Read it, build on it, credit it.

These terms cover scenef.com, the open JSON APIs, the calendar feeds, the MCP server at scenef.com/mcp, and the SceneF GPT. There is no account to open and nothing to pay, so using any of them is the whole of your agreement to what follows.

What you may do

Read the listings, query the APIs, connect the MCP server, subscribe to the calendar feeds, and build things on top of them — commercially or not. No key, no quota negotiation, no permission to ask for. If you republish showtimes, credit SceneF and link back to the SceneF page the showtime came from (answers from /ask carry it as scenef_url). The attribution line “Showtimes via SceneF.com” rides in the listings API, /ask and the calendar feeds, and closes every showtime answer from the MCP server, for exactly this purpose.

Ticket links are always scenef.com/go/{screeningId}, with a region parameter outside San Francisco. Publish those rather than resolving them to a vendor URL: the door redirects to whichever box office is correct at the moment it is clicked, and a resolved link goes stale the first time a theatre changes ticketing systems.

What you may not do

Don’t present the listings as your own reporting, don’t strip the attribution, and don’t resell the feed as a data product. Don’t hammer the APIs hard enough to degrade them for anyone else — they are cached and ETagged, and honouring those is the whole of good citizenship here. Don’t use any surface of this site to impersonate a theatre, to sell tickets you do not sell, or to represent that a screening exists when the board does not list it.

What the listings claim about themselves

Every screening carries a confidence level, a source tier and a last-verified time, and the running record of our own verification checks — failures included — is public at /accuracy, and as JSON at /api/accuracy. Many showtimes, including most chain theaters’ and some independents’, come from a third-party showtimes data service rather than from the theater itself; they are labelled licensed-feed, which is the weakest claim on the site.

Programmes change, prints break, and a theatre can cancel a show after we last read its calendar. SceneF is a guide to what the theatres are publishing, not a ticket seller and not a party to your purchase — the box office you are sent to is. Check the door before you drive across town, and if you find a discrepancy we want it: send the screening id and what you saw to info@scenef.com.

Whose work is whose

Showtimes are facts and we make no ownership claim over them. Film details, posters and trailers come mostly from TMDB. Where TMDB has none, a poster can come from the theater’s own listing or from OMDb, and a trailer from a YouTube search; ratings come from TMDB and OMDb. All of it belongs to its rights holders and each source’s own terms apply to its material; this product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Theatre names, marks and programme copy belong to the theatres. The site’s own writing, design and code are ours.

Availability

Everything here is offered as it stands, without a service commitment. Endpoints may move; when a contract changes, it changes at /openapi.json and /llms.txt first, which is where a machine caller should be reading it from.

If a listing is wrong

Tell us and we will check it against the theater’s own listing and correct it. The record at /accuracy publishes the automated checks’ misses beside their passes. Those are the remedies this site actually offers, and they are the ones worth having.

What it cannot offer is a warranty. Showtimes change after we read them, theaters cancel, and a feed can go quiet between checks — so SceneF is provided as it stands, and to the fullest extent the law allows we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses arising from using it, including a trip made for a screening that did not happen. The verification record is public, passes and failures alike, so anyone deciding how much weight to put on a listing can see how well that house is known before they decide.

Which law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the state and federal courts in San Francisco are where any dispute about them belongs. SceneF is operated from San Francisco; that is the same answer the footer gives.

Changes

If any of this changes, this page changes first and the practice follows. Questions to info@scenef.com, alongside the privacy policy.

Last reviewed October 2026 · SceneF, San Francisco