Scan Your Contract for Risks, Free
Upload a contract or paste the text. In about a minute you get a clause-by-clause report: what is risky, why it matters, and what to push back on, all in plain English.
Quick answer: A contract risk scanner reads every clause of an agreement and returns a clause-by-clause risk report: each flagged clause is rated critical, high, medium, or low, explained in plain English, and paired with suggested alternative language, a negotiation strategy, and a fallback position. It also checks the agreement for protections it should contain but does not, such as a limitation of liability or force majeure clause, and rolls everything into an overall risk score from 0 to 100. Upload a PDF or DOCX up to 5 MB or paste up to 100,000 characters, optionally select the governing US state, and most scans finish in well under a minute, free with no account required.
Drag and drop your contract here, or browse files
PDF or DOCX, up to 5 MB
Found red flags? Have an attorney fix them.
The scanner tells you where the risk is. A licensed attorney rewrites the clauses so it is gone: a full review and redline of your contract at a flat fee, delivered in about two days, with unlimited revisions included.
Clause-by-clause analysis
Every clause is scored from critical to low risk, with a plain-English explanation of what it means for you.
Negotiation pointers
Each flag comes with what to ask for instead, so you walk into the negotiation knowing your position.
Confidential by default
Encrypted in transit, used only for your report, never shared. Your contract stays yours.
What a Clause-by-Clause Risk Review Looks For
Every flagged clause lands in one of four tiers. Critical means sign-and-regret: terms that shift catastrophic liability onto you or take something you cannot get back. High means economically one-sided but negotiable with the right ask. Medium and low mark terms that drift from market standard or are simply worth knowing before you sign. These are the patterns the scan hunts for.
One-sided indemnification
Language making you cover the other party’s losses, sometimes even losses caused by their own negligence. The balanced version is mutual and limited to each side’s breach, negligence, or willful misconduct.
Uncapped liability
A missing limitation-of-liability clause, or a cap gutted by carve-outs so broad they swallow it. Market practice ties the cap to fees actually paid, with narrow exceptions for things like confidentiality breaches.
Automatic renewal
Evergreen terms that renew for another full year unless you cancel inside a short window. Several states require conspicuous disclosure of auto-renewal terms, and courts read sloppy ones against the drafter.
Termination asymmetry
They can exit for convenience while you are locked in for the full term, or you can be terminated instantly with no cure period. Exit rights should roughly mirror each other.
IP assignment overreach
Clauses assigning your pre-existing IP or all work product outright when a limited license would serve the business purpose. A frequent trap for contractors, agencies, and developers.
Overbroad restrictive covenants
Non-compete and non-solicit terms whose duration, geography, or scope go past what your state will enforce. Some states void them entirely; others narrow them and enforce what remains.
Home-turf governing law and forum
Disputes decided under the other side’s state law, in their county’s courthouse. It quietly raises your cost to enforce the deal or defend a claim.
Payment-term traps
Pay-if-paid conditions, net-90 timelines, and unilateral setoff rights that let the other side delay, hold, or reduce what they owe you.
Unilateral amendment rights
A clause letting the counterparty change the agreement by posting new terms or sending notice, with no signature or consent from you.
Hidden personal guarantees
Guarantee language buried in commercial boilerplate that puts your personal assets behind a business obligation you thought the company was taking on.
Missing protections
Provisions the contract should contain but does not: limitation of liability, force majeure, notice, and assignment restrictions. Absence gets flagged as a risk, not skipped.
Compound clause risk
Clauses that look tolerable alone but combine badly, like broad indemnity plus no liability cap plus a wide definition of losses. The scan reads them together and elevates the flags.
How to Read the Contract Risk Score
Every report opens with an overall risk score from 0 to 100, summarizing how many flags the scan raised and how severe they are. A score of 0 to 30 reads as low risk, 31 to 60 as moderate risk, 61 to 80 as high risk, and 81 to 100 as critical risk. Next to the score, the report identifies the type of contract it read, gives a short set of general observations about the agreement as a whole, and counts the flags at each severity level, so you can see at a glance whether you are looking at two critical problems or a dozen small ones.
Treat the score as a triage signal, not a verdict. A moderate score on a high-stakes agreement deserves more attention than a high score on a trivial one, and the number moves with the contract, not with your situation. The filter tabs under the summary let you cut the clause list down to a single severity level, which is the fastest way to isolate the critical and high flags that belong on your negotiation agenda.
What Every Flag in the Report Gives You
Each flagged clause expands into a complete working file for that one term. You see the original clause text quoted from your document with its location and risk category, a plain-English explanation of what the clause means for you, and the specific legal concern that earned the flag its severity level.
Then the flag turns practical: suggested alternative language you can copy with one click into your redline or reply, a negotiation strategy explaining how to ask for the balanced version, and a fallback position to hold in reserve if the other side refuses the first ask. That structure means the report is not just a list of problems; it is the raw material for the counteroffer.
What to Do With Your Risk Report
Triage by severity
Filter the report to critical and high flags first. Those are your negotiation agenda; medium and low flags are context you carry into the conversation, not battles you need to pick.
Ask for the mutual version
Most one-sided clauses have a balanced twin: mutual indemnification, mutual termination rights, a two-way confidentiality obligation. Copy the suggested alternative language from each flag straight into your redline or reply, and keep the fallback position in reserve if they push back.
Escalate what you cannot fix yourself
If critical flags survive negotiation, or the stakes justify it, hand the marked-up contract to a licensed attorney. The scanner tells you where the risk is; the attorney rewrites the clauses so it is gone.
