Meally

Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 9, 2025

Overview

Meally helps you figure out what to cook from what you have. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and your choices.

What we collect

  • Photos you choose to analyze. We upload the photo to a secure file service to process it, then pass the URL to our server to extract ingredients.
  • Ingredient text derived from your photo by AI. We store or reuse the extracted text only to find recipes for your session.
  • Preferences you set (diet/allergies, cuisines, cooking experience, usual time, goals, and kitchen tools). These are stored locally on your device and are sent with requests to improve results.
  • Basic usage and device data. Our servers may log things like your IP address, request time, and error details to keep the service working and to diagnose issues.

How we use data

  • Identify ingredients in your photos and suggest recipes.
  • Enforce your diet/allergy selections strictly and prefer recipes that match your cuisines, usual time, and equipment.
  • Maintain security, prevent abuse, and fix bugs.

Where data lives

  • On your device: onboarding preferences, saved recipes, and certain cached content.
  • On our servers: transient analysis data required to fulfill requests.
  • Third parties: Uploadcare (file hosting) and OpenAI (AI model for image understanding). We also fetch public recipes from TheMealDB; ingredient keywords you provide may be included in those requests.

Third parties we share data with

  • Uploadcare, Ltd. – We may send the photo you choose to analyze to Uploadcare to temporarily host it so our system can process it. Privacy: https://uploadcare.com/privacy/
  • OpenAI (GPT‑4 Vision) – We may send the image (as a secure URL or a base64 snapshot) and a short instruction to OpenAI to extract the ingredient text from your photo. Privacy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
  • TheMealDB – We may send ingredient keywords (not your photo) to TheMealDB to look up public recipes that match. Site: https://www.themealdb.com/

These providers process data under their own policies. We select providers that meet or exceed the protections described here, and we limit what we share to the minimum needed to provide the feature.

Retention

Photos you upload are kept only as long as needed to analyze and deliver results. Your preferences and saved recipes remain on your device until you delete the app or clear its data. Server logs are retained for a limited period for security and debugging.

Security

We use HTTPS to protect data in transit and follow reasonable practices to safeguard data. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.

Children

Meally is not directed to children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, please use the app store contact channel to reach us so we can address it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do, we’ll change the “Last updated” date above. Continued use of Meally means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Have questions? Reach out via the support link in our app store listing.