Privacy Policy for CalGrade

This Privacy Policy explains how CalGrade ("we", "our", or "the app") handles information when you use our mobile application on iOS and Android. CalGrade is a calorie counter: it turns a photo of a meal into calories, macros and a grade, keeps a food diary, and gives you an AI coach.

The short version. Your food diary, your weight, your photos and your plan live on your phone. There is no account to create and no cloud copy of your diary. To read a meal from a photo, to answer the coach, or to look up a barcode, the app sends that one request to our server, which answers it and forgets it — nothing you send is stored there. We never ask for a name, an email address, or a phone number.

1. What Stays On Your Phone

• Your food diary: every meal, the photo you took of it, its calories, macros and grade
• Your profile: height, weight, age, sex, activity level, goal, diet, pace and the daily targets computed from them
• Weight entries, progress photos, water, steps, fasting sessions, streaks and badges
• Saved meals, recipes, meal plans, coach conversations and your settings

All of this is stored only on your device, in the app's own storage, and is never uploaded as a whole. Your daily calorie and macro targets are calculated on your phone. Deleting the app removes everything; Profile → Delete all data does the same without uninstalling.

2. What Is Sent To Our Server, and Why

Some features need more than your phone can do alone. For those, the app sends a single request to our server, which passes it to a third-party AI model or a food database and returns the answer. Each request carries only what that answer needs:

2.1 Reading a meal, a nutrition label or a menu from a photo

• The photograph, reduced to at most 1024 pixels on its longest side
• Your language, your goal (for example "lose weight"), your diet (for example "vegetarian"), the meal slot and, for a menu, how many calories and macros you have left today
• The coach you chose, so the reply is written in that voice

2.2 Describing a meal or an exercise in words

• The text you typed or dictated ("two eggs, toast and a latte"), with the same language, goal, diet and coach
• When you correct a result ("that's brown rice"), the previous result and your correction

2.3 The coach: daily insight, chat, weekly recap, recipes and meal plans

• A summary of your day or week: calories eaten and the goal, protein, carbs, fat, water, steps, calories burned, the names and grades of the meals you logged, your streak, your current and target weight
• For chat, the recent messages of the conversation; for recipes, what you have left today and the ingredients you listed

2.4 Barcodes and food search

• The barcode number, or the words you searched for, and your language

What is not sent: your name, your email, your contacts, your location, your device identifiers, your full diary, your progress photos, your Health data as such, or anything else from your phone.

We do not store what you send. Our server holds a photo, a description or a summary only in memory for the seconds it takes to produce the answer. It is not written to disk, not written to a database, and not kept in a request log. Meal photos remain on your phone; the copy sent for analysis is discarded once the analysis is returned. The AI model providers process the request to generate the answer under their own policies and do not use it to train their models.

3. The Camera, Your Photos and the Microphone

• The camera is used to photograph a plate, a barcode, a nutrition label or a menu. Barcodes are read on your device; only the number is looked up
• Photos you open from your library are treated exactly like photos you take in the app
• Progress photos are stored on your device only and are never transmitted
• Share cards you save go to your own photo library, and only when you ask
• When you describe a meal by voice, the speech recognition built into your operating system — Apple's on iOS, Google's on Android — turns your words into text. Depending on your device and language that may happen on the device or on that provider's service under its own privacy policy. CalGrade receives only the finished text and never records, saves or uploads audio

Camera, photo library, microphone and speech recognition permissions can each be granted or revoked at any time in your device settings.

4. Apple Health and Health Connect

If you connect CalGrade to Apple Health (iOS) or Health Connect (Android), the app reads your steps and active energy so calories burned can count towards your day, and writes the meals, water and weight you log so your other apps can see them. Health data is read and written on your device. Your Health data is not uploaded; only the day's step count and calories burned appear, as two numbers, in the day summary described in section 2.3 when you use the coach. You choose exactly which types to share when you connect, and you can disconnect at any time in the Health or Health Connect settings.

5. Usage and Diagnostics

To understand how the app is used and to fix problems, we collect:

• Device information (device model, operating system version, app version, language, country)
• Anonymous usage events, such as which screen was opened, which logging method was used (photo, barcode, description, search), whether a scan succeeded and how long it took, which coach is selected, and paywall and subscription events
• Crash reports and error logs
• A randomly generated install identifier that is not linked to your name or any account

These events never contain your food. No photo, no meal name, no calorie figure, no weight, no Health data and no conversation with the coach appears in any analytics event. We record that a meal was logged, not what it was.

If you email us for support, we receive your message, your email address, and whatever app and device details you choose to include.

6. How We Use This Information

• Logging and coaching: To read your meals, answer the coach's questions and rank a menu — the features you asked for
• App improvement: To understand which features are worth building on and where the app is confusing
• Reliability: To find and fix crashes, failed scans and performance problems
• Subscriptions: To unlock Pro for the purchase you made
• Support: To answer your questions

We do not show advertising, we do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not sell it. CalGrade gives dietary information, not medical advice; nothing it produces is a diagnosis or a treatment.

7. Purchases and Subscriptions

CalGrade Pro is sold as a subscription through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Payment is handled entirely by the store. We never receive or store your payment card details — only whether a subscription is currently active, so the app knows what to unlock. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and you can manage or cancel them in your App Store or Google Play account settings.

8. Third-Party Services

CalGrade uses a small number of third-party services, each governed by its own privacy policy:

• OpenRouter and the AI model providers it routes to (currently OpenAI and Google): read meals, labels and menus from photos, interpret descriptions, and write the coach's replies, as described in section 2
• Open Food Facts: the open database our server queries for barcodes and food search; it receives the barcode or search words, not who asked
• Apple and Google: speech recognition, Apple Health and Health Connect, as part of your operating system
• Google Firebase (Analytics, Crashlytics, Remote Config) and Mixpanel: anonymous usage analytics, crash reporting and feature configuration
• Apple App Store / Google Play: purchase and subscription processing

9. Data Storage and Retention

• Photos, descriptions and summaries sent for analysis are held only in memory while the request is being answered, and are not retained afterwards
• Your diary, profile, photos and settings live on your device until you delete them or delete the app
• Analytics events are retained in aggregate to monitor app health
• Support emails are kept only as long as needed to resolve your request

10. Data Security

Everything CalGrade sends travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Requests to our server are signed so that they cannot be tampered with in transit. Your diary never travels at all, so for it the question does not arise.

11. Your Rights and Choices

• Log without sending anything: search the built-in food list, use a saved meal, or enter a food by hand — none of these leave your phone
• Permissions: grant or revoke camera, photo library, microphone, speech recognition, notification and Health access at any time in your device settings
• Export: take your whole diary with you as CSV or PDF from Profile → Export
• Deletion: Profile → Delete all data erases everything the app stored; uninstalling does the same
• Analytics: limit tracking through your device's privacy settings
• Access: contact us to ask what diagnostic data we hold for your install identifier

12. Children's Privacy

CalGrade is not intended for children under 13, and calorie counting is not appropriate for young children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us.

13. International Data Transfers

Requests to our server and the diagnostic information described above may be processed in countries other than your own, including by the providers listed in section 8. We ensure appropriate safeguards are in place in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the new policy on this page and update the "Last Updated" date above.

15. Contact Us

This Privacy Policy is effective as of the date listed above and applies to all users of the CalGrade application.