Shelfly

Privacy Policy

Effective November 13, 2026

Shelfly is a pantry tracker for you and the people you share a kitchen with. This policy explains what information the Shelfly app and its servers collect, why, who else handles it, and the choices you have. The short version: we collect what's needed to run your shared pantry, we don't sell your data, and we don't use it for advertising.

Shelfly is made by Ani Abraham, an independent developer (“we”, “us”). If you have a question about this policy or your data, write to privacy@zoyapantry.com.

1. What we collect

Your account

Email address. You sign in with a one-time code we email to you. There are no passwords.
Display name and, if you choose one, a profile emoji. Members of your household see these.
Sign-in records. Short-lived sign-in codes (stored only as a scrambled hash) and session tokens that keep you signed in.

Your pantry and household

Pantry and shopping list items you add: names, categories, quantities, expiry dates, stores, and which member added them.
Household details: the household's name, its members and their roles, and invitations, including the email address of anyone you invite.
An activity feed of changes in your household (for example, “Sam added milk”), so members can see what changed.

Receipt scanning

Receipt scanning has two modes, and you can switch between them in Settings.

Shelfly AI (on by default). Your phone first reads the receipt's text on the device. We then send the receipt photo and that text to our servers, which pass them to an AI model to pick out the items. We don't save the photo. We ask the AI service to route requests only to model providers that don't store or train on them. We keep a count of how many scans you've used, to apply the monthly free allowance. We also keep a shared, store-level lookup table of printed receipt lines and the product they stand for (for example, a store's code for “2% milk”), so the next scan at that store is faster. These entries aren't linked to you or your household.
Basic mode. The receipt is read entirely on your device and nothing about it is sent to us, apart from the items you choose to save to your pantry.

Barcode scanning

The camera image is processed on your device. Only the barcode number is sent to our servers, to look up the product's name, picture and details in the Open Food Facts database. Open Food Facts never sees who you are.

Purchases

If you subscribe to Shelfly Plus, Apple handles payment and we never see your card details. We use RevenueCat to manage subscriptions. RevenueCat receives your Shelfly account ID and your purchase and subscription status from Apple, so we can unlock Plus for your household.

Technical information

Like any online service, our servers receive your IP address and basic request details (such as the time and which feature was used) when the app talks to them. We use these server logs to keep the service running, fix bugs and prevent abuse. The app has no advertising or analytics SDKs and doesn't track you across other apps or websites.

2. What stays on your device

Camera and photos. Shelfly uses the camera only while you're scanning, and reads only the photos you pick.
Expiry reminders are scheduled on your phone. We don't use push notification services.
Settings and sign-in tokens are stored on your device, with tokens in the system's secure storage (the iOS Keychain).

3. How we use it

To run Shelfly: sign you in, store and sync your pantry across your household's devices in real time, and estimate expiry dates.
To read receipts and look up barcodes when you ask us to.
To apply your plan, subscription and free scan allowance.
To send you sign-in codes and household invitations by email. We don't send marketing email.
To keep Shelfly secure, fix problems and improve how well scanning works.

We don't sell your personal information, share it for advertising, or use it to build advertising profiles.

4. Who we share it with

We use a small number of service providers to run Shelfly. They process data only on our behalf and only as needed to provide their service:

Provider	What it does	What it handles
Fly.io	Hosts our servers (United States)	All data the app sends to us
Neon	Hosts our database (United States)	Your account, household and pantry data
Resend	Sends our emails	Email addresses and email content
OpenRouter, and the AI model provider it routes to (such as Google)	Reads receipts in Shelfly AI mode	Receipt photos and receipt text
RevenueCat and Apple	Subscriptions and payments	Account ID and purchase status
Cloudflare	Hosts this website	Standard web request data

Open Food Facts receives barcode numbers from our servers, never your identity. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the safety or rights of our users or others, or as part of a transfer of the app to a new owner, who would remain bound by this policy.

5. Your household

Shelfly is built for sharing. Everything in a household's pantry and shopping list, its activity feed, and each member's display name and emoji are visible to every member of that household. Only invite people you're happy to share this with. You can leave a household at any time, and its Head Chef can remove members.

6. How long we keep it

We keep your account and pantry data for as long as you have an account.
When you delete your account, we delete your account and the pantry items you added. If you were the only member of your household, we delete the household too. Otherwise, the household passes to another member, and its activity feed keeps past entries without linking them to you.
Sign-in codes expire within minutes. Receipt photos aren't stored after the scan finishes.
Server logs and backups are kept only as long as we need them to run and secure the service, then deleted.

7. Your choices and rights

See and edit your information in the app at any time.
Turn off Shelfly AI in Settings to keep receipt scanning on your device.
Delete your account by emailing privacy@zoyapantry.com from the address you sign in with.
Ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to correct or delete it, at the same address.

Depending on where you live (for example, in the European Union, the United Kingdom or California), you may have further rights, such as to object to or restrict how we use your data, or to complain to your local data protection authority. Email us to use any of them. We'll reply within 30 days and won't treat you differently for asking.

8. Security

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted. Sign-in codes are stored only as hashes, and household data is only reachable by that household's members. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you promptly if a breach affects you.

9. Children

Shelfly isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we'll also let you know in the app or by email before it takes effect.

11. Contact

Questions, requests or concerns: privacy@zoyapantry.com.