Privacy Policy

Effective September 12, 2026 · Helpings app and gethelpings.com

Helpings is a shared recipe box, shopping list, and meal planner for a household. This policy explains what the app and website collect, how it is used, and the choices you have. Helpings is a product of Up & Adam, LLC (Ohio, United States).

What We Collect

Your account. When you create an account we collect your email address and a password. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider and stored only as a secure hash; we never see your plain password. If you choose Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google instead, we receive your email address (or Apple's private relay address if you choose to hide your email) and, on first sign-in, the name your provider shares. No Helpings password is created, and we never see your Apple or Google credentials.
What you put in the app. The recipes, photos, shopping-list items, meal-plan entries, ratings, cooking notes, and household preferences (such as number of people, appetite, cuisines, equipment, and diet tags) that you and your household create. Photos you add are stored so they can appear on your recipes.
Household membership. Which household (kitchen) you belong to, so your recipes, list, and plan stay in sync with the other members you invite.
Crash and diagnostic reports. Release builds send Sentry error reports, stack traces, app version, device and operating-system information, and limited performance and session information. Reports can include your account's internal identifier and context about an error, so they are not anonymous. We use them to find and fix failures. Session Replay is disabled; we do not record your screen.
Product updates (website only). If you subscribe at gethelpings.com, we store your email address, assigned page-headline variant and signup source, including a broad device platform such as iOS, Android or web. We use these to send product updates and count signups. We also record a first-visit page count and headline variant without a personal identifier in that count. The browser stores its assigned headline variant and whether that view has been counted. Email signup is optional and is not required to install Helpings.
Website visit statistics (website only). gethelpings.com uses Vercel Web Analytics to count page views, the page that referred you, and your broad country, device type, browser and operating system. It uses no cookies and does not identify you personally or follow you across other sites. The app does not use it.

What We Use It For

To run the app: sign you in, store your kitchen, and sync it live across the phones in your household.
To diagnose crashes, investigate errors, and improve reliability. We redact common sensitive values from diagnostic reports and do not intentionally attach your email address, password, or household content. Diagnostic context can still contain information involved in an error.
To send account and service email (for example, email confirmation and password reset), and, for website subscribers, occasional product updates.
We do not use your data to build advertising profiles or to train advertising models.

What We Do Not Do

We do not sell or rent your data, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.
We do not show ads and we include no advertising SDKs or advertising identifiers.
We do not use advertising trackers. We do collect the crash, session, and diagnostic information described above to operate and improve the app.

What Your Household Can See

Helpings is built for sharing within a household. Recipes, the shopping list, the meal plan, ratings, notes, and photos you add are visible to the other members of the kitchen you join. Only people who have your household's invite are members. Do not add content you would not want the people you invite to see.

Recipe Import and AI Processing

When you import a recipe from a link, Helpings' server retrieves or receives the page and first looks for structured recipe data. If usable structured data is available, Helpings can import it without sending the page content to an AI provider. Some imports use an AI service: link imports need it when usable structured data is not available, and photo imports need it to read the selected images. This happens only when you choose to start an import.

Who processes it. We use Anthropic (the maker of Claude), a United States provider, when AI extraction is needed.
What is sent. For a link import that needs AI extraction, we send the cleaned text of the page you chose and its web address. For a photo import, we send the photos you take or choose. Normal imports do not send Anthropic your email address, password, other recipes, allergy notes, or household cooking preferences.
Why. Only to extract that one recipe's details, such as its title, yield, ingredients, and steps, into a source-faithful draft for you to review before saving. Optional serving changes are calculated separately as a reversible display choice; they do not cause Anthropic to rewrite your stored source recipe.
Retention and training. Under Anthropic's commercial API terms, your inputs and outputs are not used to train its AI models. Anthropic keeps this data only for a limited period (up to 30 days) to monitor for abuse and then deletes it, unless it must keep it longer to meet a legal obligation.
Your control. Importing is always your choice. You can add or edit any recipe by hand instead. A link with usable structured recipe data does not need AI processing; if a link needs AI extraction, or you choose photo import, the content described above is sent to Anthropic.

Who Processes Your Data

Optional spoken-video import. When you choose Read Spoken Recipe, we send the public video link to Apify and the selected transcription provider (InVideoIQ or memo23). They retrieve and transcribe the video's audio; we send the resulting spoken text to Anthropic to build a recipe draft. We do not send these transcription providers your Helpings password, email, kitchen preferences, or other saved recipes. Spoken-video import does not read text that appears only on screen.

Apify holds run inputs and outputs while processing. Helpings attempts to delete completed provider runs and their default data stores after collecting the result. Interrupted runs or failed cleanup may remain under the provider's retention settings. Helpings keeps a private job receipt containing the source link and result so retries can recover the same attempt; it is removed when the associated account or kitchen is deleted. Apify and the actor providers' terms govern their processing; the Anthropic training statement above applies to Anthropic, not to every transcription provider. You can use caption import, screenshots, or manual entry instead.

We use Supabase to host our database, storage, and authentication in the United States, and an email delivery provider to send account email. When an import needs AI extraction, we also use Anthropic as described in "Recipe Import and AI Processing" above. If you sign in with Apple or Google, that provider confirms your identity to us; we receive only the sign-in details described in "What We Collect" and nothing else from your Apple or Google account. We also use Sentry in the United States for the diagnostics described above. Diagnostic records follow the retention periods configured for our Sentry service; contact us about access or deletion of reports associated with your account. The optional transcription providers are described above. We do not share your information for third-party advertising.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are stored as secure hashes by our authentication provider. Your sign-in session on your device is stored in encrypted form using your device's secure keystore. Access to household data is enforced by row-level security so that only members of a household can read or change its contents. One exception today: recipe photos are served from long, unguessable links that do not require sign-in, so they load quickly on every phone in the kitchen. Someone who obtains a photo's exact link could view that photo. We plan to move photo storage to fully private, signed access. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and limit what we collect.

Keeping and Deleting Your Data

Export anytime. You can export your kitchen's recipe text and supported list, plan, and history records from Settings, free. In Helpings 1.14 and later, you can include supported photo files in your backup or choose a text-only export. Older backups contain photo links rather than the image files; keep separate copies of those photos before deleting a kitchen. The export and restore screens describe included records, photo limits, and anything omitted.
Delete your account. Settings → Delete Account removes your account and your membership, and de-identifies the notes and photos you authored. Shared content that belongs to the household (such as recipes and the shopping list) stays with the household so you do not erase everyone else's kitchen.
Request deletion another way. You can also email adam@upandadamco.com to request deletion of your account and associated data, and we will handle it within 30 days.
Waitlist data is kept until launch invitations are complete and no longer than 12 months after public launch, unless you have become a Helpings user by then.

Children

Helpings is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Your Choices and Rights

You can access and export your data in the app, correct it by editing it, and delete your account as described above. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information; email us and we will honor applicable requests.

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes we will update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app or by email.

Contact

Questions or requests: adam@upandadamco.com. Helpings is a product of Up & Adam, LLC, Ohio, United States.

Up & Adam, LLC
1985 W Henderson Road #2394
Columbus, OH 43220