Website Terms and Conditions Template UK (Terms of Service)

Website terms and conditions are the contract between you and everyone who uses or buys through your site. Terms of service, terms of use, T&Cs — the names vary but the document and its job are the same. A UK website terms and conditions template gives you that contract's skeleton: who you are, what you sell, and the rules both sides accept.

It does two kinds of legal work. On a selling site it forms the contract at every order, and carries much of the information consumer law requires before that happens. On any site it sets the house rules and says whose courts deal with a dispute.

Drip pricing: the total price, up front

What you sell, the full price including taxes, and how payment and delivery work — clear descriptions are required pre-contract information. Show the total price up front: CMA guidance that applies to commercial practices from 6 April 2025 onwards treats so-called drip pricing — a headline price with mandatory charges added later as the customer proceeds — as prohibited.

What a website terms and conditions template should cover

These are the clauses that earn their place on a UK consumer-facing site. The pricing duty above and the first four below reflect distance-selling duties GOV.UK sets out, drawn from the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

Your identity — business name, contact details and address are among the details GOV.UK says a customer must get before ordering.
How the contract forms — say plainly whether the customer's order or your confirmation creates the contract. A clause reserving acceptance until you confirm gives you room to catch a pricing error, but it is not a free hand: the clause is itself open to assessment for fairness where the customer is a consumer.
The 14-day cancellation right — GOV.UK's wording is that customers "can cancel their order up to 14 days after their order is delivered"; say so in your terms and explain how.
What cancellation does not cover — GOV.UK's exempt list covers personalised or custom-made items, perishable items, newspapers and magazines, unwrapped CDs, DVDs and computer software, and sealed items that cannot be returned once opened for health or hygiene reasons; downloads and streaming follow different rules.
A statutory-rights saver — nothing in your terms removes a consumer's statutory rights; the Consumer Rights Act 2015 governs unfair consumer terms and GOV.UK calls restricting customers' rights illegal.
Acceptable use — the behaviour that lets you suspend or terminate an account.
Intellectual property — who owns site content and what visitors may reuse.
Liability — what you accept and what you cap, always subject to the consumer carve-out.
Complaints — how problems are raised and answered; a complaints procedure does this properly.
Privacy and cookies by reference — link to a standalone privacy policy and cookie policy rather than restating them here.
Governing law and courts, plus how you make changes to the terms.

Selling, subscriptions, accounts and content: where the terms do their work

You sell goods, services or digital content to consumers online — distance sales carry the information and cancellation duties covered above.
You run subscriptions or software as a service — renewal, cancellation and price changes need agreeing before anyone pays. Subscription selling is an area of active regulatory change in the UK: planned changes are not yet in force, and no commencement date has been confirmed, so check the current position before relying on a subscription clause you drafted a while ago.
Users hold accounts or post content — suspending an account or removing material is far easier to defend if you reserved the right to do it and set out when you will use it.
You publish guidance or take bookings — terms manage responsibility for accuracy and record when a step becomes binding.

Our free DPIA template covers the data protection impact assessment process.

Common mistakes

Copying an American terms of service. It will say nothing about the 14-day cancellation right, and clauses written for US law — arbitration wording and references to US statutes among them — cannot be assumed to work against a UK consumer.
Writing "no refunds". GOV.UK says restricting or taking away customers' rights is illegal — its example is exactly this kind of sign.
Folding privacy and cookie information into the terms instead of linking separate documents — it makes all three harder to keep accurate.
Never revisiting the document. Adding downloads, subscriptions or user content changes which rules apply.

England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are three separate legal systems, so the governing-law and courts clause must name one — normally where your business is based. The consumer rules above come from UK-level legislation, but the detail is not uniform: GOV.UK states that customers have up to 6 years to make a claim for an item they have bought from you, and 5 years in Scotland. If you trade mainly in Scotland or Northern Ireland, have the governing-law wording and any time-limit wording checked for your system rather than assuming an English draft carries over. And the clause is no escape hatch: choosing English law does not remove the consumer protections above.

Frequently asked questions

What information must a customer get before ordering from a UK website?

GOV.UK lists details that must reach the customer before an order is placed — business name, contact details and address, a description of what you sell, the price including taxes — and a terms page is the practical place to put them. Separate rules also require commercial websites to identify the business behind them, and what you must show depends on how your business is set up, so check what applies to yours.

Is there a difference between terms and conditions and terms of service?

No. They are different names for the same document. "Terms of service" is the usual American label; UK sites more often say "terms and conditions". Pick one and use it consistently.

Does the 14-day cancellation right apply to everything sold online?

No. It applies to consumer distance sales, and GOV.UK's exemptions include personalised or custom-made items, perishable items, newspapers and magazines, unwrapped CDs, DVDs and computer software, and sealed items that cannot be returned once opened for health or hygiene reasons. Digital downloads and streaming follow different rules, so digital sellers need a specific clause.

Can my website terms say "no refunds"?

Not against consumers. GOV.UK states that restricting or taking away customers' rights is illegal, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets out the law on unfair terms in consumer contracts. You can explain genuine limits for exempt goods; you cannot remove rights the law gives.

Do I need a separate privacy policy and cookie policy?

Yes. Data protection duties exist whether or not anyone agrees to your terms, so they belong in standalone documents that your terms link to.

Statutory references on this page were checked against primary sources (legislation.gov.uk, GOV.UK, HSE, ICO and Acas) on 8 August 2026. Our templates themselves are not solicitor-drafted — see the note below.

This page is legal information, not legal advice.

Dogetlawyer is a Legal-Technology platform, not a law firm.

Our templates are not solicitor-drafted and have not been checked against primary sources. They are starting points to adapt, not finished documents.

This page describes the law of England and Wales unless it says otherwise. For anything significant, consider taking advice from a qualified professional.

Dogetlawyer's website terms and conditions template sits in our public A–Z index of around 114 free UK legal templates. Browse the full template index without signing in, then register a free account — registration, not payment — to download.