Skip to content

Playground build · Anything marked “Sample data” is fictional

Draft. Pending review by counsel.

Terms of Use

Last updated November 1, 2026

These terms cover your use of porkbarrel.ai, its pages, data downloads, share images, newsletter and API (together, “the site”). The site is run by an individual for now; a nonprofit or fiscal sponsor is expected to take it over. “We” and “us” mean whoever runs the site at the time. By using the site you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use it.

What the site is

Porkbarrel.ai compares each section of a US federal bill with the bill’s own title and official summary, and shows the sections that aren’t described by either. An AI model drafts each check and a person approves every flag before it’s published. See the editorial and AI disclaimer for how this works.

The site is for general information only. It is not legal, financial, political or professional advice. Always read the official bill text on Congress.gov or GovInfo before relying on anything here.

How to read a flag

A flag means only that this section isn’t described by the bill’s title or summary. It is not a claim that the section is wasteful, improper or added for any reason.

A flag is a statement about how a section of text compares with other text. It does not say who wrote the section, why it was added, whether it is good policy or whether anyone acted improperly. Please don’t quote or share a flag in a way that suggests otherwise.

Acceptable use

You’re welcome to read, quote, link to and share the site. Please don’t:

  • break the law, or use the site to harass, threaten or defame anyone;
  • edit a flag, share image or screenshot so it says something the site didn’t, or present it as ours after changing it;
  • suggest we endorse, oppose or are affiliated with any candidate, party, campaign or cause;
  • try to break into, overload, probe or disrupt the site, its servers or other users’ accounts;
  • use automated tools in a way that breaks the API and scraping rules below;
  • use the site to send spam or to collect personal information about other people.

Accounts

Reviewer accounts (at /admin) are by invitation only. If you have one, keep your sign-in private, use it only for reviewing, and tell us at once at hello@porkbarrel.ai if you think someone else has used it. We can suspend or remove any account.

Data and licenses

Government data

Bill text, titles, actions and Congressional Research Service summaries come from Congress.gov and GovInfo; roll calls from the House Clerk; committee contributions from the Federal Election Commission. Works of the US government are in the public domain in the United States, and nothing in these terms limits your right to use them. Later, the site may also show data from USAspending.gov and lobbying disclosures, under the rules those sources set. Senate roll calls come from Voteview (UCLA) public data.

Our content

Our own writing (flag reasons, bill pages, explainers) and our share images are © Porkbarrel.ai. You may quote and share them for any purpose, including in news reporting, research and commentary, as long as you link to the original page and don’t change the meaning. [Owner to confirm: we plan to license our own content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).]

Our methodology

The rubric, scoring instructions and test set we publish on How we decide are offered so anyone can check and reproduce our work. [Owner to confirm: methodology under CC BY 4.0; software code under its own license in the code repository.]

Our name

“Porkbarrel.ai” and the site’s logo identify us. Please don’t use them in a way that suggests we made, endorse or sponsor something we didn’t.

API, bulk data and scraping

  • Use the public pages and feeds at a reasonable rate, identify your tool with a contact address in its user agent, and respect robots.txt. Don’t try to get around rate limits or access controls.
  • The paid API and bulk files, when offered, come with their own order terms. If those terms conflict with these, the order terms win for that product.
  • Where data on the site comes from Federal Election Commission reports, contributor data is shown as totals only, never for solicitation or commercial use. Federal law (52 U.S.C. §30111(a)(4)) forbids selling or using information copied from FEC reports to solicit contributions or for commercial purposes, and you must follow that rule too.
  • Don’t use our data to imply that a flag is a claim about anyone’s motives or conduct.

Ads, sponsors and donations

The site may show ads and list sponsors. Ads are labeled, never appear next to a flag or inside a bill check, and never come from political parties, campaigns, candidates, PACs or governments. Advertisers have no say in what we check or publish. See Funding and the Privacy Policy. Donations, when we accept them, are covered by the note on the donation page; until a fiscal sponsor or 501(c)(3) is in place, donations are not tax-deductible.

Links to other sites

We link to Congress.gov, GovInfo and other sites we don’t control. We aren’t responsible for their content or their privacy practices.

No warranty

We work hard to be accurate and we correct mistakes in public, but the site is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, timeliness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Bills change, summaries lag behind text, and AI models and people both make mistakes.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, arising from your use of the site or your reliance on it. Our total liability for any claim about the site is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim or US $100. Some places don’t allow these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

If something is wrong

If you think a flag is wrong, please challenge it. Every challenge gets a public answer, and accepted challenges are logged on the corrections page. For anything else, including a legal concern, email hello@porkbarrel.ai.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [State to be confirmed] and applicable US federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be heard in the state or federal courts located in [State to be confirmed], unless the law where you live says otherwise.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. We’ll change the date at the top, and for significant changes we’ll post a notice on the site. Using the site after a change means you accept the new terms.

Contact

Email hello@porkbarrel.ai. [Owner to add a postal address (a PO box or virtual mailbox) once one is set up.]