Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 9, 2026

Overview

Ladle ("we", "our", "the app") is a recipe management app for iOS. Your privacy is important to us. This policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights.

Data We Collect

Data You Provide

  • Recipes - titles, ingredients, steps, images, source URLs, tags, and cook history that you save in the app.
  • Meal Plans & Shopping Lists - the meals you plan and the shopping items you check off.
  • Settings - your preferences for appearance, meal types, and shopping list window.

Data Collected Automatically

  • Import Diagnostics - when a recipe import fails, the app sends us the address of the page it failed on, along with the stage it failed at, the error type, and the app version. We use these to find and fix extraction bugs; a page that fails for one person usually fails for everyone. Common tracking parameters (utm_*, fbclid, gclid and similar) are stripped before the address is sent. Your IP address is not stored - it is replaced with a one-way code that changes every day, so failures from the same device on the same day can be recognised as related without identifying you or being linkable from one day to the next.
  • Crash Reports - the app uses Firebase Crashlytics (Google) to report crashes and errors, so we can fix them. These reports contain the crash itself, the device model, the OS version and an app-generated identifier. They do not contain your recipes or any other content you enter. This is separate from Apple's own crash reporting, which you control in iOS Settings.

How Your Data Is Stored

All your recipes, meal plans, and settings are stored on your device using Apple's SwiftData framework. If you are signed into iCloud, your data syncs automatically across your Apple devices via Apple CloudKit. We do not operate our own servers for storing your personal data.

AI Features

Ladle offers AI-powered features such as meal-plan suggestions, tonight's cooking suggestions, and speech transcription for video import. These features run entirely on your device using Apple's Foundation Models framework and on-device speech recognition. No recipe data, photos, or personal information is sent to external AI services for on-device processing.

For recipe URL extraction fallback, Ladle may send the HTML content of a web page to our extraction proxy service hosted on Cloudflare Workers. This service processes the content to extract recipe data and does not store the HTML content after processing.

Third-Party Services

  • Apple CloudKit - for cross-device data sync. Governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
  • Apple StoreKit - for processing Premium subscriptions and purchases. We do not see or store your payment information.
  • Cloudflare Workers - our recipe extraction proxy service. Subject to Cloudflare's Privacy Policy.

Data Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes. We use no advertising networks and no advertising or attribution SDKs.

The one third-party SDK in the app is Firebase Crashlytics (Google), used only for the crash reports described above. Ladle previously also included Firebase Analytics; it was removed in version 1.5, and with it Google's on-device conversion measurement library, which Firebase Analytics had brought in as a dependency.

Family Sync (Premium)

If you use the Family Sync feature, your recipes, meal plans, tags, and cook history are shared with members of your sync group (up to 5 people) via CloudKit. Only users you explicitly invite can access your shared data.

Your Rights

You can at any time:

  • Delete any recipe, meal plan, or tag within the app.
  • Delete all app data by removing the app from your device.
  • Disable iCloud sync for Ladle in your device's iCloud settings.
  • Request a copy of your data or ask questions by contacting us.

Children's Privacy

Ladle is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@getladle.app.