ChefPal app iconChefPal

ChefPal Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 20, 2026

ChefPal ("ChefPal," "we," "us," or "our") helps users plan meals, manage pantry items, save recipes, create shopping lists, and chat with an AI cooking assistant. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have.

Contact

If you have questions or requests, contact us at:

support@chefpalapp.com

Information We Collect

We collect information you provide directly, information generated when you use ChefPal, and limited technical information needed to operate the service.

Account information, if you create or sign in to an account:

  • Email address
  • Name, if provided through Sign in with Apple or account setup
  • Authentication identifiers from our authentication provider

Food, cooking, and profile information:

  • Pantry items, quantities, storage locations, and purchase status
  • Meal plans, recipes, saved recipes, cooking progress, and shopping lists
  • Dietary preferences, allergies or avoidances, cooking preferences, serving sizes, schedule preferences, and similar profile settings
  • Assistant persona preference and saved assistant memory

User content:

  • Chat messages and prompts you send to the assistant
  • Photos, videos, documents, and other files you choose to attach
  • Recipe, meal, pantry, and shopping-list content you create or save

Usage and diagnostic information:

  • AI usage and quota information
  • App version, build, and compatibility check information
  • Limited product analytics events that help us understand how ChefPal features are used
  • Server logs and request metadata needed for security, debugging, abuse prevention, and service reliability
  • Guest installation identifiers and trial-redemption records used to maintain guest access and enforce free-meal limits

We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. ChefPal is not intended for children.

How We Use Information

We use information to:

  • Create, authenticate, and manage guest profiles and optional accounts
  • Sync your pantry, recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, and chat history across devices
  • Generate meal ideas, recipes, shopping lists, and assistant responses
  • Remember preferences you ask the assistant to remember
  • Process uploaded photos, videos, and documents when you attach them
  • Enforce quotas, subscriptions, trial limits, and usage limits
  • Improve reliability, troubleshoot issues, secure the service, and prevent abuse
  • Respond to support, privacy, and account deletion requests
  • Comply with legal obligations

AI and Third-Party Processing

ChefPal uses third-party service providers to operate the app. These may include:

  • Supabase or another authentication, database, and storage provider
  • PostHog for product analytics
  • Meta for optional advertising measurement, as explained below
  • OpenAI or another AI provider for chat, meal planning, recipe generation, image understanding, and image generation
  • Pexels or another image provider if you enable web image search for meal images
  • Hosting providers such as Render or similar infrastructure providers
  • Apple services for Sign in with Apple, DeviceCheck trial protection, App Store distribution, and in-app purchases if enabled

When you use AI features, relevant prompts, preferences, pantry data, meal data, uploaded files, and conversation context may be sent to AI providers so they can generate responses. Do not submit information you do not want processed by these providers.

Product analytics helps us understand onboarding, meal generation, chat, pantry, shopping-list, and subscription flows. These events are designed to exclude your prompts, recipe text, dietary preferences, uploaded media contents, email addresses, and purchase identifiers.

Guest Access and Free-Trial Protection

Versions with guest-first onboarding let you use ChefPal without supplying an email or creating an account. Guest preferences, meals, and other app data are associated with a randomly generated installation identifier. On iPhone, the installation identifier and guest access credential are kept in device-only Keychain storage so an ordinary reinstall can resume the same guest profile and remaining-meal count. These credentials are not synchronized to other devices. You can optionally sign in to link your guest data to an account for recovery and use across devices.

To prevent repeated free trials, ChefPal sends an opaque, short-lived Apple DeviceCheck token to our server. Our server sends that token to Apple to query or update limited per-device trial-redemption state maintained by Apple. This state can survive an app reinstall. We use it to enforce trial limits and prevent abuse. ChefPal does not save the DeviceCheck token in its database or include it in product analytics.

ChefPal keeps trial-claim records based on hashed installation and account identifiers and maintains meal usage on the backend. A limited redemption record may remain after account deletion, and deleting an account or reinstalling the app does not clear Apple's per-device redemption state or create another free trial. The retained redemption record does not contain your email, name, Apple DeviceCheck token, recipes, or other user content.

Optional Advertising Measurement

ChefPal may also use Apple's SKAdNetwork to register an app installation and measure advertising in aggregate, including when you decline tracking permission. Apple limits and delays these attribution reports. This install-registration path does not initialize Meta's SDK, collect an advertising identifier, or send ChefPal account details or app content to Meta.

Starting with ChefPal 1.0.9 for iPhone, you can choose to share install and app-open activity with Meta to measure and improve ChefPal ads on Facebook and Instagram. We require Apple's App Tracking Transparency permission before enabling Meta app-event collection. Version 1.0.9 also asks for a separate in-app choice. Version 1.0.10 and later use Apple's system permission prompt without that additional popup. Previously declined in-app choices remain off. Declining permission does not limit ChefPal's features.

When you opt in, Meta's SDK may receive:

  • Install, app-open, and session events and their timestamps
  • App version, device model, operating system, language, and SDK details
  • SDK-generated app-instance or device identifiers and network information, including your IP address
  • SDK diagnostic information, including crash information

Meta may link this activity with information from other apps and websites for advertising measurement and optimization. We keep Apple advertising identifier (IDFA) collection and automatic advanced matching disabled. We do not send your ChefPal account ID, email address, name, chats, recipes, pantry contents, dietary preferences, allergies, or uploaded content to Meta. This integration does not send ChefPal purchase or subscription events, and implicit purchase logging is disabled.

You can revoke tracking permission in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Version 1.0.9 also provides an Ad measurement control in ChefPal Settings. Revoking permission stops future app-event collection; it does not recall information already received. You can contact us about access or deletion requests. Meta also handles information under its Privacy Policy, including its retention practices and privacy controls.

Photos, Videos, and Documents

ChefPal requests access to your camera or photo library only when you choose to take or attach media. Uploaded media may be stored and processed to provide chat, fridge scan, recipe, and meal-planning features.

Nutrition, Allergies, and Health

ChefPal may show nutrition estimates and accommodate dietary preferences. These outputs are informational estimates only and may be inaccurate or incomplete. ChefPal is not a medical, nutrition, allergy, or dietetic service. Always verify ingredients, labels, allergens, and nutrition information yourself, especially if you have allergies, medical conditions, dietary restrictions, or other health concerns.

Data Retention

We keep account information and user content while your account is active or as needed to provide the service. We may retain limited records when required for security, legal compliance, billing, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or backup recovery.

Account Deletion

You can initiate account deletion in the app from Settings. Deleting your account removes ChefPal-owned app data associated with your account, including saved preferences, pantry items, recipes, generated meal plans, shopping lists, chat history, uploaded files tracked by the app, assistant memory, and entitlement records, subject to limited retention described above.

ChefPal may maintain a separate recipe or meal catalog that is not tied to your account. Content in that catalog should not include your personal information, chat history, pantry contents, dietary profile, uploaded files, or other account-specific data. If ChefPal later offers a way to contribute recipes or generated meals to a shared catalog, we will describe how that contribution works in the app or in this policy.

If deletion of the underlying authentication record cannot be completed automatically, contact us at support@chefpalapp.com and we will complete or assist with the request.

Your Choices

You can:

  • Update preferences in the app
  • Delete saved assistant memory in Settings
  • Delete individual pantry items, recipes, meal plan entries, and other app content where supported
  • Delete your account in Settings
  • Manage tracking permission in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking
  • Contact us to request access, correction, deletion, or export of your information

Depending on where you live, you may have additional privacy rights under applicable laws.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

International Processing

Your information may be processed in the United States and other countries where we or our service providers operate.

Changes To This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the effective date and provide notice where required.