Stewy Privacy Policy
Effective October 1, 2026
Stewy suggests dishes you can cook, walks you through them step by step, and keeps track of what's
in your fridge and what to buy. It works without an account: there is no sign-up, and we do not know
who you are.
AI suggestions: what is sent, to whom, and when
Dish ideas, recipes, cooking answers, meal plans, reading a spoken grocery list, spotting the food in a
photo of your fridge (described in its own section below) and typical grocery prices come from an AI model.
Before the first request, Stewy asks for your permission.
If you allow it, each request except a fridge photo sends to our server, and from there to the AI provider
DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.):
- your food preferences from the setup questions: how much you enjoy cooking, time per dish,
kitchen appliances, favorite foods, cuisines and dishes;
- foods you never eat, including allergies and diets, so that suggestions avoid them;
- what you asked for: the choices on the home screen and the words you said or typed;
- the names and amounts of items in your fridge list, and the titles and ratings of dishes you
recently cooked;
- for cooking questions, the recipe you are cooking and your question.
Your voice is turned into text by Apple's speech recognition, the same service as iOS Dictation, and
only the text is sent to us. Requests carry a random install ID and the anonymous purchase ID described below, used only to
limit how many requests one phone can make per day and to check whether Stewy Premium is active. Our
server does not store the content of requests or answers and does not write it to logs.
DeepSeek processes the request to produce an answer under its own terms. Grocery price estimates are
cached on our server by country and product name only, with nothing about you.
You can say no: your fridge list, cooking history and saved recipes keep working without AI. To withdraw
permission later, use Delete all data in Settings: it erases the permission together with
everything Stewy keeps on your iPhone, and Stewy asks again before the next AI request.
Fridge photos (beta)
Scan with camera is a beta feature of Stewy Premium. It works only when you tap it and,
like everything above, only after you allowed AI. You take a photo of your fridge, a shelf or your groceries
(or pick one from your photo library), and Stewy lists the food it can see so that you can check the list and
add it to your fridge.
- What is sent: that one photo and nothing else from your profile — no allergies, no
fridge list — apart from the random install ID and anonymous purchase ID that every request carries.
Stewy first shrinks the photo on your iPhone (to about 1280 pixels on the long side) and re-saves it as a
plain JPEG, so location and other hidden photo details are not sent.
- To whom: the photo goes to our server, and from there through the
OpenRouter service (OpenRouter, Inc.) to an AI model that looks at it:
Google Gemini (Google LLC) or, if Google is unavailable, OpenAI
(OpenAI, L.L.C.). We ask OpenRouter to use only providers that state they do not store requests or train
on them; each provider processes the photo under its own terms.
- What we keep: nothing. Our server does not store the photo or the list that comes back
and does not write them to logs. Stewy does not save the photo to your photo library or to its own data,
and deletes the temporary copies on your iPhone once the photo has been prepared.
- Camera access: the camera is used only while you take that photo. If you turn it off
in iOS Settings, you can still choose a photo from your library.
Recognition is a beta: it can miss items or get one wrong. It is told not to guess what is inside closed
containers, but always look over the list before you add it.
Data that stays on your device
- Your settings, saved recipes, cooking history and ratings, fridge list, menu, shopping
purchases and your own prices are stored on your iPhone. If iCloud Drive is turned on, a
copy is kept in your private iCloud storage so your data survives reinstalling the app or moving to
a new iPhone. That copy belongs to your Apple Account; we cannot read it.
- Foods you never eat (diets, allergies, dislikes) are stored only on this iPhone and
are not copied to iCloud. They are sent with AI requests as described above, only if you allowed AI,
and are not stored on our server.
Other data we receive
- Crash reports (Sentry): technical details about crashes — device model, iOS version,
app version and the code location of the error. They contain no names, emails, recipes, fridge
items or diet choices, and they are not linked to your identity.
- Product usage (PostHog): anonymous events such as "dish ideas were shown" or "the
paywall was shown", used to see which steps of the app work and which don't. Events carry no money
amounts, dish names, text you say or type, fridge items or diet choices, and are not linked to your
identity. Screen recording is turned off.
- Purchases (Apple and RevenueCat): subscriptions are processed by Apple. RevenueCat
receives the App Store receipt with an anonymous app ID to confirm that Stewy Premium is active. Our
server asks RevenueCat about that anonymous ID to apply the right daily limits and keeps the answer
in memory for a few minutes only. We never see your payment details.
What we don't do
- No ads, no tracking across other apps or websites, no data brokers.
- We do not sell or share your data for advertising, and we do not use it to train AI models.
- Reminders (rating a dish the next day, upcoming meals, cooking timers) are local notifications
scheduled on your iPhone; no push server is involved.
Prices
Grocery costs in Stewy are estimates: official average prices where they exist (U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, USDA Economic Research Service, UK Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada) and
AI estimates of typical supermarket prices elsewhere. They may differ from your store; you can enter
your own prices.
Allergies and food safety
Stewy checks every AI recipe against the foods you never eat before showing it, but AI can make
mistakes and product recipes vary. Always check ingredient labels if you have a food allergy.
Deleting your data
Settings → Delete all data removes everything Stewy stores on your iPhone and its iCloud copy.
Deleting the app removes the data on the device; the iCloud copy can also be removed in iOS Settings →
[your name] → iCloud → Manage Storage → Stewy. Our server keeps nothing about you to delete.
Children
Stewy is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page with a new effective date.
Contact
Write to us with the form on our support page or in the app: Settings → Contact
us. Messages are forwarded to the developer by email and are not used for anything else.