Last updated: 1 October 2026
Pantryful is a recipe and pantry app for iPhone and Android. This policy explains what happens to your information when you use it. The short version: your recipes and your pantry stay on your phone, or in your own iCloud if you turn sync on. On iPhone, Pantryful has no server of its own. On Android, sharing a household uses a database we run; the Android section below says exactly what that holds.
Everything you put into Pantryful — your recipes, your pantry, your shopping list, your favourites, your meal plan, and your record of what you've cooked — is stored in files on your own device, inside the app's private storage.
Household sync (optional). If you turn on Sync with iCloud in Settings, the same data is also stored in your private iCloud database, using Apple's CloudKit, so it can be kept identical across your devices. That copy is held by Apple under your Apple Account and the Apple privacy policy; we cannot read it. If you invite other people to your household, they can see and edit the shared recipes, pantry, list and plan, and you can remove them or stop sharing at any time. Sync is off until you turn it on.
Pantryful has no account system, no login, and no server of its own. Your data is never uploaded to us, because there is no "us" to upload it to. We cannot see your recipes, and we could not retrieve them for you if you asked.
If you delete Pantryful, the data on the device is deleted with it; turning sync off first removes the iCloud copy. If your device is included in an iCloud or iTunes backup, Pantryful's data is included in that backup under Apple's terms, not ours.
Nothing.
Pantryful contains no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting, and no tracking of any kind. It does not collect your name, your email address, your location, your contacts, or an advertising identifier. It does not build a profile of you and has nothing to sell.
Pantryful makes network requests in four situations, all of them started by something you do.
1. When you import a recipe from a link. Pantryful fetches the page at the address you paste, reads the recipe from it, and saves the result on your device. The request goes to whichever website you chose. That website will see the request the same way it would see a visit from a browser, which normally includes your IP address.
2. When you scan a barcode. Pantryful sends the barcode number to Open Food Facts, an open food database, and uses the reply to fill in the product's name, brand, and size. Only the barcode is sent. Nothing about you, your pantry, or your recipes is included. Open Food Facts has its own privacy policy at world.openfoodfacts.org/privacy.
3. When a saved recipe or product has a picture. Images are not copied onto your device. They are loaded from the website or database they came from each time they are displayed, which means that site may see your IP address when a picture loads.
4. When household sync is on. Pantryful reads and writes your data in your private iCloud database, and receives silent push notifications from Apple when another device in the household changes something. This traffic goes to Apple only.
Pantryful does not connect to the internet for any other reason. Receipt scanning, recipe scanning and Siri requests are handled on your device.
Pantryful asks for camera access to read grocery barcodes, to photograph receipts, and to photograph recipe pages. Barcode frames are processed on your device and not stored; only the resulting number leaves your phone, and only to look the product up. Receipt and recipe photos are read on your device with Apple's on-device text recognition and are not kept or transmitted. If you pick a photo from your library instead, Pantryful only receives the photo you choose.
You can refuse camera access, or withdraw it later in iOS Settings. The rest of the app works normally without it, and pantry items can be added by hand.
Everything above applies to the Android app too, with these differences, because Android has no iCloud.
On your phone. Your recipes, pantry, shopping list, meal plan and cooking record are stored in the app's private storage on your phone. If Android's own backup is turned on, they are included in your Google backup under Google's terms, not ours.
Household sync (optional). If you start or join a household, the household's recipes, pantry, shopping list, meal plan and cooking record are also stored in a database that Pantryful runs on Google Cloud Firestore, so that every phone in the household sees the same kitchen. Your phone is given a random anonymous identifier to say which household it belongs to. We do not ask for your name, email address or phone number, and there is no account to create. The data is encrypted in transit and is readable only by the phones in that household. We do not look at it, analyse it, share it or sell it. Nothing is sent to this database unless you start or join a household.
Deleting it. The person who started a household can choose Turn off household sync in Settings, which deletes the shared copy. Anyone else can choose Leave household, which removes their phone from it. Either way, the copy on your own phone stays until you delete the app. To have household data removed for you, write to the address below.
Photos. Photos of recipes and receipts are read on your phone using Google's on-device text recognition and are never uploaded. Barcode scanning uses Google's on-device scanner; only the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts, as described above.
Purchases are handled by Google Play. Pantryful learns only whether Plus is active, and never sees your payment details.
Pantryful is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from anyone. It has no social features, no messaging, and no user-generated content that is visible to anyone else.
Because your data lives on your device and in your own iCloud, you control it directly:
There is no account to close and no data export to request from us, because we hold nothing to export.
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new date at the top. Material changes will also be described in the app's release notes.
Questions about this policy or about privacy in Pantryful can be sent through the support page:
https://stevanothon-ship-it.github.io/pantryful-support/