Belong Austria, Terms and Conditions
These terms are the agreement between you and Belong Europe ApS for the use of Belong Austria. By downloading or using the app you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.
Who we are
Belong Austria is made by Belong Europe ApS, a company registered in Copenhagen, Denmark, CVR number 46649044, reachable at hello@belongeurope.com.
What Belong Austria is
Belong Austria is a personal tracker. It helps you see your own distance to Austrian citizenship by organising the information you enter against published rules, and by showing honestly which part of the journey you control and which part you do not. Everything you enter stays on your device.
It comes in two versions, an iPhone app and an Android app. They work the same way and neither has an account. Both let you keep a count for another adult on the same phone.
The app follows the ten year standard route and the two six year routes for strong integration and for spouses of Austrian citizens. It does not model the six year routes for EEA citizens or for people born in Austria. If one of those may apply to you, ask your provincial citizenship office.
Belong Austria is not legal advice
Belong Austria is an information tool, not a lawyer and not an authority. Citizenship law changes and administrative practice varies. This app may contain errors or be out of date. Nothing here creates any right, decides anything or binds any authority.
Verify your own situation with the bodies that actually decide it: your provincial citizenship office, the Amt der Landesregierung, in Vienna the MA 35, which decides citizenship applications, the official information at oesterreich.gv.at and staatsbuergerschaft.gv.at, which publishes the BMI’s Mein Österreich learning material and a practice test for the Staatsbürgerschaftsprüfung. You use Belong Austria at your own risk, and decisions about your file remain yours.
Practice is practice, not the exam
The questions in the Practice tab are written by Belong Europe from the subject areas of Anlage A to the Staatsbürgerschaftsprüfungs-Verordnung. They are not the BMI’s or your province’s questions and they are not endorsed by them. They can contain mistakes. There are 454 of them, across the 17 chapters the regulation lists for the democratic order and for Austria’s history. Each has exactly one correct answer, while a question in the real test can have up to three.
The real sitting is 18 questions in two hours, four options each: six on the democratic order, six on Austria’s history and six on the history of your province. You pass with half the points in each area or with 12 of 18 overall. The app does not write the six provincial questions, because each province sets its own. A full mock here therefore runs 12 questions in 80 minutes, the federal share of the sitting at the real pace, and gives a score, not a verdict. A good score in a mock is not a pass, and passing the Staatsbürgerschaftsprüfung does not replace the separate proof of German.
Today’s five, the schedule that decides when a question comes back and the run of days it keeps are a study aid. The run counts days on which you practised and nothing else: it is not progress toward citizenship and it is not an assessment. No authority sees it or takes it into account. An exam date you add is one you enter yourself, and the countdown to it is only as right as the date you put in: your province sets the real one.
What if is a sandbox
The What if feature runs the same rules on a hypothetical copy of your situation so you can see how a decision would move your finish line. It is an illustration, not a prediction, not a promise and not a commitment by any authority. Nothing you try in it is saved.
Documents you attach
You choose what to attach on the Path tab, and what you attach is your responsibility. We do not read, verify, validate or store your documents, and attaching one does not satisfy a requirement or prove anything to anyone. Only the authority deciding your case can do that. The count of requirements that carry a document is a count of attachments, nothing more.
Belong Austria is not a backup service. Documents live only on the phone you added them on. If you remove one, delete the app or lose or replace the device, it is gone and we cannot recover it, because we never had it. Your own device backup will not save it either: documents are deliberately kept out of that backup, so restoring a new phone does not bring them back. Keep your own copies of anything that matters.
Dates, reminders and alerts
What’s coming lists dates worked out from what you have entered and from rules the authorities have published. A date shown as the earliest possible one is a projection, not a commitment: rules and calendars change and nothing shown here binds any authority.
On the iPhone and on Android you can also enter a trip dated ahead. A planned trip is kept apart and marked as planned. It counts for nothing until it starts: the figures in the trip sheet run the real rules on a copy that includes it, and like What if they are an illustration, not a prediction. Once the trip has happened, check its dates, because the app counts what you entered, not where you were. Time abroad is read against 20 percent of your required period; going over it can restart the residence clock, and the app says so rather than deducting days.
Alerts for those dates are local notifications scheduled on your device and delivered by the operating system at its discretion. They can arrive late or not at all, and your system settings, a Focus mode or a battery saver can hold them back. They stop if you turn notifications off. Do not rely on them as your only reminder. Meeting a deadline, a reply window or a renewal remains yours.
Another person on your phone
On the iPhone and on Android you can add another adult and keep their count next to yours. Enter another person’s details only with their agreement, and only for an adult: Belong Austria is not for tracking children. Everything said on this page about your own count applies to theirs. It is a tracker, not legal advice, and its figures bind no authority. What you enter about them is your responsibility. Practice, documents, reminders and, on the iPhone, widgets stay with the phone’s owner; another person gets a count, not a second copy of the app. A trip logged for both of you is one entry read against each person’s own rules, so check its dates for both.
