Privacy Policy

Plateful is run by Petar Blazhevski as an individual, who is the controller of your personal data under the GDPR. For anything on this page, write to privacy@useplateful.com.

• Account details — made when you sign up: your email address, the name you choose (optional, and you can set or change it on your Account page), and your password if you choose one (stored only as a one-way hash). Signing up with a code instead creates the account without a password.
• Sign in with Google — if you choose “Continue with Google”, Google sends us your name and email address, and we make or sign in the account for that address. We don’t keep your Google profile picture, and we don’t use Google’s tokens to reach anything else in your Google account. Google’s own privacy policy governs what it knows about you signing in.
• Sign-in sessions — when you sign in we record the IP address and browser it came from, to keep your account secure. Sign-in codes expire after five minutes.
• Your cookbook — the recipes, ingredients, steps, photos, tags, sources and notes you add. Location and camera details are removed from photos you upload or import.
• Imports — when you import a recipe from a link, we keep the link, what we found on the page, and whether the import worked. If you paste a recipe’s text instead, we keep that text (and the link, if you gave one) in the same way. Our server logs also note the website’s name (such as example.com, never the full link) and how the import went, so we can spot sites that cannot be imported.
• Reports — if you report a shared recipe, we keep that you reported it, the reason, and anything you wrote.
• Feedback — if you send us feedback, it arrives as an email in our mailbox, not in Plateful’s database. It contains what you wrote, the page you sent it from (without search terms or filters), and your browser and device type. Unless you untick “Include my name and email”, it also contains your name, email address and account id so we can answer. If you leave them out, we don’t receive your name, email or account id — but Plateful briefly records that your account sent feedback, to limit how often anyone can, so it isn’t fully anonymous.
• Email you send us — if you write to hello@useplateful.com or privacy@useplateful.com, we keep your message and the address it came from in our mailbox, to reply to you.
• Server logs — our server notes each request it handles: what kind of request it was, which part of Plateful it reached, whether it worked and how long it took, and any error it hit. Logs never include your IP address, your account or your recipes. We use them to find and fix what breaks.

We use this only to run Plateful for you and to keep it safe.

Your recipes are private until you share one. A shared recipe can be read by anyone who has its link, without signing in, and a signed-in reader can save their own copy of it, photos included. Unsharing stops the link working; it does not remove copies others have already saved. Your private notes are never shown on a shared recipe. If someone reports a shared recipe, we look at it.

• To run your account and cookbook — because you asked us to (performance of a contract).
• To keep Plateful secure — session records, rate limits and suspending abusive accounts (our legitimate interest in a safe service).
• To fix what breaks — error reports from our server (our legitimate interest in a working service).
• To read and answer your feedback — because you chose to send it (our legitimate interest in hearing from the people who use Plateful).
• Counting visits — anonymous, cookie-free counts of pages and actions (our legitimate interest in knowing how Plateful is used).
• Analytics with cookies — only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time below.

When you import a recipe from a link, our server fetches that page and copies its photo into your cookbook. If the page has no complete recipe markup we can read, or the link is an Instagram post, we send the page's text or the post's caption, with its address, to the AI provider we use for this — OpenAI or Anthropic — to pick out the ingredients and steps. The provider receives only that — never your email, your name or anything else from your cookbook. The result is saved as a draft for you to check; nothing is changed without you.

For a YouTube link, our server asks Google’s YouTube Data API for the video’s title, channel, description and thumbnail, sending only the video’s id. It may then fetch up to three pages the description links to, the same way it fetches a link you paste. If none of them holds a recipe we can read, the description goes to the AI provider in the same way.

If you paste a recipe’s text instead of a link, we send that text to the same provider in the same way, with the link if you gave one. We never fetch a link you give alongside pasted text.

If you use Recipe Scan, the photos you pick go to the same AI provider to read the recipe off them. Your browser first shrinks them, and our server removes location and camera details. Plateful deletes the photos as soon as the scan finishes, whether it worked or not, and never keeps them with the recipe. The result is saved as a draft for you to check.

We use PostHog, hosted in the European Union, to understand how Plateful is used: which pages are opened and a few actions such as creating, importing, sharing or saving a recipe. For an import we record only whether it was a link, pasted text or photos, never the link, the text or the photos themselves. Events never carry recipe titles, ingredients or anything else you wrote. Search terms and filters are stripped from page addresses, and there is no session recording.

When someone creates an account, our server counts it as an anonymous event that records only how they signed up, by code or by password. It carries no user id, no email address and nothing from the request, and it is sent whatever you chose in the cookie notice.

Without your consent, these are counted anonymously. Nothing is stored in your browser. To tell one visitor from another for a single day, PostHog computes a one-way hash of your IP address and browser details, with a secret that changes every day, so a visit today cannot be linked to one tomorrow or to your account.

With your consent, PostHog also uses a cookie and browser storage, so it can see how Plateful is used over time. Events are then linked to your account's internal id — never your email or name — and the language you chose for the interface is recorded on your PostHog profile.

When something breaks, PostHog also receives an error report: what kind of error it was and where in the code it happened — never what you typed or anything from your recipes. Errors in your browser are reported the same way as everything above: anonymously, or linked to your account's internal id if you accepted. Errors on our server are always reported, linked at most to your account's internal id, so we can fix them.

PostHog's cookies are set only after you choose Accept in the cookie notice. If you decline, only the anonymous counts are sent and no analytics cookies are set. Changing your mind below removes its cookies and returns to anonymous counts.

Plateful keeps you signed in with a cookie, remembers your light or dark theme, the language you chose, the temperature unit you read recipes in and whether Cooking Mode's timer alarm makes a sound in cookies, and stores your cookie choice in your browser. These are essential and need no consent. PostHog's cookie and browser storage are optional and are set only after you accept.

We use a small number of providers to run Plateful. They process data only on our behalf:

• Hostinger — the server and database Plateful runs on.
• Cloudflare — stores your recipe photos and our database backups, forwards email you send to our addresses, and relays usage counts and error reports from your browser to PostHog.
• Resend — delivers sign-in codes, confirmation codes, password reset codes, invitations, the notice we send when someone tries to create an account with an address that already has one, and the feedback you send us.
• Google — if you continue with Google, it signs you in and tells us your name and email address. It also serves the YouTube Data API described above.
• Proton — the mailbox where email you send us is read.
• OpenAI or Anthropic — whichever we use at the time tidies up the text of recipes you import from a link or paste, and the photos you scan.
• PostHog — anonymous usage counts, analytics with cookies if you consent, and error reports from your browser and our server.

Where any of these transfers data outside the EU, it is covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Your account and cookbook are kept until you delete them or ask us to. A recipe or photo you delete is removed straight away; photos you upload but never save are removed within a day or so. Database backups can hold deleted data for a short while longer, until they are replaced. Server logs are kept for 14 days on the Hostinger server Plateful runs on, then deleted. Feedback and email you send us stay in our mailbox for as long as they’re useful for the conversation; ask at the address above and we’ll delete it.

You can ask us to delete your account and everything in it at any time. Email privacy@useplateful.com from the address you sign in with. We'll confirm, then permanently remove your account, recipes, photos and analytics data within 30 days. Copies that other people saved of recipes you shared belong to them and are not removed.

Under the GDPR you can ask for access to your data, a copy of it, its correction or deletion, or for us to restrict or stop processing it, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Write to privacy@useplateful.com and we'll reply within 30 days. You can also complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the one where you live.

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, we'll tell you by email before the change takes effect.