Privacy Policy

Summary

Smart Grocer helps households plan grocery trips on the website, in the iPhone app, and in the Android app. Smart Grocer stores the lists you choose to add, the items read from receipts, and a household profile of what you buy so Smart Grocer can suggest what you may need next. Smart Grocer does not sell your data and does not share it with data brokers. It does not currently show ads or use receipt or purchase history for advertising. If that changes, this policy will be updated first, and you will be asked before any advertising cookies are used.

Data Smart Grocer collects

• Account details from email sign-up or Google / Apple: name and email address, and a photo if that provider shares one. Sign in with Apple may share a private relay address (Hide My Email) instead of your personal inbox — Smart Grocer treats that the same as any other email.
• Uploads you send: receipt photos and list photos are sent to extract line items, then discarded. On iPhone and Android the camera and photo library are used only when you choose Take a photo or Upload an image. Typed lists and the date and time are stored.
• Speak: the microphone is used only while you tap or hold Speak. Your phone’s or browser’s own speech service turns what you say into text; Smart Grocer receives only that text, never the audio.
• Shopping history: name, category, brand when printed, quantity, unit, vendor, and price.
• Your current shopping list, trip history, stores, and household members.
• Household settings: shopping days, reminder on/off and the time of day to remind you, and your monthly budget if you set one.
• Abuse limits: to cap how often scans, invites, support notes and similar actions can be sent per hour, Smart Grocer stores a one-way hash of your IP address with a counter and the time of the last request. The plain IP address is not stored.
• Subscription status (Free Trial or paid) and the billing records needed to keep a subscription active. On the website that is Stripe. In the iPhone app that is Apple In-App Purchase. In the Android app that is Google Play Billing.

You can type a shopping list before creating an account. That list stays on this device until you sign in. Any photo upload (a receipt, a list or ingredients) requires an account so Smart Grocer can read the image and save it to your household.

Smart Grocer does not collect contacts or GPS. Optional ZIP and city on a household, and the store street printed on a receipt, are approximate location used to attach a ticket to a real store — Smart Grocer never requests the device’s precise location. Smart Grocer does not use notifications for advertising, and does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

How Smart Grocer uses it

Smart Grocer uses your data to read receipts, keep your list, learn what you buy, suggest items for the next shop, and show Insights (spend and frequent items). Confirmed receipt line prices also update a shared store-place index (median price, how many tickets, and how recent) so Smart Grocer can later estimate what a shopping list costs at nearby stores. That index has no household or account identifier. Smart Grocer shows a reason when an item is recommended.

Notifications are off until you turn them on. On the website, turning them on stores a push subscription for this browser (its push endpoint and keys) with your time zone, your household and your notification choices, so Smart Grocer can send shopping-day reminders, free-trial reminders and the other notifications you pick. They are delivered through your browser's push service (run by Apple, Google or Mozilla, depending on the browser). In the iPhone and Android apps, shopping reminders are scheduled on the device itself. Turn notifications off in Settings › List & notifications (with all of them off, this browser's push subscription is removed) or in your browser or phone settings. Smart Grocer does not send grocery reminders by email.

Smart Grocer also analyses how the service is used, such as which features households use and how often, to fix problems and decide what to improve. This uses the data already stored on its own servers (hosted by Base44). It uses no cookies, no third-party analytics or advertising tools, and is never used for advertising or shared with data brokers.

Smart Grocer counts which onboarding steps are reached on a device, without any personal information, to make the first minutes clearer.

Cookies and local storage

On the website Smart Grocer uses essential storage on this device: a sign-in token, your guest list before you create an account, reminder choices, and similar settings needed to run the app. The iPhone and Android apps store the same essentials on the device and do not use advertising cookies. Smart Grocer does not currently use advertising or product-analytics cookies anywhere. See the Cookie Policy.

