The terms for using UPSC Grade

UPSC Grade reads photos of your handwritten UPSC Mains answers, or answers you type, and marks them against how toppers write: a mark for each answer, notes on its intro, body and conclusion, and a topper’s answer to compare with yours. You can also write UPSC’s past Mains papers and test papers on the Desk, practise Prelims questions from UPSC’s own past papers, read toppers’ answer copies and past questions, and ask the AI Mentor about your own copies.

We are not part of, or connected to, the Union Public Service Commission. Our marks are not UPSC’s, and they are not your UPSC score.

Marking is still in beta. A mark is what a strict evaluator might give, judged against how toppers write. Read it as a second opinion, not a final verdict, and use it to see what to fix.

Reading handwriting can go wrong too. Before a copy is marked, we show you the questions and answers as we read them, so you can catch a misread. The free check skips that step to mark your answer at once, but it still shows you what we read.

• You must be 18 or older. UPSC itself requires candidates to be 21, so this is not a bar for anyone preparing.
• One account per person, for you alone: please don’t share it or make extra ones.
• Keep your Google sign-in safe. What is done in your account, including by an app you linked to it, counts as done by you.

You sign in with your Google account (or Apple, in the app). We don’t keep a password. Your UPSC Grade account is for you alone.

You can delete it whenever you like, from the menu under your name in the app. If your plan renews by itself, deleting the account cancels the autopay first, so nothing more is ever charged; the time and credits left on the plan go with the account and aren’t refunded. Our Privacy page says what goes with it and what one bare record stays, so that the same sign-in cannot collect the free credits twice.

• Your first 30 answers are marked free once you sign in, with 30 free credits: typed, photographed or from a PDF. They are for life, not each month. Each answer marked uses one credit, when marking starts; an answer we couldn’t mark gives it back.
• When a copy has more answers than you have credits left, your credits mark the first answers you wrote. The rest are kept just as you wrote them, and are marked when you tap to mark them once you have more credits. With no credits left, a copy you send is kept the same way, unread.
• Today’s question, one real UPSC question chosen for everyone each day, is marked free once a day, on top of your 30 free credits.
• The quick free check (photos of one answer, marked at once) uses one of your credits. It is limited to 3 a day for each network, and 100 a day across everyone; when they run out, they open again at 5:30 am India time.
• The AI Mentor answers 5 messages a day free.
• On Free, up to 5 copies a day are marked. A copy you send after that is kept as you sent it, and marked after 5:30 am India time, or when you tap to mark it then. Copies we couldn’t read don’t count.
• A copy that is already marked is marked again, without using anything more, only when something has changed: you corrected what we read, or the marking rubric for its paper has been updated. Corrections can re-mark a copy up to 3 times.
• Every copy, free or on a plan, can be up to 10 MB and 100 pages.

A paid plan brings credits: one credit marks one Mains answer, typed, photographed or one of a copy’s, and an app you link marks answers from the same credits. While a plan is on there is no daily limit, and the AI Mentor has no message limit. Unused credits carry over for as long as the plan renews; when it ends, the credits it brought end with it. Each copy can still be up to 10 MB and 100 pages.

• Mains Monthly: ₹999 for 150 credits, renewing every month.
• Mains Max Monthly: ₹1,799 for 300 credits, renewing every month.
• Mains Annual: ₹5,999 for 1,500 credits, renewing every year.
• Mains Max Annual: ₹10,999 for 4,000 credits, renewing every year.
• Top-ups, while a plan runs: 50 credits for ₹449, 100 for ₹849 or 250 for ₹1,999, paid once. They last while your plan does.

Prices are in rupees. We aren’t registered for GST yet, so none is charged and the price is what you pay. If we register, 18% GST is added on top of the price, and shown before you pay; an autopay you set up before then keeps charging what you bought it at.

