Terms of service

By creating a Hoofine account or transacting through the Hoofine platform (the "Service"), you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Hoofine is operated by Growvit GmbH, a limited liability company incorporated in Germany ("Growvit", "Hoofine", "we", "our"). Full company details are listed in our Imprint. We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify registered users by email at least 14 days before material changes take effect.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering a binding contract in your jurisdiction. Business accounts must be in good legal standing.

You may not use the Service if you are subject to sanctions or trade restrictions under applicable law, or if you have been previously banned from Hoofine.

Sellers are solely responsible for the accuracy of every listing: age, breed, height, soundness, training, competition record, registration status and provenance.

Sellers warrant that they have legal title to the horse and authority to transfer it, free of undisclosed liens. Misrepresentation — intentional or negligent — may result in listing removal, account suspension, and dispute findings against the seller.

Buyer funds for horses and breeding contracts transacted on Hoofine are held pending release through our payments partner, Stripe, whose regulated payment infrastructure holds the funds (the "Escrow"). Hoofine facilitates this hold but is not itself a bank, a licensed escrow agent, or a money-transmission business; the regulated party is Stripe. Funds are not the seller's property until released under the rules described on our Escrow service page.

Platform fees on sale and breeding escrows are split between the parties. The buyer (for breeding contracts, the mare owner) pays a platform fee of 3% of the agreed price, added on top of that price and shown before the escrow is funded. The seller (for breeding contracts, the stallion owner) pays a platform fee of 4.8% of the agreed price plus a fixed EUR 69.99 (reduced to EUR 24.99 where the agreed price is under EUR 2,000), deducted from the payout at release. The fees that apply to a transaction are those in force when the escrow agreement is concluded; later fee changes do not affect escrows already open.

Auctions: the user who creates an auction pays a non-refundable listing fee of EUR 159.99 at auction creation, and the auction does not go live until this fee is paid. On settlement, the winning bidder pays a buyer's premium of 4.8% of the hammer price, added on top of the hammer price — every bid is placed on the basis that the total purchase price equals the hammer price plus this premium, and the premium is disclosed on the bid screen before bidding — and a commission of 9.5% of the hammer price is deducted from the initiator's payout.

Platform fees are quoted in euro. Prices shown to consumers are total prices and include VAT at the rate of the consumer's country of residence; your invoice itemises the tax separately. Where you use the Service as a business, prices may be shown net of VAT and are marked as such. Card processing is provided by Stripe and subject to Stripe's terms.

The Verified badge indicates that, at the time of verification, the horse's microchip, registry record and a vet-sighted photo were matched. Verification is not a warranty of future soundness, suitability or market value.

Verified badges (member, business and horse) are subscription products: a badge displays while the underlying subscription is active. Cancelling a subscription stops further renewals, and the badge lapses at the end of the period already paid for. Business (KYB) and horse (KYH) verification additionally require a one-time application fee, charged before document review and non-refundable once review begins — see the Refund policy for the conditions under which application fees are returned.

Buyers remain responsible for their own pre-purchase examination.

Hoofine offers a voluntary internal dispute-resolution process, described on our Dispute resolution page. Taking part is optional for both sides, and you remain free to go to the ordinary courts at any stage. An outcome of the internal process binds the parties only if they expressly accept it as a settlement once it concludes.

The 48-hour window that opens when delivery is confirmed exists so that visible transport or handover damage can be reported in time to hold the release of escrowed funds. It is not a cut-off period for defect claims: your statutory warranty rights against the seller are unaffected even if you do not report within it.

You may not: (a) list a horse you do not own or are not authorised to sell; (b) request or accept payment outside the Service; (c) use stolen images, falsified pedigrees or forged registry papers; (d) harass, threaten or impersonate another user; or (e) use the Service in violation of any applicable law, including animal welfare statutes.

Hoofine, the Hoofine logo, and associated marks are the property of Growvit GmbH. User-contributed content (listings, photos, descriptions) remains owned by the user, who grants Hoofine a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to host, display and distribute it for the purpose of operating the Service.

