Privacy, in plain English

What we collect

• Your account. Your email address. If you sign in with Google we also get your name and profile photo. If you sign up with email you give us your name, your email and a password, and optionally a phone number. We don’t store your password ourselves; our sign-in provider keeps it in hashed form.
• Your kitchen. The receipts you scan (we keep the photo, and the store, date, items, prices and totals read from it), what’s in your pantry and shopping list, the recipes you save, cook or report, and your cooking history.
• Your preferences. What you tell us when you set up: goals, dietary needs, skill level, cooking time and household size.
• Your household. If you create or join one, that you’re a member and the name shown to the other members.
• Product usage events. Simple records of what you do in the app, such as scanning a receipt, adding items, opening, saving or cooking a recipe, finishing set-up and signing up (including how you found us, if the link you used carried campaign tags such as utm_source or a referrer’s handle). Each event is tied to your account and a time. These events don’t include your IP address, browser details, the page you came from, or your name or email. We use them to see what’s working. We don’t use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.
• Usage limits. We count how often you use the features that cost us money (AI and recipe search) each day so nobody can run up our bills. We also keep a log of IP addresses and times for the same purpose; it isn’t linked to your account.

How we use it

To run Cookbill: build your pantry from receipts, match and write recipes, estimate expiry dates, show nutrition and food-waste summaries, send expiry alerts if you turn them on, keep the service secure and within its usage limits, and see which features people use. We don’t sell your personal data.

Who else handles your data

• Supabase runs our database, sign-in (including the confirmation and password-reset emails) and file storage. Your receipt photos sit in a private storage area, in a folder tied to your account.
• Vercel hosts the app. Like any host, it processes requests, including IP addresses, and may keep logs.
• Sentry monitors errors on our servers and website. The iPhone app has no error tracking of its own, but if one of its requests fails on our server, that server error is reported too. When something breaks, technical details such as the error message and the page address are sent to it. We’ve set it not to collect cookies or request headers, and we don’t use session replay.
• Anthropic (Claude) reads receipt photos and text, identifies items from photos, understands spoken item lists, tidies up food names, and writes and ranks recipes. We send it the photo or the relevant text, such as item names, quantities, dietary needs and anything you type to Chef AI. We don’t include your name or email. In the iPhone app, a receipt photo is sent to Anthropic only after you agree to it in the app.
• Spoonacular provides recipe search and details. Our servers send it search terms such as ingredient names, cuisine, dietary filters (for example vegan or gluten-free) and a time limit. We don’t send your name, email or account ID.
• USDA FoodData Central provides public nutrition data. We look up generic food names (like “chicken breast”); nothing about you goes with them.
• Your browser’s push service (run by Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on your browser) delivers expiry alerts if you turn them on. It receives your device’s push address and the message, which is encrypted.
• Google tells us your name, email and photo if you sign in with Google. If you use voice input, your browser’s built-in speech recognition handles the audio (on Chrome that’s Google); we only receive the text.

Household sharing

If you join a household, its members can see your pantry items (names, quantities, expiry dates) and mark them as used. Leaving a household ends that sharing right away; your items stay yours. Only share your invite code with people you trust: anyone with the code can join and see the shared pantry.

The shared food library

To make scans and matches better for everyone, Cookbill keeps a shared food dictionary (what a receipt abbreviation like “BNNS ORG” means) and a shared recipe library. If you save or cook a recipe Chef AI invents for you, it may be saved to that library, without your name or any account details. These entries aren’t linked to your account, so they stay when you delete it.

Cookies and local storage

On the website we use a cookie to keep you signed in; the website doesn’t work without it. If you arrive through a link with campaign tags (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign or ref), we set a first-party cookie called kp_attr for 7 days to remember them until you sign up, and delete it when you do. Your browser also keeps a small note when you dismiss the notifications prompt. We don’t use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your data for as long as you have an account.

You can delete your account any time, in the iPhone app or on the website. On the website it’s under Settings → Delete account. For your safety we may ask you to sign in again first. Deleting takes effect immediately and can’t be undone. It permanently removes your profile and sign-in, your receipts and receipt photos, your pantry, shopping list and saved recipes, your cooking history, preferences and usage records, your notification settings and your household membership. Receipt photos are deleted when you delete your account; there is no way to delete a single photo before that.

If you own a household that other people are still in, dissolve it first (on the Household page) so nobody loses access without a say. Items you added to a shared pantry are deleted with your account; other members keep their own items.

What stays: the shared dictionary and library entries above, and the IP-based rate-limit counters (an address and a time, with no link to your account), which we keep to prevent abuse. Our providers may also keep routine backups or logs for a limited time under their own schedules.

Contact

Questions or requests about your data: anujursal007@gmail.com. If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top.