Privacy Policy
This policy explains what information the MealMotor iPhone app and its related services (together, "MealMotor", "we", "us") collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and how you can delete it. The short version:
- We collect what we need to plan your meals and run your account, and nothing for advertising.
- We do not show ads, we do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not sell or rent your information.
- You can delete your account and its data at any time from inside the app.
Information we collect
Account information
You sign in with Apple or with Google. We don't use passwords. When you sign in we receive and store:
- your email address (with Sign in with Apple this may be a private relay address),
- the account identifier Apple or Google assigns you, which is how we recognize you next time,
- your name, if Apple or Google shares it, which we use as your display name,
- for Sign in with Apple, a token Apple issues, used only so we can revoke MealMotor's access when you delete your account.
To keep you signed in, we store a hashed form of your session token, never the token itself.
Meal-planning preferences
These are what you enter so MealMotor can plan meals for you:
- household size, and the ages of any children you choose to add, used for portions. We don't ask for their names.
- food allergies and dietary restrictions,
- dislikes, and the cuisines, proteins and cooking styles you prefer,
- the kitchen appliances you have, your time and effort limits, calorie limits,
- your shopping day and items you buy every week.
Allergies and dietary restrictions may count as health-related information. We use them only to filter and flag recipes for you and your household.
Your content
- Your meal plans, grocery lists, cooking history and recipe ratings.
- Recipes you create or save. If you import a recipe from a web page, we receive the page's address and its content. If you import one from a photo or screenshot, we receive the image and the text your device reads from it. We keep a photo of the dish if one is available.
Household information
If you create or join a household, we store the household's name and its members' names, email addresses and roles. If you invite someone, we store their email address until the invitation is accepted or expires, which happens after 7 days.
Subscription information
Subscriptions are bought and billed through Apple's App Store. We never receive or store your payment card or billing details. Apple sends us a record of your subscription, including the product, its status, its expiration date and Apple's transaction identifier, and we store it so we can unlock the features you paid for.
Device permissions
MealMotor asks for camera access only when you choose to photograph a recipe from a cookbook page or recipe card. Photos you pick from your library are chosen through the system photo picker, so the app sees only the images you select. MealMotor does not access your location, contacts or health data, and it does not use advertising identifiers.
Technical logs
Our servers keep operational logs, such as request times, errors, and which features were used, so we can keep the service running and fix problems. Logs are stored with your internal user ID, not your name, and are deleted automatically after at most 30 days. We don't use third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software.
How we use information
We use your information to:
- provide the app: suggest and plan meals, build grocery lists, import and save recipes, and scale recipes for cooking,
- apply food allergies and restrictions. On a household plan, the allergies of every member apply to the whole plan,
- run households and send the invitation emails you ask us to send,
- check your subscription and unlock paid features,
- secure the service, prevent abuse, and fix problems,
- respond when you contact us.
We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't build profiles of you for anyone else.
AI processing
Some features use artificial intelligence to read and organize recipe content. When you import a recipe from a web page or a photo, when MealMotor fills in details for a recipe you saved, when it combines ingredients into a grocery list, or when you ask for an ingredient substitute, we send the relevant recipe content to Anthropic's Claude API. That content may be the page content, the image, ingredient lists, or recipe titles and steps. We don't send your name, email address, or your allergy and preference settings as part of these requests. We use Anthropic's commercial API, under terms that do not allow it to use this content to train its models.
Recipes you save are also indexed with an AI text-embedding model that runs inside our Amazon Web Services account, so we can find similar recipes.
Meal suggestions come from our own recipe catalog and your preferences. Planning does not send your information to an outside AI service.
The Claude connector (optional)
You can choose to connect MealMotor to Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, so you can plan meals by chatting. When you connect, you sign in with Apple or Google and approve access. Claude can then read and change the areas you approved, which may include your preferences, meal plan, grocery list and recipes. What you say to Claude and what MealMotor returns to it are handled by Anthropic under Anthropic's own terms and privacy policy. Access tokens for the connector last one hour and refresh access lasts at most 30 days. You can disconnect at any time from Claude's settings, and deleting your MealMotor account revokes access.
How information is shared
We don't sell, rent or trade your personal information. We share it only as follows:
- With your household. Members of a household share its meal plan, grocery lists and day-by-day planning settings, and can see each other's names and email addresses. Members can also open and view recipes that other members have saved, but can't change or delete them. That access ends as soon as either of you leaves the household. Each member's allergies and dietary restrictions shape the plan everyone sees. Invitation emails show the household's name and the inviter's name or email address.
- With service providers that run MealMotor on our behalf, under contracts that limit their use of the data:
- Amazon Web Services: hosting, storage, databases, and email delivery for invitations. Our data is stored in the United States.
- Anthropic: AI processing of recipe content, as described above.
- Apple and Google: sign-in. Apple also handles subscription purchases.
- With recipe websites. When you import a recipe from a web address, our servers download that page and its images from the website. That website sees a request from our servers, not from you.
- When required by law, or to protect the rights, safety or property of our users, the public or MealMotor.
- In a business transfer. If MealMotor is merged or acquired, your information may transfer to the new owner, who must keep honoring this policy.
How long we keep information
We keep your account information and content while your account exists. Some items expire on their own:
- household invitations after 7 days,
- server logs after at most 30 days,
- database backups after up to 35 days.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account in the app. Open the Profile tab and tap Delete Account. Deleting your account from Apple's "Sign in with Apple" settings also deletes it. When you delete your account:
- Deleted:
- your profile and preferences, your personal meal plans and grocery lists, and the recipes you created or imported, including their photos,
- your cooking history and ratings, pending invitations, and your sign-in identities and sessions,
- any access you gave the Claude connector.
- Households:
- If you own a household, the household is deleted with its shared meal plans and grocery lists, and the other members are removed from it. Their own accounts are not deleted.
- If you are a member, you leave the household. Meals and list items you added to the shared plan stay with the household.
- Kept, anonymized: subscription transaction records (product, status, dates and Apple's transaction ID) are kept with nothing linking them to you. Apple still sends us renewal and refund notices for a subscription after an account is deleted, and we need those records to process them.
- Imported photos: if another user imported the exact same image, the shared image file stays for that user.
Deleting your account does not cancel your subscription. Apple manages billing, so cancel it first, either from Manage Subscriptions in the app or in your iPhone's Settings (tap your name, then Subscriptions). See Support for details.
Deleted data may remain in database backups and server logs until those expire, as described above.
Security
We protect your information with encryption in transit (HTTPS) and at rest, access controls that limit who and what can reach your data, and short-lived sign-in tokens. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will notify you as required by law if a breach affects it.
Children
MealMotor is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. A parent may add the ages of children in the household to help with portions. We don't collect those children's names or any other information about them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Your choices and rights
You can view and change your preferences in the app at any time, and you can delete your account as described above. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- access your personal information, correct it, delete it, or receive a copy of it,
- object to or restrict how we use it,
- not be discriminated against for using these rights.
To make a request, email us at the address below. We may need to confirm the request comes from the account holder. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
International users
MealMotor is operated from the United States, and your information is stored and processed in the United States. If you use MealMotor from outside the United States, your information will be transferred there.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the effective date above. For material changes, we'll also give notice in the app or by other appropriate means before they take effect.
Contact us
Questions or requests about privacy: support@mealmotor.com.