Hoofine is a marketplace and payment-facilitation provider. We are not a party to the underlying horse sale contract between buyer and seller.

We are liable without limitation for damage arising from injury to life, body or health caused by an intentional or negligent breach of duty by us, our legal representatives or our agents, and for any other damage caused by an intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty.

Where we breach a material contractual obligation through slight negligence — an obligation whose fulfilment makes proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may reasonably rely — our liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical of this type of contract. Liability for slightly negligent breaches of other obligations is excluded.

The limitations above do not apply to claims under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz), where we have assumed a guarantee, or where a defect has been fraudulently concealed.

Listings and the performance of contracts concluded between users are the sole responsibility of the users concerned.

Hoofine is operated globally by Growvit GmbH from Germany. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

Consumer rights: if you use the Service as a consumer (i.e., not in the course of a trade, business or profession), you keep the protection of any mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country in which you have your habitual residence — wherever in the world that is. Nothing in these Terms is intended to override those rights, and any provision that would do so is to be read narrowly to comply with local law.

Place of jurisdiction for users acting as merchants (Kaufleute) is the registered seat of Growvit GmbH. Consumers may sue Growvit GmbH at the registered seat or at their own place of residence, and Growvit GmbH may sue consumers only at the consumer's place of residence, in each case to the extent required by applicable law.

Consumer dispute resolution (EU users): the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform was discontinued on 20 July 2025. The Commission publishes an overview of out-of-court dispute resolution bodies at consumer-redress.ec.europa.eu. Growvit GmbH is not obligated and does not currently participate in proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (Verbraucherschlichtungsstelle) under the German VSBG.

Because Hoofine accounts carry ongoing escrow obligations and active listings that affect other users, accounts cannot be self-deleted from within the Service. There is no "delete my account" button, and we do not offer self-service account removal.

If you wish to close your account, contact [email protected]. We will review the request and close the account once all active escrows, payouts, listings and disputes associated with it have been resolved. Closure may be refused or deferred while a transaction or investigation is open, or where retention is required by law (for example, tax, anti-money-laundering or fraud-prevention obligations).

Your right to erasure of personal data under Art. 17 GDPR is entirely unaffected by the paragraphs above and can be exercised at any time via [email protected]. After closure we retain personal data only for as long as statutory obligations require, and we may keep a minimal record to prevent banned users from re-registering; everything else is deleted or anonymised.

Hoofine uses AI-assisted systems to answer questions and to help handle incoming enquiries. The Hoofine assistant runs in the chat window on this site and, where you choose to reach us that way, over email and messenger services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram. Where you are interacting with an AI system rather than with a person, this is disclosed to you at the start of the conversation. The assistant is operated for us by a third-party provider, which processes the messages you send it on our behalf.

The assistant is never the only way to reach us. You can contact a person directly at any time using the addresses in section 13, and nothing you need to do on Hoofine requires you to use the assistant.

AI systems can be wrong. What the assistant tells you about a horse, a price, our fees or a legal question is for orientation only; it does not replace the listing itself, these Terms, or professional veterinary or legal advice. Where the assistant and these Terms disagree, these Terms govern.

If you are signed in and have accepted the cookie categories that load the chat, the assistant can carry out actions in your account when you ask it to — for example creating or editing a horse profile, publishing, repricing or pausing a listing, sending a message, making or responding to an offer, or requesting or accepting a breeding booking. Actions it takes at your request are taken in your name and count as your own.

The assistant cannot move money. Funding or releasing escrow, payouts, placing bids in an auction, buying subscriptions or other paid products, the outcome of a dispute, and verification approvals are outside what it is able to do, and always require you — or, where the decision is ours, a member of our staff — to act in the interface directly. We do not take decisions producing legal effects concerning you, or similarly significantly affecting you, based solely on automated processing.

Incoming conversations may be classified automatically (for example as a buying enquiry, a seller enquiry or a support request) so that they reach the right place. Where you contact us through a third-party messenger, that provider's own terms and privacy notice apply in addition to ours.

Questions about these Terms: [email protected]. Trust & safety reports: [email protected]. Account closure and general support: [email protected].