Countey

Privacy Policy

Countey is a personal finance app that works with no account and no sign-up. This document explains, plainly, what stays on your phone, what leaves it, and why.

Last updated: 31 October 2026 · Effective from: 31 October 2026

01 Who is responsible

Data controller: César Alonso Sáez.

For any privacy matter, or to exercise your rights, write to support@countey.app.

02 What stays on your phone, and what doesn't

This is the important part, so it comes first. Countey has no servers holding your books: your transactions, accounts and balances live only on your device.

Never leaves your phone

  • Your saved transactions: amounts, dates and notes
  • Your accounts and their balances
  • Your categories and budgets
  • Your recurring payments
  • Your app settings

Leaves only when you ask

  • The photo you choose to capture
  • The audio you choose to dictate
  • The text you choose to type for the AI to read
  • The names of your categories and accounts, so the AI files the transaction in the right one
  • The merchants you’ve already put in a category (up to 40 merchant → category pairs, with no amounts or dates), so the AI files them the same way
  • With the automations you turn on (Apple Pay, bank notifications): the merchant and amount of a payment whose category the iPhone doesn’t recognise, or the text of a bank notification the iPhone can’t read
Your money data is never sent on its own. It leaves only if you’ve allowed Google’s AI, and only when you tap to capture an expense with the AI or when an automation you turned on logs a payment the iPhone can’t fully understand. If you enter a transaction by hand, nothing leaves at that moment; its merchant and category may go along with your next AI capture. Separately, the app checks your subscription with Apple and RevenueCat and sends the measurements described in sections 05 and 07, which never include anything you record: no amounts, merchants or notes.

03 What happens to what you send

When you capture an expense with the AI (or one of your automations needs it), the content travels encrypted to our own intermediate server and from there to Google's artificial intelligence service (Gemini), which reads it and returns the transaction details.

Your permission
The first time something is about to go to the AI, Countey asks whether it may send it. Without your permission nothing is sent to the AI: you log with what the iPhone reads on its own and by hand, and automations send nothing either. You can change it at any time in Settings → Privacy.
Purpose
Solely to extract the amount, date, merchant and category from what you captured or, in “Ask Countey”, to understand your question (the answer is worked out on your iPhone).
Retention
None. Neither the intermediate server nor Countey stores your captures: they are processed and discarded.
Why an intermediate
So the AI service access key never ships inside the app, where it could be extracted.
Google
Acts as a data processor under its API terms. The content is not used to train its models.

04 What the intermediate server stores

To stop anyone from using the service by impersonating the app, each installation identifies itself through Apple's App Attest. That means storing:

  • A random identifier generated by your device, which reveals nothing about who you are and cannot be used to locate you.
  • A public key tied to that identifier, to verify requests genuinely come from the app.
  • The date it was registered.
  • A usage counter, to cap how many captures each device may make and curb abuse.

None of this is linked to your name, your email or any personal data. The key on your iPhone stops working when you uninstall the app (if you reinstall it, the app creates a new one). On the server, all of this stays with no expiry date, with nothing that identifies you. If App Attest doesn’t work on your iPhone, the server can check it with Apple’s DeviceCheck instead; then it keeps only a usage counter, under an irreversible summary of the code Apple gives the app.

05 What Countey does not do

  • No advertising and no ad space.
  • No tracking: nothing follows you across other apps or websites. To learn which screens work, the app sends, by day, how far people get before and after paying:
    • the name of the step and how each screen was left (answered or skipped), with the seconds spent on it;
    • for each purchase attempt, which plan was tapped, how it ended and, if it failed, the error code and iOS version (in ranges);
    • whether notifications are allowed and where they were requested;
    • after paying: whether automatic capture, the widget or the Control Center button were set up, and how many expenses were recorded on days 1, 3 and 7 (only how many, in ranges);
    • the app version and which variant of the app and payment screen you got;
    • the country (taken from the connection, without storing the IP);
    • if you answer them, your age range and how you heard about Countey.
    It never includes your name, your email or anything you record. The overall count is anonymous; only what section 07 explains is kept with the random RevenueCat identifier. Without a connection, it waits on your iPhone and is sent later.
  • If Countey crashes or freezes, iOS prepares a technical report and the app sends it to our server so we can fix the problem: the app version, the iPhone model, the iOS version and where in the code it happened. Nothing you have entered goes with it, and it carries no identifier.
  • The only third-party SDK in the app is RevenueCat, used to manage subscriptions and to know which Apple Ads campaigns bring them (see section 07).
  • To convert your expenses between currencies, the app downloads public exchange rates from the European Central Bank and, for the currencies it doesn’t publish, from an open table (currency-api, served by jsDelivr and Cloudflare). Only figures are downloaded: nothing of yours is sent.
  • Your information is never sold or shared with anyone for commercial purposes.
  • No advertising profiles and no automated decisions with legal effects on you.

06 Permissions the app asks for

Camera
To photograph receipts. It activates only when you open the camera from the app.
Microphone
To dictate an expense out loud.
Speech recognition
To turn that dictation into text.
Photos
Only the specific image you pick is accessed; the app never sees the rest of your library.
Notifications
To tell you what was recorded automatically, which payments are coming up and how your plan is doing, with buttons to correct things without opening the app. Also the occasional reminder from Countey.

