The short version. Stubby has no accounts and no servers of its own. Your receipts, photos, budgets, and history are stored on your iPhone, and in your own iCloud if you turn sync on. The one time data leaves your phone is when a receipt is read by a cloud AI model on iPhones that cannot run Apple's on-device model; that request contains the receipt and nothing about you. We do not sell data, run ads, or use analytics or tracking libraries.
Stubby is made by Steelhead AI, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and operated by Jake Rosenegger. For anything about this policy or your data, email support@stubby.money. Under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act, the person accountable for Stubby's handling of personal information is Jake Rosenegger, reachable at that address.
Stubby never asks for your name, email address, phone number, or a password. There is nothing to sign up for. What it does hold is the information you put into it:
All of this lives in the app's private storage on your iPhone, protected by iOS data protection and your device passcode. It is included in your normal iPhone backups according to your own backup settings. If you turn on iCloud sync inside Stubby, Apple keeps a copy in your private iCloud database under your Apple Account so your data survives a lost or replaced phone; that copy is encrypted by Apple and we have no way to read it. We have no server that holds your data and no way to look at it.
Text is first recognized on the phone using Apple's Vision framework. A language model then interprets that text to find the merchant, date, total, tax, and category. Which model depends on your iPhone:
Anthropic processes that request under its own privacy policy and terms, which state that data sent through its API is not used to train its models and is kept only briefly for safety and abuse monitoring. You can read Anthropic's policy at anthropic.com/privacy. If you entered your own API key, the request goes directly from your phone to Anthropic. In test builds, requests may instead pass through a small relay operated by Steelhead AI so that testers do not need their own key; the relay adds the key and forwards the request, and it does not keep the text or image of your receipt. Every request is sent over HTTPS.
Stubby uses the camera only while you are scanning a receipt. When you import from your photo library, iOS shows you a picker and Stubby receives only the pictures you select; it cannot browse the rest of your library. Reminders are scheduled on the phone itself; there is no push notification server and nothing is sent to us when a reminder fires or when you tap "Nothing today".
Apple may share aggregated crash reports and usage statistics with us if you have opted in to sharing analytics with app developers in your iPhone settings, and TestFlight collects crash logs and any feedback you choose to send through it. Those come from Apple under Apple's terms and do not include your receipts.
If Stubby offers a subscription or other purchase, it is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. We receive a confirmation that a purchase was made and never see your payment details. Whatever you have already stored in Stubby, including the ability to view and export your receipts, is never removed because a subscription ends.
You are in control of how long anything stays. Delete an entry and its photo at any time from the app; delete the app and everything stored on the phone goes with it; remove the iCloud copy from Settings on your iPhone under your Apple Account, iCloud, Manage Storage. You can export your data at any time as a CSV file or a PDF bundle from the Taxes tab. Stubby never deletes receipts on its own, because the Canada Revenue Agency asks people with self-employment income to keep their records for six years; deleting them is your decision, not the app's.
Stubby is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Because your information is on your own device rather than with us, you can see, correct, export, and delete it yourself at any time. You are still welcome to write to us with any question or request about your personal information, and we will answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca, or to the privacy regulator in your province.
If Stubby starts handling data differently, for example when iCloud sync or a subscription is added, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will also be mentioned in the app's release notes.
Steelhead AI, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. support@stubby.money