You buy a plan on our website, signed in, and pay through Razorpay. The plan belongs to that account and can’t be moved to another. If you’d rather not set up autopay, you can pay once instead: that plan doesn’t renew, and ends when its time is up. While a plan runs, you can only move up to a bigger one (see below); the same plan bought again starts when your paid time ends, and a smaller one can be chosen once it has ended.

When you buy a plan, you set up autopay with Razorpay: UPI Autopay, a card, or netbanking (eNACH). The plan then renews by itself until you cancel:

• Each renewal is charged when your paid time ends, at the price you bought the plan at, and your plan carries on, its credits added to the ones you have, as soon as the charge goes through.
• Your bank or UPI app sends its own notice 24 hours before each charge, as the RBI requires.
• We email you before that: 30, 7 and 1 days before a yearly plan renews, and 3 days before a monthly one. You can ask for fewer, but one still comes 7 days before a yearly renewal.
• If a renewal can’t be charged, Razorpay tries again over the next few days, and we email you. Your credits keep working meanwhile, but nothing new can be bought, and Free’s daily limits apply until a charge goes through; if none does, the plan ends, and its credits with it. Your copies and marks stay either way.
• To move up to a bigger plan (Mains Monthly to Mains Annual, say), choose Upgrade in Plan and payments. You pay the difference between the two prices, the extra credits arrive at once, and your plan’s dates stay the same: a monthly plan moving to a yearly one runs a year from when its month began. A smaller plan isn’t offered while your plan runs, nor a move up in its last 2 days.

You can cancel any time, in one tap, from Plan and payments in your account. Cancelling the autopay in your UPI app or with your bank works too: Razorpay tells us, and it counts the same.

Renewals stop at once. Your plan runs to the end of the time you’ve paid for, with its credits, and nothing more is charged; then your account is on Free, the plan’s credits end, and every copy and mark stays.

A plan’s credits, and its lifting of the daily limits, are for one person writing their own answers. So:

• Your account can be signed in on two devices at a time, such as your phone for photos and your laptop for results. Sign in on a third, and the device you signed in on longest ago is signed out. Apps you link don’t count as devices.
• Upload only your own answers. Your AI Mentor gets to know how you write from your copies; someone else’s copy mixes their mistakes into yours.
• An account clearly shared by many people, such as a coaching centre marking its students’ copies on one plan, isn’t what a plan is for. We’ll write to you first. If it carries on, we may pause the account or close it, and a plan on an account closed for this isn’t refunded.

A plan is a digital service; nothing is shipped. It turns on as soon as Razorpay confirms the payment, usually within a minute. If it hasn’t turned on within a day, we turn it on or refund you in full. The details are on our Delivery page.

Payments are final once made. We don’t refund a plan, a renewal or a top-up because you changed your mind or didn’t use its credits; you can always cancel, so that nothing more is charged. A payment that can’t be used, such as a second autopay paid by mistake, we refund in full by ourselves, at once; if you are charged and no plan or credits arrive, we refund in full too. When the reason is ours (we stop running UPSC Grade, close your account when you did nothing wrong, or change these terms so a plan is worth less), we refund the days left on your plan. The details are on our Refunds page.

The AI Mentor is a language model, not a person. To answer, it reads your own marked copies, your marks and the toppers’ answers, and it tells you what it looked at. It can be wrong, it can miss things, and nothing it says is advice about your attempt or your rank. Check anything that matters against the marked copy itself.

• On Free you have 5 messages a day; they come back at 5:30 am India time. With a plan there is no limit.
• Marking an answer you paste into the chat uses a credit, and is limited to 5 a day on Free; a message can be up to 6,000 characters.
• On a day when its use across the whole site runs far past normal, the AI Mentor rests for everyone until the next day.
• We may change the model behind it. Which model wrote a reply is kept with the reply.

You can connect UPSC Grade to ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Codex or your own agent through our MCP server. The app sends you to our own sign-in page, where you sign in with Google and see exactly what it is asking for before you allow it. It can then use the same tools the AI Mentor has: list your copies, open a marked answer, show your weak points, find toppers’ answers and past questions, mark an answer you paste, and save a question. The list is on our developers page.

