Privacy Policy
Last updated 20 August 2026 · ChurAte, New Zealand
The short version. ChurAte works without an account. It has no advertising, no analytics and no tracking of any kind. Photos you take of recipes are read on your phone and never uploaded. If you make an account we hold your email address, and nothing else about you.
What we collect
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Only if you create an account | To sign you in and to keep any paid features attached to you if you change phone |
| Your meal plan, pantry, shopping list and saved recipes | Only if you turn on household sync | So the people in your household see the same list |
That is the complete list. There is nothing else.
What we do not collect
- No advertising and no ad networks. The app contains no advertising SDK.
- No analytics and no tracking. We do not measure how you use the app, and we do not build a profile of you.
- No location. The app never asks for your location. Supermarket addresses are stored as ordinary data about shops, not about you.
- No contacts, no device identifiers, no advertising ID.
- No selling or sharing of personal information. Not to anyone, for any purpose.
Photos stay on your phone
ChurAte can read a recipe from a photograph of a cookbook page. The text recognition runs entirely on your device using the operating system's own facilities — Google ML Kit on Android, the Vision framework on iOS. The photograph is never uploaded, and neither is the text read from it. Only the ingredient lines you confirm are saved, and they are saved on your phone.
The app asks for camera or photo-library permission at the moment you use that feature. Declining it leaves the rest of the app fully working.
Household sync, and what a sync code means
Household sync is optional and off until you turn it on. When you create a household, the app generates a random code and stores your plan, pantry, shopping list and saved recipes in a row identified by that code.
The code is the key. Anyone who has it can read and change that household's data, in the same way anyone holding your house key can open your door. Share it only with the people you live with. If a code gets out, create a new household and stop using the old code.
Household data is not linked to your email address or to any account. Sync works whether you are signed in or not.
Where your data is held
Accounts and household data are stored with Supabase, our database provider, on servers in Sydney, Australia. Passwords are handled by Supabase's authentication service and are stored hashed; we never see them.
This means your account email and, if you use household sync, your meal plan and shopping list are held outside New Zealand. Under the Privacy Act 2020 we remain responsible for that information wherever it is stored.
Everything else — your meal plan, pantry, recipes, photos and the supermarket price catalog — is stored on your phone.
Deleting your data
You can delete your account from inside the app at any time: Profile → Account → Delete my account. This permanently removes your sign-in and any subscription record. It cannot be undone.
Because a household belongs to everyone holding its code and not to any one account, deleting your account does not delete a shared household by default — that would destroy other people's shopping lists. The delete screen offers it as a separate, clearly labelled choice.
To remove data held on your phone, uninstall the app or use your device's "clear app data" option.
Children
ChurAte is a grocery shopping tool intended for general audiences. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Your rights
Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and complain if you think we have got it wrong. Since the only personal information we hold is an email address on an optional account, in practice this means: ask us, or delete the account yourself in the app.
Supermarket prices
Prices shown in the app are collected from publicly available supermarket websites and are indicative only. They may be out of date or wrong. Always check the price in store. ChurAte is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any supermarket or grocery chain.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will update the date at the top and describe the change here.
Contact
Questions about privacy, or a request about your information: info@churate.com.