, what it can and can't see, and how to check any finding for yourself.

The short version: it is a strong first read, not a guarantee, and it is not a substitute for a lawyer.

We describe what contracts like this commonly include — we don't tell you what to do.

How the analysis works

1. We read the document
The text is extracted from whatever you send — PDF, a photo of a paper contract, Word, Excel, or text you paste in. Photos and scans go through character recognition first, so a sharp, flat image reads better than a creased or shadowed one.
2. We find the clauses that carry weight
The analysis works through the whole document and pulls out the terms that decide what actually happens to you: termination, renewal, payment, liability, confidentiality, dispute resolution, and their neighbors.
3. We weigh the clauses that matter
Each one is assessed on how far it sits from what's ordinary for that kind of agreement, how much it could cost you, and how hard it would be to undo. That is what the risk level on each finding, and the score at the top of your report, are describing.
4. We write it in plain English
Every finding is rewritten as three things: what the clause says, why it matters to you, and what you could reasonably ask for instead.

The work is done by an AI model, with no human lawyer reviewing your document along the way. That is what makes it fast and affordable — and it is exactly why the rest of this page exists.

Every finding shows its source

Each finding in your report carries the exact clause it came from, taken from your own document, alongside the reasoning for the risk level we gave it. You can open the original text at any point and read it in full.

We do this because a verdict you cannot check is just an opinion. If a finding does not match what the clause actually says, the document wins — tell us, and read it as a prompt to look closer rather than a conclusion.

What we don't do

We don't give legal advice — The analysis is informational. Using it does not create a lawyer-client relationship, and we do not represent you.
We don't guarantee completeness — A clause can be missed, and a risk level can be read more harshly or more gently than a professional would read it.
We don't decide for you — Whether a term is acceptable depends on your leverage, your alternatives, and your appetite for risk. We surface it; the call is yours.
We don't publish accuracy scores — You won't find a percentage or benchmark on this page. We don't have a number we would be comfortable defending in public, so we don't print one.

Where the analysis has limits

Language: The analysis is built and tuned for English-language contracts. Documents in other languages, or heavily mixed-language ones, will get a weaker read.
Scan and photo quality: If the text can't be read cleanly — a blurred photo, a skewed scan, a stamped or handwritten page — anything unreadable is simply not analyzed.
Jurisdiction: Contract law differs by country and often by state or province. A clause that is unenforceable in one place can be routine in another, and the analysis does not decide that question for you.
What we can't see: We only see the file you upload. Side letters, earlier drafts, email promises, and anything agreed verbally are invisible to the analysis — and they can change what a clause really means.
Unusual agreements: Highly specialized, bespoke, or unusually structured documents are further from the patterns the analysis knows well, so treat those results with extra care.
Missing clauses and alternative wording: “Commonly included, not found here” means a protection that agreements of this type usually contain did not appear in yours — commonly included is not the same as required, and a contract can be perfectly sound without it. Where we show alternative wording for a clause, it is generic drafting for that type of agreement and is AI-generated: a starting point for a conversation with the other party or your own lawyer, not a drop-in replacement.

How to check our work

Read the clause we quote. Open the original text under any finding and check that the clause says what we say it says. This takes a minute and it is the single most useful thing you can do with the report.

Sanity-check the framing. Our guides and glossary explain what these terms usually look like, so you can judge whether a clause really is unusual for your situation.

Know when to call a lawyer. If the agreement is high-value, long-term, hard to exit, or simply something you can't afford to get wrong, take it to a qualified attorney. Bring the report with you — arriving with the clauses already flagged tends to make that conversation shorter and cheaper.

What happens to your contract

4 things you can check in our code, with the date we measured them.

Your file is not in a public folder.: Uploads go to a private storage bucket, in a folder named after your account. There is no public link to them, and a second account asking for your file gets an error — measured on the live site with two real accounts on 2 Sep 2026.
Access is enforced by the database, not only by our code.: Every table that holds your data has row-level security. On 22 Aug 2026 we ran 18 probes on the live database from a second account: it read 0 of the first account's documents, analyses, chat messages and usage rows.
On the pages that show your document, only our own scripts run.: Those pages carry a fresh one-time token on every request, and the browser refuses any script that does not have it. Enforced since 11 Jul 2026, with a test that fails the build when a new page is added without it.
Payment messages are checked before we believe them.: As of 14 Aug 2026, every notification from our payment provider is signed; we verify the signature in constant time, refuse anything more than 5 minutes old, and record each delivery id so a repeated message is ignored. If the key is missing, the endpoint refuses the request instead of guessing.

We have not had an outside security audit, and we don't show a badge for one. Everything above is something you can check in our code.

Analyze my contract — free

Want to see the output first? See a sample analysis.

Think we got something wrong here, or missed a limitation worth naming? Email hello@fixmycontract.com — we read everything.