You can revoke any of these in iOS settings. The app will keep working: you will only lose that particular way of capturing.

07 Subscriptions and purchases

Subscriptions are sold and charged by Apple. Countey never sees, receives or stores your payment details: your card, billing, renewals and cancellations are managed by the App Store through your Apple Account. With a Family plan (Apple Family Sharing, up to 6 people), each person uses Countey on their own iPhone with their own expenses and data, which no one else sees.

To know whether your subscription is active, Countey uses RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., United States) as a data processor. RevenueCat receives from Apple your Countey purchase history (product, dates, price, country and renewal status). It stores it linked to a random identifier created by the app, never to your name or email. With that same identifier, the app stores there: if you answer them, your age range and how you heard about Countey; which variant of the welcome and payment screens you got and the app version you started with; whether your iPhone has iOS 27; whether you selected Apple Pay during setup and whether any expense is already recorded automatically. This shows which channels and screens bring subscriptions. If you came from an Apple Ads ad, Apple tells us, without tracking or personal data, which campaign and keyword you came from, and RevenueCat stores it with that random identifier to learn which ads bring subscriptions. Transfers to the United States have the safeguards required by the GDPR (standard contractual clauses).

To know how many trials end in payment and how many people keep paying each month, our server (hosted on Cloudflare) receives from RevenueCat the steps of each subscription: trial started or cancelled, charges, a failed charge and whether it recovers, refunds, and when and why it ends. They arrive with the plan, the country and the offer code, if any. Each subscription carries the random RevenueCat identifier, Apple’s purchase number and the usage data from the previous paragraph. Never your name, your email or your payment details. Only the developer has access, using their management tools. It is deleted 25 months after that subscription’s last step. We do this based on our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the app, and you can object (section 08).

If you allow notifications, we keep the code Apple gives your iPhone to send it notifications, its time zone, its language and the app version, together with the random RevenueCat identifier, to tell you if your plan can’t be charged and to write to you if you’ve asked for help. If a charge fails, we also keep when it failed and which notifications are still to be sent, for 100 days at most. Notifications are sent by Apple (Apple Push Notification service). The code is deleted when you delete your data in the app, the next time you open Countey with notifications off, when Apple tells us it’s no longer valid (for example, if you delete the app) and, at most, after 400 days. We do this based on our legitimate interest in you not losing your plan over a failed charge and in giving you support, and you can object (section 08) or turn off Countey’s notifications in your iPhone’s Settings.

To help you when you write to us and to improve the app, our server counts each day how much you use Countey, together with the random RevenueCat identifier: how many times you use the AI and of what type (photo, voice or text), whether it failed or you reached the usage limit, how many times you use Apple Pay, bank notifications, the widget, the Control Center button or Ask Countey, how many transactions you record and how many are recorded automatically, the app and iOS versions, and which setup step you’re on, along with the steps from section 05 and their time. With that same identifier we also keep a record of each customer for support: when you last opened the app, the app and iOS versions, your iPhone model, the language, the country, the state of your subscription (trial, paying, failed charge…), the plan, the Apple Ads campaign, your age range and how you heard about us if you answered and, if you write to us, the notes and tags we add while helping you. From it we can give you Countey for free, offer you a discount, remove or apply the AI usage limit for a few hours, or send a notification to your iPhone. These are only counts: never what you record, no amounts, merchants, photos, voice or texts. It’s not used to track you and it’s not sold to anyone. Only the developer has access, using their management tools, and it’s deleted after 13 months without you opening the app. We do this based on our legitimate interest in supporting you and improving the app, and you can object (section 08).

If you suggest an idea in Settings → Coming up, we receive the text you write and the app language in order to review it; if we publish it, other people using Countey will see it, without knowing who wrote it. If we don’t publish it, it’s deleted within 30 days at most. Please don’t include personal data. If you vote, we keep the vote with a random number that doesn’t identify you.

To know whether you’ve already seen the welcome offer, the app checks Apple’s DeviceCheck service, which stores two bits per device at Apple and nothing about you.

If you send us feedback from the app (Settings → Send feedback, or when it asks whether you’re enjoying Countey), we receive only what you write, the app version and its language. It reaches the developer and is kept to improve the app; it carries nothing that identifies you. If you turn on the Face ID lock, the check happens on your iPhone: Countey never sees your face or your passcode.

If you downloaded Countey before it had subscriptions, you keep it at no cost. The app checks this with Apple on your own device.

08 Your rights

Because your financial data is stored only on your device, you keep direct control: you can view it, correct it and delete it from within the app, and uninstalling removes all of it.

In addition, under the General Data Protection Regulation you have the right to access your data, rectify it, erase it, restrict or object to its processing, and request its portability. To exercise these rights, write to support@countey.app. If you believe they have not been honoured, you may lodge a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) or with the supervisory authority in your own country. Since we don’t know who you are, to find your subscription records from section 07 send us your support ID (copy it from Settings). If you no longer have the app, send us Apple’s receipt for the purchase (reportaproblem.apple.com) and we’ll try to find them with it.

09 Children

Countey is not directed at children under 14 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

10 Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be published here with its new date.