Version 1.0 Last revised: July 25, 2026
The website at https://theknowngood.com, together with our blog at
https://blog.theknowngood.com (collectively, the "Site"), is operated by
The Known Good, an independent personal project of Kerry Kier ("we," "us,"
"our"). These Terms of Use ("Terms") are the legally binding terms that govern
your use of the Site. Some features may carry additional posted guidelines; those are
incorporated into these Terms by reference.
By accessing or using the Site, you accept these Terms on behalf of yourself or the entity you represent, and you represent that you have the authority to do so. If you do not agree, do not use the Site.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle information and forms part of your agreement with us.
1. What the Site is
The Known Good publishes reference data and written analysis about AI models, including aggregated benchmark results, pricing, throughput and latency figures, arena ratings, and model metadata, together with derived measures such as the Known Good Index.
We aggregate; we do not benchmark. With the exception of measures we explicitly identify as our own derived calculations, the underlying figures on this Site are collected from third-party publishers and are attributed to those publishers on our methodology and attribution pages. We do not run our own model evaluations and we do not represent third-party results as our own.
2. Eligibility and access
You must be at least 13 years old to use the Site. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Site only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.
No account is required. The Site is free to read, the data is free to download, and we do not gate content behind registration or payment.
We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Site or any part of it at any time, without notice. We are not obliged to provide support or maintenance, and we will not be liable to you or any third party for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation.
3. License to use the Site
Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Site for your own personal, research, editorial, or internal business purposes.
You may quote, cite, and link to our pages, charts, and analysis for commentary, reporting, research, and teaching, provided you attribute The Known Good and link to the source page. Downloading and reusing our published datasets is governed by Section 4.
4. Data, sources, attribution, and downloads
This section governs the data on the Site and takes precedence over any more general language elsewhere in these Terms.
4.1 Third-party data — the source's license controls. Much of the data presented here originates with third-party publishers and is used under their respective licenses, several of which are open licenses such as CC BY 4.0. Those licenses, not these Terms, govern your reuse of the underlying third-party data. We identify each source and its license on our attribution page. We claim no ownership of third-party data and grant no rights in it beyond what its license already gives you. Where a source's license conflicts with these Terms as to that source's data, the source's license controls.
4.2 What we own. We own, or license, the Site's original written analysis, page copy, design, code, logos and marks, and our own compilation, normalization, and derived measures — including the composition and methodology of the Known Good Index.
4.3 Downloads are permitted. We publish machine-readable exports — CSV and JSON — and we intend them to be used. You may download them, in bulk, and use them for research, journalism, analysis, teaching, and commercial purposes. Our own contribution — the compilation, the normalization, and our derived measures including the Known Good Index — is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). You do not need to ask permission, and there is no fee.
4.4 Attribution is required, and it runs to two parties. Our CC BY license
requires that you credit The Known Good and link to https://theknowngood.com.
Separately, the underlying third-party data in our exports carries its own publishers'
attribution requirements, which pass through to you unchanged — our license cannot
and does not waive them. If you republish figures taken from this Site, credit both
The Known Good and the original publisher we identify for that figure, and consult our
attribution page for the per-source
requirements. Crediting us alone misattributes other people's work and may breach the
upstream license.
4.5 Exports are files, not an API. We do not currently operate a public API. The export files are static, point-in-time snapshots served as ordinary downloads. Retrieving them normally is expected and welcome. Automated, repeated, or high-frequency fetching of the export paths is not — it is treated the same as any other automated request under Section 7, and is subject to our rate limiting, edge filtering, and blocking. Download a file once and cache it; do not poll it. If you need a genuine data feed, email us and ask rather than building one against the export paths.
5. Accuracy, and no reliance
Read this section carefully. It is the most important disclaimer on this page.
We work to keep the data on this Site accurate, sourced, and timestamped. We cannot guarantee it. Data on the Site may be incomplete, outdated, misattributed, incorrectly parsed, or wrong for reasons including changes at the original source, errors in an upstream publisher's own figures, transformation errors on our side, ingestion failures, or normal delays between a change and our next update.
Benchmark scores, pricing, and performance figures are point-in-time approximations under specific measurement conditions. They are not guarantees of how any model, provider, or endpoint will behave for you, and results vary by configuration, region, load, prompt, and version.
Downloaded exports are snapshots and go stale immediately. Each export carries the timestamp of the data it contains. A file you downloaded last month does not reflect subsequent corrections, and we have no way to update a copy you hold. If you publish from an export, state the retrieval date.
The Site is published for general informational purposes. It is not professional, legal, financial, procurement, security, or engineering advice, and it is not an endorsement of any model, provider, or vendor. Do not make purchasing, deployment, security, or other consequential decisions on the basis of this Site alone. Verify anything that matters against the primary source before you rely on it.
If you find an error, please tell us at [email protected]. Corrections are welcome and we act on them.
6. Independence and non-affiliation
The Known Good is an independent project. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any AI model developer, API or inference provider, benchmark publisher, evaluation organization, or any other publication, service, or site that produces or aggregates comparable data.
All third-party names, product names, logos, and trademarks appearing on the Site belong to their respective owners and are used for identification and reference only. Their use does not imply any affiliation or endorsement in either direction.
Inclusion or exclusion of a model or provider, and any ranking or score shown, is not a recommendation and does not reflect any commercial relationship. We accept no payment for placement, ranking, coverage, or inclusion.
7. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Use the Site in violation of any applicable law or regulation
- Access the Site in a manner that interferes with, disrupts, or places an undue burden
on the Site or the networks and servers behind it — including automated request
floods, denial-of-service activity, polling the export paths, or ignoring rate limits
and
robots.txt - Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Site, its underlying systems, or any connected network, or probe, scan, or test their security without our prior written permission
- Upload or transmit any virus, worm, or other code intended to damage, disable, or alter a system or data
- Circumvent any access control, rate limit, or security measure
- Remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, attribution, licensing, or other proprietary notice, including the attribution required by Section 4.4
- Misrepresent the Site's data, alter figures and present them as ours, or represent that we have endorsed you or your product
- Use the Site to harvest personal information about others
We conditionally permit operators of public search engines to crawl the Site for the
purpose of creating publicly available searchable indices, subject to robots.txt.
That permission is revocable.
8. Newsletter
If you subscribe to the newsletter, you consent to receive it at the address you provide. Subscription uses double opt-in and every message contains an unsubscribe link. We may also send occasional administrative notices, such as material changes to these Terms or the Privacy Policy. See the Privacy Policy for how we handle your address.
9. Submissions and feedback
If you send us a correction, data source suggestion, methodology comment, or other feedback ("Submission"), you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to use, reproduce, and incorporate that Submission into the Site and our methodology, without compensation or attribution unless we agree otherwise in writing.
Please do not send us confidential or proprietary information. We treat Submissions as non-confidential. You represent that you have the right to send us anything you send.
10. Our blog, and third-party links
Our blog is ours. The blog at https://blog.theknowngood.com is our own
publication. We write, edit, and control its content, and it is covered by these Terms
and by our Privacy Policy exactly as the rest of the Site is. The blog is delivered
through a third-party publishing platform, which means that platform operates the
servers and applies its own technical and data-handling practices to your visit — but
the words, images, and analysis there are ours, and our ownership, license, and
attribution terms in Sections 3 and 4 apply to them in full.
Third-party links. The Site and the blog link out to third-party sites, datasets, papers, and services. We do not control those resources, do not review or endorse them, and are not responsible for their content, accuracy, availability, or practices. When you follow a link, that third party's terms and privacy policy govern your use of it.
11. Copyright complaints
We respect intellectual property rights. The Site hosts no user-generated content — there are no accounts, uploads, or comments — so everything published here is either our own work or third-party material we have chosen to publish under an identified license.
If you believe material on the Site infringes a copyright you own or control, email [email protected] with the subject line "Copyright complaint" and include:
- Identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed
- The specific URL or URLs where the material appears
- Your contact information
- A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
- A statement that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf
We review complaints promptly and will remove or correct material where the complaint is well-founded. Please note that knowingly material misrepresentations in a copyright complaint can expose the complaining party to liability for the resulting damages and costs.
12. Disclaimer of warranties
THE SITE AND ALL CONTENT, DATA, AND EXPORTS ON IT ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
WE MAKE NO WARRANTY THAT THE SITE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, THAT IT WILL BE AVAILABLE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY DATA, SCORE, PRICE, RANKING, EXPORT FILE, OR OTHER FIGURE PRESENTED IS ACCURATE, CURRENT, OR COMPLETE.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
13. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, LOST BUSINESS, OR COSTS OF SUBSTITUTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF — OR INABILITY TO USE — THE SITE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. THIS INCLUDES ANY DECISION YOU MAKE IN RELIANCE ON DATA PUBLISHED OR EXPORTED FROM THE SITE.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SITE, FOR ANY CAUSE AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION, WILL NOT EXCEED FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS ($50). MORE THAN ONE CLAIM DOES NOT ENLARGE THIS LIMIT. THE SITE AND ITS DATA ARE PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE, AND THIS LIMIT REFLECTS THAT ALLOCATION OF RISK.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
14. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless The Known Good and Kerry Kier from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by a third party arising out of your use of the Site, your violation of these Terms, your violation of any law or of any upstream data license, or your Submissions. We may assume exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, at your expense, and you agree to cooperate. You will not settle any such matter without our prior written consent.
15. Suspension and termination
We may block, suspend, or terminate your access to the Site at any time, for any reason, at our sole discretion — including for any use that violates these Terms — and without liability to you. Sections 4, 5, 6, and 9 through 17 survive termination. The CC BY 4.0 license granted in Section 4.3 on data you have already downloaded is irrevocable as to that data, in accordance with its terms.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may revise these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will post notice on the Site and update the "Last revised" date, and we may notify newsletter subscribers by email. Your continued use of the Site after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree, stop using the Site.
17. General
Governing law and venue. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in Sacramento County, California for any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Site, except that either party may seek injunctive relief for infringement or misuse of intellectual property in any court of competent jurisdiction, and either party may bring a qualifying individual claim in small claims court.
Informal resolution first. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us at [email protected] with a description of the dispute and to attempt in good faith to resolve it informally for at least 30 days.
Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Site and supersede any prior agreements on that subject.
No waiver; severability. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed, and the remaining provisions stay in effect.
Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent; any attempt to do so is void. We may assign these Terms freely. These Terms bind permitted successors and assigns.
Relationship. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship between you and us.
Export controls. You agree not to export or re-export any data obtained from the Site in violation of U.S. export control laws.
Headings. Section titles are for convenience only and have no legal effect. "Including" means "including without limitation."
18. Contact
Name: Kerry Kier Email: [email protected] Postal address: available on request by email
Copyright © 2026 Kerry Kier. All rights reserved, except that our compilation and derived measures are licensed under CC BY 4.0 as described in Section 4.3. Third-party data remains the property of its respective publishers and is used under the licenses identified on our attribution page.
Last updated: July 25, 2026