Third-party processors

• Hosting, database, authentication and email (Base44) — stores accounts, lists, household data, and runs the app. Base44 sends account mail (verification and password reset), household invite emails to the address a member enters, and support notes you send from the app.
• Support inbox (Google Gmail) — support notes and emails to the support address arrive in a Gmail inbox, with your account email and household ID, so Smart Grocer can reply.
• Receipt reading (Google Gemini API) — receives the image you scan so Smart Grocer can extract line items. Smart Grocer does not store receipt photos; Google's own API terms govern how Google processes the image.
• Speech to text (Apple or Google) — when you use Speak, your browser's or phone's own speech service turns what you say into text. Smart Grocer receives only the text.
• Sign-in providers (Google and Apple) — to create and sign in to your account when you choose those buttons.
• Payment processor (Stripe) — website subscriptions only.
• Crash and error reports (Sentry) — when the app hits an error, it sends a technical report (the error, the screen it happened on, device and app version) so it can be fixed. Reports carry no name, email, list items or receipt contents, and are not used for analytics or advertising.
• Apple — Sign in with Apple, and In-App Purchase when you subscribe from the iPhone app. Apple processes that payment; Smart Grocer receives subscription status so it can unlock the subscription.
• Google Play — Google Play Billing when you subscribe from the Android app. Google processes that payment; Smart Grocer receives subscription status so it can unlock the subscription.

Each processor works under a contract and may only process data on Smart Grocer's instructions.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Receipt photos are sent to Google's Gemini API to read them; Smart Grocer does not store them. Household members only see this household. Admin tools (cost and algorithm monitoring) are limited to the app owner and admins they appoint.

Retention and deletion

Smart Grocer keeps receipt history while your account is active because that history is what makes recommendations useful. In Settings you can export your household's purchases as CSV, or delete your account. You can also request deletion without signing in at smart-grocer.com/account-deletion. Deletion removes the account, your personal grocery data, and — if you are the household owner — the household, shopping history, lists, members, and learning profile, unless you first hand the household to another member, when it carries on with them. Members who delete their account leave the household and remove their own data. Deletion is usually immediate, and within 30 days. Your subscription won't be refunded automatically. If you subscribed via the App Store or Google Play, cancel there first. A website (Stripe) subscription is cancelled when the household owner deletes the household; if the owner hands it over, it stops renewing and runs to the end of the paid period. Billing records are kept only as long as tax law requires. So that the free trial stays one per person, Smart Grocer keeps a one-way hash of your email address and the day your trial began, even after deletion. The hash cannot be turned back into your address.

After deletion Smart Grocer also keeps, only as long as needed for security, to answer your requests and to meet legal obligations: a security log of account actions (your email, what was done and when), and messages you sent to support. If you were a member, receipts you scanned stay in your household's shopping history, which belongs to the household, but are no longer used to learn what the household buys. If you handed your household over, your receipts, list and what it has learned stay with the household and its new owner.

Your rights

• Access — view lists, uploads, Insights, and your profile in the app.
• Correction — edit any parsed item; your edits teach the next list.
• Deletion — delete your account from Settings, or request it at /account-deletion. Every signed-in person can do this.
• Portability — export your household's purchase history as CSV: every item bought, with no receipt images.

You must be 13 or older (16 where local law requires it) to create an account. Smart Grocer does not knowingly process data of anyone under 13.

California residents (CCPA): Smart Grocer does not sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and has no ads or ad trackers. You can request access to or deletion of your personal information by emailing the support address below.

Households

Members join by email invite or share link. Once they accept, they share this household's shopping list, receipts and Insights, and see member names and member emails, and who added each list item ("Added by"). Members also see the email addresses of people invited who have not joined yet. If you join a household, your items come with you. If you were already in another household, your list stays there. Email invitees sign in with that email. Anyone with a share link who signs in can join after they consent. Uploads belong to the person who added them but feed the shared household list and profile. A member who leaves or is removed loses access at once; the receipts they scanned while in the household stay in its shopping history, which belongs to the household, and the items they added stay on its list. Optional ZIP and city on a household, and store names and streets on trips, are used to attach a receipt to a real store place and later to rank nearby stores. Deleting a household removes your lists and tickets; the anonymized store-place price index stays.

Changes to this policy

Smart Grocer will post any update to this policy on this page and change its date. Material changes are also announced in the app.

Contact

Privacy questions: thesmartgrocerapp@gmail.com.