The scanner reads any US commercial agreement, and it earns its keep fastest on vendor and master service agreements, SaaS subscription terms, commercial leases, franchise agreements, and independent contractor agreements. It is equally at home on nondisclosure agreements, non-compete agreements, and software EULAs. When a contract clears the scan but the deal is large enough that you want a professional set of eyes anyway, flat-fee attorney contract review and redlining picks up where the report leaves off, and document review services cover higher-volume portfolios.
What a Risk Report Cannot Tell You
The report is information, not legal advice, and it only reads what is inside the four corners of the document. It cannot verify facts the contract merely asserts: whether the counterparty actually carries the insurance it promises, whether the price is fair for your market, or what was said in the emails that led to the draft. It flags a clause as one-sided by comparing it to market practice, not by knowing your deal, and a term that is legally lopsided can still be worth accepting when the business context justifies it.
Enforceability calls are pattern-level, too. Selecting the governing state sharpens the analysis, for example on non-compete or liquidated damages clauses, but only a licensed attorney reviewing your specific contract and facts can give you an opinion on how a clause will fare in your courts. And the scanner does not negotiate for you: it hands you the alternative language and the strategy, and the pushback is still yours to deliver.
When to Escalate to Attorney Review
Escalate when critical flags survive negotiation, when the same counterparty keeps returning one-sided paper, or when the stakes of the deal justify a professional set of eyes even on a clean scan. The scanner tells you where the risk is; a licensed attorney rewrites the clauses so it is gone, with a full review and redline of your contract at a flat fee, delivered in about two days, with unlimited revisions included.
Flat-fee attorney contract review and redlining picks up exactly where the report leaves off: bring the scan results to the review and the attorney starts from your marked-up agenda instead of a blank page.
Written and legally reviewed by our editorial team
Draft the Balanced Version Yourself
When the scan convinces you the other side's draft is not worth saving, start from a balanced template instead and keep the negotiating leverage.
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Build a mutual nondisclosure agreement with two-way confidentiality obligations instead of signing their one-way version.
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Draft an MSA with mirrored termination rights, a real limitation of liability, and payment terms that are not a trap.
LLC Operating Agreement Generator
Put the governance document behind your business on paper before you sign commercial contracts in its name.
Contract Review Services
Flat-fee attorney review and redlining for the agreements where the stakes justify professional eyes.
Contract Scanner Questions
Is the contract risk scanner really free?
Yes. Upload a PDF or DOCX, or paste contract text, and you get the full clause-by-clause risk report at no cost, with no account required. Fair-use limits apply to keep the tool fast for everyone.
What does the scanner check for?
It reads every clause and flags risk on four levels, from critical to low: one-sided indemnification, unlimited liability, automatic renewals, non-compete overreach, missing termination rights, unclear payment terms, and dozens of other patterns, then explains each flag in plain English.
Is my contract kept confidential?
Yes. Documents are encrypted in transit, are used only to produce your report, and are not shared. For ongoing storage, monitoring, and portfolio-wide analysis, create a free account.
What should I do about the issues it finds?
The report is information, not legal advice. If the scanner surfaces critical or high-risk clauses, a licensed attorney can review and redline the contract for a flat fee, with unlimited revisions and delivery in about two days.
What do the four risk levels mean?
Critical marks sign-and-regret terms a careful attorney would refuse without changes, such as uncapped liability or assignment of your pre-existing IP. High marks clauses that are economically one-sided but negotiable, like indemnity obligations far beyond the contract value. Medium marks terms that deviate from market standard, and low marks common provisions still worth understanding before you sign.
Which types of contracts benefit most from a risk scan?
Any agreement where the other side wrote the first draft: vendor contracts and master service agreements, SaaS subscription terms, commercial leases, independent contractor agreements, franchise agreements, NDAs, and employment offers with restrictive covenants. Standardized paperwork from a larger counterparty tends to carry the most one-sided language, because nobody on your side has pushed back on it yet.
What formats and contract lengths does the scanner accept?
You can upload a PDF or DOCX file up to 5 MB, or paste up to 100,000 characters of contract text. You can also select the governing US state, which sharpens the analysis, for example on whether a non-compete or liquidated damages clause is likely enforceable where you are. Most scans finish in well under a minute.
Does it catch clauses that are missing, not just clauses that are bad?
Yes. The scan checks the agreement against protections every contract should contain, such as a limitation of liability, force majeure, notice, and assignment provisions, and flags each absent one as a missing-provision risk. It also reads clauses together to catch compound risk, where terms that look tolerable on their own combine into outsized exposure.
Can I tell the scanner which state’s law governs my contract?
Yes. An optional governing-jurisdiction selector covers every US state. Leave it on auto-detect and the scan works from the contract’s own governing law clause; pick the state and the analysis sharpens, for example on whether a non-compete or liquidated damages clause is likely enforceable where you are.
Is the risk score a legal opinion?
No. The 0 to 100 score is an informational summary of how many flags the scan raised and how severe they are, so you can compare drafts and triage your negotiation. It is not legal advice, and only a licensed attorney reviewing your specific contract and situation can give you an opinion on it.
How long does a scan take?
Most contracts finish in 15 to 30 seconds, and nearly all in well under a minute. Length is the main driver: a very long agreement takes longer, and the scan times out at 90 seconds, so if that happens, try again or scan the contract in shorter sections.
Does the scanner produce a redline of my contract?
No. For each flag it gives you suggested alternative language and a fallback position, both copyable with one click, which you can paste into your own redline or reply. If you want an attorney-prepared redline of the full document, flat-fee contract review and redlining delivers one in about two days with unlimited revisions.