Vimeo On Demand shuts down on 20 November 2026, and stops taking money on 21 September. SurfLingo is one of the ways out, and it is open to every creator: a director with one film as much as a distributor with three hundred. No subscription to pay, no minimum catalogue.
It is an app for learning a language by watching video: the subtitles are clickable, and any word can be defined with a click. You sell your films there to buy outright or to rent for 24 hours, at the price you set. We take 5% of each sale, and that 5% is not going to move.
Send a requestAnswer within 5 working days · No exclusivity · Withdraw within 30 days
What SurfLingo is
They start your film with the subtitles on. When a word escapes them, they click it and the definition opens without stopping playback. The word then goes into their vocabulary book, where they review it over the following days. Your file itself is untouched: nothing is added to the picture and nothing is recut.
People learning English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese or Norwegian. They pick a title for its subject and for the level of language it asks of them. Release date doesn’t come into it, which is good news if your film is five years old.
A statement every month, title by title: purchases, rentals, minutes watched. And the payout that goes with it.
To be straight about it: the catalogue is only starting. We won’t promise you an audience, there isn’t one yet, and whoever joins now shapes what it covers.
What it costs you
You set the price of every title. On each sale we keep 5% and the rest is yours. The rate is written into the contract and does not creep up later: for good means for good, not "for the first year".
Your choice, title by title, and both at once if you want: one price to keep the film, another to open it for twenty-four hours. Nothing forces you to put the whole catalogue on a single tariff.
You go on distributing your films anywhere else, at the same time. Any title leaves the catalogue on request, within 30 days. Your rights stay whole, we resell nothing, and we train no model on your files.
For reference: Vimeo On Demand kept 10%, and shuts down on 20 November 2026.
How it works
The form below: what you have, the rights you hold, the territories, the subtitle languages. Five minutes.
We check that your titles belong here and we settle the rights questions. It is also where you tell us what you will not agree to.
Purchase, rental, or both, for each title. Plenty of partners start with two or three films, to see what sells.
Licence signed, catalogue live, statement and payout every month.
Partnership request
One film or three hundred, it is the same form. The more precise you are, the fewer emails we trade. We answer everyone, including when the answer is no.
A question before filling anything in? . Rather write to us? support@surflingo.app. Submitting one work on your own, with no company behind you? The creators page is built for that.
FAQ
5% of the sale price, on every purchase and every rental, for the whole life of the contract. On a film at €4, you get €3.80, less the payment provider’s fees — which do not come to us either. No submission fee, no subscription, no advance to earn back.
A purchase gives the viewer permanent access to the title. A rental opens a 24-hour window, counted from first playback rather than from payment. You can offer both on the same programme, at two different prices, and change your mind afterwards.
Yes, under the licence agreement, and only for playback inside the app. Files are stored on our European servers. They are never redistributed and never downloadable by the viewer.
Ideally yes: an original-language .srt is enough to put a film online straight away. With no text there is no word to click, so no reason for anyone to come and watch it here. If you have none, we look case by case at producing them at our expense, and you proofread them before it goes live.
Common video formats (MP4, MKV, MOV) and .srt subtitles. On languages, our dictionaries cover six pairs: English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian. Those go first; the others depend on the volume you bring.
It is being built. SurfLingo Player currently reads files the user already owns, and the paid catalogue is the next brick. We are opening discussions now so it launches with a first set of titles, and whoever joins this wave shapes its scope. We will not promise you an audience: there isn’t one yet.
On that title there is nothing we can do: we only list films for which you hold distribution rights in the relevant territories. Nothing stops you from starting with what is rights-clear and looking at the rest later.