The short version
Your tea stays in your cup. We collect only what we need to give you good reads and remember the people you tell us about. We do not sell your data, we do not run ad trackers on you, and we never share your notes with anyone. The whole point of Bestea is that it is just you and your private notes in here.
Who this covers
This policy covers bestea.app and the Bestea app ("Bestea", "we", "us"). It explains what we do with your information when you use it.
What we collect
- 🩷Account basics: your email and the name you go by, handled through our sign-in provider (Clerk) when you create an account.
- 🩷What you tell Bestea: the people you add (the names you pick for them, their age, your notes), the messages and screenshots you log, your voice notes, and your chats with Bestea.
- 🩷Your settings: what you're looking for, timezone, language, and an optional birthday, used to tailor your reads and send the nudges you turn on.
- 🩷Usage counts: how many reads and chats you have used, so we can keep free and Bestea+ limits fair.
- 🩷Payment info: if you subscribe to Bestea+, our payment processor (Polar) handles the transaction. We never see or store your card number.
- 🩷Standard technical data: basic logs and, if you enable push notifications, the subscription token your browser provides.
Things we do NOT keep
Voice notes are transcribed to text and then discarded. We do not store the audio. Screenshots you share for a read are processed to pull out the text and are not kept as images. We hold on to the text of your logs so Bestea can remember the story over time, but the raw media does not stick around.
How we use it
- 🩷To give you reads: we send the text you share to our AI provider (Anthropic) to generate the read, and voice notes to a transcription provider (Groq) to turn them into text.
- 🩷To remember: we keep your people, logs, and notes history so Bestea can help you see who actually shows up for you over time.
- 🩷To reach you: only for the nudges and notifications you opt into, and the occasional important account or service message.
- 🩷To keep things working: basic security, fraud prevention, and fixing bugs.
About the AI
Bestea uses AI to read your texts and write your replies. The text you share is sent to Anthropic (for reads and chat) and Groq (for voice transcription) to do that. These providers process your text to return a result and, under their standard business terms, do not use it to train their models. Your reads are generated just for you.
Who we work with
We use a small set of trusted providers to run Bestea. Each one only gets the data it needs to do its job:
- 🩷Clerk, for sign-in and account security.
- 🩷Anthropic, for generating your reads and chats.
- 🩷Groq, for transcribing voice notes to text.
- 🩷Polar, for handling Bestea+ payments.
- 🩷Vercel, for hosting the app.
- 🩷Our database and rate-limiting providers, for storing your notes and keeping limits fair.
Keeping it private
Your data is encrypted in transit. Bestea also lets you lock your dashboard with a PIN and your device's Face ID or fingerprint, so even someone holding your phone cannot peek at your notes. Turn it on any time in settings.
Your choices
- 🩷You can delete any person, log, or chat from your notes whenever you want.
- 🩷You can delete your whole account, which removes your personal data from Bestea.
- 🩷You can ask us for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete it, by emailing support@bestea.app.
- 🩷You can turn notifications on or off any time in settings.
How long we keep it
We keep your information while your account is active so Bestea can remember your story. When you delete your account, we remove your personal data. We may keep limited records where we are required to for legal or fraud-prevention reasons.
Age
Bestea is for people 18 and older. It is not meant for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If we update this policy, we will change the date at the top and, for anything important, give you a heads up in the app. Using Bestea after a change means you are okay with the updated policy.