Stage one and your permit
Stage one on the Path tab reads the requirements for Daueraufenthalt-EU against what you have entered. Where a row can be read from your entries, such as your years of residence, the app fills it in. Every other row is your own check: I meet this records what you tell the app, it verifies nothing and it is not an assessment by any authority. Telling the app you hold Daueraufenthalt-EU verifies nothing either: it removes the permit card and its reminders, and where your citizenship route asks for that status, the citizenship count takes your word for it. Confirming it also switches on your settled residence status on the You tab, because the title needs five settled years, and undoing the confirmation reverses exactly that. The requirements, fees and other routes shown there are a dated reading of the official sources linked on the screen, and they change: check them there before you apply or pay. Your residence authority decides (in Vienna, the MA 35), not the app.
The permit card counts down to the day your residence permit ends, a date you type in yourself, and works out from it, by the published rules, when you can apply to renew and what applying late can mean. Those dates are a projection from your own entry, not advice and not a decision: the permit you hold and the authority that issued it are what count. Its reminders are local notifications like the others on this page and can arrive late or not at all. Applying in time remains yours.
After you apply
Once you tell the app you have applied, the Dashboard follows the wait from the filing date you entered. The day count is arithmetic on that date, and the updates and reply windows it shows are the ones you logged, not anything received from an authority.
Austrian law gives the office six months to decide (AVG section 73), so the app shows that date, counted from the filing date you entered, and says what you can do if it passes without a decision, a Säumnisbeschwerde. The law counts from the day your application reached the office, which may not be the day you entered, and the app cannot know whether a delay was the office’s fault. Beyond that deadline the app gives no estimate of when you will hear, because none is published it could stand behind. A reply window is the date you read from the letter and typed in; meeting it remains yours. The letters you receive from the office are the record of your case. The app is not.
Exam sittings and guides
The Practice tab lists no sittings, because there is no national calendar: once you have applied, your province invites you to a sitting at least eight weeks ahead. The app does not book a sitting and does not speak to any office. The five guides in the Guides segment are a dated reading of the authorities’ own pages, and the day each was last checked is printed on it. Authorities change dates, fees and rules, and an app update is the only way a change reaches your phone. Check with your provincial citizenship office before you travel or pay.
Widgets
On the iPhone, a home screen or Lock Screen widget shows what the app held when the widget last refreshed. The system decides when that is, so a widget can lag behind the app by hours, and longer if your phone is short of power or you have not opened the app in a while. Where a widget and the app disagree, the app is right. A widget is a glance, not a record, and nothing it shows binds any authority. The Android app has no widgets.
News comes from The Local
The News segment shows stories from The Local Austria, taken from their public feeds for immigration and Austrian citizenship. The stories are The Local Austria’s own reporting, not ours. We do not write or verify them, and we do not control what is published or how long it stays available; some articles may need a subscription with them. Nothing in that feed is legal advice, and a story is not a change in the rules until the authority says it is. The feed can be empty, late or unavailable, and the app says so rather than filling the gap.
Passport facts
The Passport tab shows facts about the Austrian passport (validity, fee, where to apply and dual citizenship), taken from the issuing authority’s own published pages on the date shown in the app. Fees and rules change, and nothing on that tab binds any authority: check with the issuing authority before you book or pay. The cover shown is an illustration and the holder name and any photo are ones you added yourself. None of it is a travel document or proof of anything. The notes on the passport’s design are descriptive only, and the line under the cover saying when you could apply restates the app’s own estimate. It is not a decision date and not advice.
Subscriptions
Belong Austria Pro costs 34,99 € a year. New subscribers get a 7 day free trial. The subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Where the law permits, any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription.
On the iPhone, payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase; manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings. On Android, it is charged through Google Play; manage or cancel it in your Google Play subscriptions. We cannot do it for you in either store.
Each store handles its own sale, billing and refunds under its own terms: purchases made on the iPhone are refunded by Apple under Apple’s policy, and purchases made on Android by Google under Google Play’s policy. Because neither app has an account, a subscription bought in one store does not unlock the other.
No warranty
Belong Austria is provided as is and as available. We do not warrant that it is accurate, complete, uninterrupted, error-free or fit for any particular purpose, and we do not warrant that any date it shows will match the decision you eventually receive.
Limitation of liability
To the extent permitted by law, Belong Europe ApS is not liable for any loss or harm arising from your use of Belong Austria or your reliance on the information in it, including any missed deadline, refused application or delayed decision. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
Acceptable use
Use Belong Austria personally and lawfully. Do not copy, resell, redistribute or sublicense it, and do not reverse engineer it. Do not use it to mislead anyone about their legal position or to provide immigration advice as a service.
Intellectual property
The app, its text, its rule summaries, its practice questions and its design belong to Belong Europe ApS. References to official sources are for information; the names and marks of the BMI, the provincial authorities and The Local belong to their respective owners, and none of them endorses Belong Austria.
Changes
We may update these terms. The current version always lives on this page with its effective date, and material changes are announced in the app.
Governing law
These terms are governed by Danish law. If you are a consumer, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of the country where you live, and nothing here removes them.
Contact
Questions about these terms: hello@belongeurope.com.