Privacy & security

Your money is personal. Here, in plain words, is what budu keeps, where it's kept, and who can see it.

The short version

Your private budget stays private. Only you can see it.
Personal details are hidden on your device before any AI reads a receipt or payslip.
You can use budu without an account, and your budget then stays on your device.

Without an account, your budget is saved only in this browser on this device. budu doesn't receive it. Clearing your browser data or changing devices removes it, so save a backup file now and then.
With an account, your entries are kept online in budu's database, so they can show up on all your devices and be shared with your household.
When you sign in, you can choose to move a budget from your device into your account. Nothing moves unless you tap the button.

Your private budget is visible only to you, even if you're part of a household.
A shared budget is visible only to the members of your household. Joining a household needs its invite code.
Your pay settings, used to show prices as hours of work, are visible only to you and never appear in a shared budget.
These rules are checked by the database itself, not just hidden on screen.

Before anything is read by AI, budu hides personal details on your device: names, addresses, bank account numbers, ID numbers, emails and phone numbers.
For photos and scanned papers, you see the covered picture first and can black out anything else with your finger. Only that covered picture is sent.
For PDF files, budu takes out the text on your device and sends only the cleaned text, never the file itself.
Automatic hiding can miss things on blurry or unusual documents, so please check the picture before sending.
Nothing is saved automatically. You review every entry and only what you save is kept. budu doesn't keep the photo or file.

Signed in: the covered picture or cleaned text is read by an AI model from OpenAI, reached through Lovable's AI service.
Not signed in, with your own key: it goes straight from your browser to your own OpenAI or Google Gemini account. Your key is stored only in this browser and sent only to that provider.
Not signed in, without a key: receipts and documents aren't read, and nothing is sent.
How long those AI providers keep what they read depends on their own rules and, for your own key, your account settings with them.

Signed in, voice recordings are turned into text by an AI service. Personal details are hidden from the text afterwards, but not from the recording itself.
Not signed in, your browser's built-in speech recognition is used. Some browsers, such as Chrome, send the sound to their maker to do this.
Typed entries without an account are sorted on your device.

You can sign in with email and password or with Google. budu keeps your email and the name you choose.
Signing in is optional. You only need it to share a budget or use several devices.
Your password is never shown to anyone, including budu. Choose one you don't use elsewhere.
Forgot your password? Use "Forgot password" on the sign-in page to get a reset link by email.
On computers, budu signs you out after 10 minutes without activity. On a shared or public computer, still sign out from the Home tab when you're done.

Our hosting provider, Lovable, counts visits. It records the pages visited, where visitors came from, their country, browser, operating system and device type, how long they stay, how fast pages load, and errors. It does this for every visitor.
It uses no cookies, stores nothing on your device, doesn't keep IP addresses and doesn't identify visitors. Detailed data is kept for 90 days and daily summaries for a year.
Lovable collects this data for us. Lovable's privacy policy explains how it handles it.
The lettering on these pages comes from Google Fonts, so Google sees the internet address of your connection when a page loads.
The on-device reading tool downloads its language files from a free download service. Your documents are never sent there.
When a receipt is in another currency, budu looks up that day's exchange rate from a free service that publishes European Central Bank rates. Only the two currencies and the date are sent.