• What a linked app receives goes to that app’s own AI provider, under that app’s terms, not ours. Link only apps you trust with your copies.
• We don’t keep the conversation you have inside a linked app. The marking you ask for there uses your credits, and on Free it also counts against the same 5 a day. There is no message cap over a linked app.
• A linked app is its maker’s product, under its maker’s terms. What it writes is its own work, not ours, and a mark it makes up itself is not a UPSC Grade mark: only a mark our marking returns is.
• It can act only within the permissions you allowed it, and anything it saves to your account counts as saved by you.
• To disconnect an app, open the menu under your name and choose Linked apps; its access ends at once. Removing the connector in that app works too.

Your answers stay yours. By uploading a copy, you let us store it and send it to the providers described on our Privacy page, so we can read it, mark it and show it back to you. It is never added to the toppers’ collection, and we never publish it.

Please upload only answers you wrote yourself, or ones you have the right to upload.

The toppers’ answer copies here were published by rank-holders and coaching institutes. They belong to the people and institutes who wrote and published them, and we show them for study: a copy’s first answer, and one topper’s answer to a question, to everyone; the rest to anyone signed in. Our index of them draws on Topper’s Copy by Hashin (CC BY 4.0).

The past questions are the Union Public Service Commission’s. Each is shown with its source named (the examination, the year and the paper), as UPSC’s website policy asks. The policy also asks for permission to reproduce its material. We are writing to the Commission to ask for it, and we will change or take down anything it asks us to. Where UPSC’s own paper is no longer online, the page says so. The explanations and topic tags beside them are ours, written with the help of a model, and are not UPSC’s.

Read all of it to learn how toppers write and what UPSC asks. Please don’t copy it out in bulk, publish it as your own, or build another product from it.

The site, the app, the marking method and rubrics, the improved answers, the explanations and topic tags, the name UPSC Grade and its logo are ours. You can use what we show you for your own study, and share your own marks and improved answers as you like. Please don’t copy the rest out, resell it, or use it to build or train another product.

If a copy, a name or a paper shown here is yours and you want it taken down, or shown differently, write to support@upscgrade.com with a link to the page. We answer within 7 days, and we take the page down while we look if there is any doubt.

Marking costs us real money for every answer, which is why Free has limits. Please don’t try to get around them, for example with extra accounts, and don’t scrape the site, share your account, or try to break into it. We also slow down bursts of requests far above normal study, so the site stays quick for everyone.

We close an account only when it breaks these terms, and we warn you first where we can. A plan on an account closed for that reason is not refunded, and its autopay is stopped. If we close an account by mistake, it is opened again, or the days left on its plan are refunded.

If we ever stop running UPSC Grade, we’ll say so in the app, by email to everyone with a plan, and on this site, at least 30 days before, so you can use your plan or ask us for your data. Autopay stops, and we refund the days left on every paid plan.

UPSC Grade is new. Features and limits can change, and things can break. We’ll do our best to keep it working and your copies safe, but we can’t promise it will always be available, that every mark will be right, or that using it will raise your score. On a day when marking across the whole site runs far past normal, new copies wait in line and are marked after midnight, India time.

In plain words: if something we did costs you money, the most we owe you is what you paid us in the twelve months before it happened. Nothing here takes away a right the law gives you that cannot be given away.

These terms are governed by the laws of India. If a dispute cannot be settled by writing to us, it goes to the courts of Bengaluru, Karnataka.

If something has gone wrong, write to support@upscgrade.com. We acknowledge every complaint within 48 hours and resolve it within one month.

If a change to these terms matters to what you pay or what we keep, we’ll tell you in the app, and by email if you have a plan, before it applies. If it makes your plan worth less, you can cancel it and have the days left on it refunded.

A new price applies only to plans bought after it. A plan that renews keeps the price you bought it at.

Write to us at support@upscgrade.com. Who we are, and where, is on our Contact page.