Privacy policy

1. Controller

The controller is Nikolaos Portokallidis, Al. Panagouli 10, 17885 Zografou, Athens, Greece, email info@sous-chef.eu. Write to that address about anything in this policy.

2. What data we keep

Without an account, your recipes and plan stay on your device and never reach us.

With a free account, your recipes, photos and plan stay on your device. Our server holds:

• your email, which you sign in with, and your name if you give it; if you sign in with Google, the name and identifier Google gives us;
• the account’s plan (Free or Plus) and your language;
• an internal library record linked to your account, and the one-time sign-in codes you asked for (they expire in 10 minutes);
• usage counters, such as how many links you imported today, the dates of your last free AI uses and the number of failed AI attempts today, and, under a keyed hash of the network address (not the address itself), how many free AI uses were made from one network today;
• logs (IP address, time, request, browser or app type) for the security of the service.

An account that never completed sign-in is deleted after about 25 hours.

With Plus, for sync we also keep:

• your recipes, variations, week plan, shopping list and cooking history (date, duration and step times, servings, rating, note);
• one compressed cover image per recipe (the original photos stay on your device);
• your favourites and planning settings, and a counter of smart imports per day;
• the MCP key and the assistant connections (for example ChatGPT, Claude) you created.

We do not use your data for advertising, we do not sell it and we do not build profiles. There are no third-party trackers or analytics in the app or on this website.

3. Diet and allergies (special category)

Diet preferences (for example vegan, gluten-free, fasting, halal, kosher) and allergies may count as special-category data, because they can reveal your health or your religious or philosophical beliefs (Article 9 GDPR). Therefore:

• they are stored only if you give explicit consent with a switch in Settings (storage is part of Plus); without it the filters work but nothing is stored;
• they are kept separately from the rest of the account data;
• they are not sent to the AI provider;
• you can withdraw consent at any time with the same switch, and they are then deleted. We record when you gave consent as proof of it. They leave backups as described in section 8.

The diet and allergen tags on recipes are informational, not a guarantee; they come from the ingredients the recipe lists. On Plus an AI may write them.

4. Why we use it and the legal basis

To provide the service to you: sign-in, storage and sync, imports you ask for, publishing recipes you choose, backups. The legal basis is the contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).

For diet and allergy data, your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a) GDPR).

For logs, usage limits and the hash kept after deletion, which keep the service safe and stop the free allowance being abused, our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)).

5. Smart import, AI and assistants

When you ask for smart import, an AI variation or an AI week plan, the photo, text, link content or the recipe, plan, favourites, ratings and recent cooking history of the request are sent to the AI provider (Google, Gemini API, paid service) to write a draft or a suggestion. On Plus, the recipes you save are also sent for automatic tags. We do not send your email, other account details or your stored diet and allergy preferences; anything you type into a request yourself is sent as written.

On Free the server stores none of this data and not the draft: it records only the date of the use, to apply the weekly allowance. On Plus, imports are stored in your synced library.

For paid use of the Gemini API, Google’s terms say it processes prompts and responses under its Data Processing Addendum and does not use them to improve its products. Google logs prompts and responses for a limited period, to detect and prevent violations of its prohibited use policy, to keep its services safe and for required legal or regulatory disclosures. We do not choose a processing region: the data may be processed or cached transiently in any country where Google has facilities, and so outside the EEA.

If you connect an assistant (Gemini with an MCP key, ChatGPT or Claude with an approval), it can read your recipes, week plan and cooking history and, when you ask, add to your plan and favourites and save recipes. Its provider handles that data under its own terms. You can revoke the connection in Settings; this does not delete what the assistant has already received.

The draft comes back to you for review. Smart import does not invent quantities: a number the source does not contain is dropped. An AI variation may change quantities, servings and time and estimates nutrition, and an AI week plan is only a proposal; you review both before they are used. On Plus, automatic tags (allergens, diets, estimated nutrition) are written by the AI without a review step, and you can correct them. The AI does not calculate costs and takes no decision with legal or similar effect on you.

6. Who else handles the data

• Hetzner Online: the server and the database, in a data centre in Finland (EU).
• Cloudflare: DNS and network in front of the app and the API (it sees traffic and the IP address), hosting of the app and this website (Cloudflare Pages), delivery of sign-in emails (Cloudflare Email Sending) and storage of recipe cover images (Cloudflare R2).
• Google: for smart import and AI (section 5) and, only if you choose it, for Google sign-in.

Encrypted backups of the database and files are stored in Cloudflare R2. Each provider’s data processing terms apply (Article 28 GDPR), except Google sign-in, for which Google acts under its own terms.

Cloudflare and Google are global providers, so some of this data may be processed outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. For those transfers we rely on the safeguards in their data processing terms: the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses and, where the provider is certified, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards.

7. Published recipes and photos

All recipes are private. If you choose to publish an original recipe, it appears on this website without your email, with its creation and update dates. You can withdraw it at any time; it is removed from the website within about 30 minutes; browsers or search engines that already have a copy may show it for a while longer. The same applies when you delete your account.

Recipe cover images in storage are not listed anywhere, but they open for anyone who has their exact link, which contains random characters; the link does not expire.

8. How long we keep it

As long as your account exists. If your Plus ends, sync stops and the data stays on your device. The copy on the server (recipes, variations, week plans, cooking history, cover images, favourites, settings, and diet and allergy preferences if you consented; you can still withdraw that consent in Settings) is no longer updated and for now is not deleted automatically; if Plus returns, sync resumes. You can delete your account at any time, in Settings or by email.

When you delete the account:

• the data is deleted from the database at once, and the cover images from storage (if it does not answer, the deletion is retried every hour). A copy held in the network’s cache may still open for up to a day;
• it leaves the backups as they expire: daily backups are kept 7 days and weekly ones 4 weeks, so within about 4 weeks;
• before each update of the service we keep a copy of the database on the server, the last 10, with no guaranteed time limit (they stay until 10 newer ones exist);
• if we restore the database from a backup, an account you deleted may come back while the backup is valid; write to us and we will delete it again;
• copies that other users made of your published recipes stay theirs, with no link to you.

The web server’s access logs are kept for 14 days and the application’s request log for 5 days; other application logs are overwritten at a size limit.

One exception, so that the weekly free AI use does not come back by deleting and signing up again: after deletion we keep only a one-way keyed hash of the email (not the email itself) with the dates of your last free AI uses and the number of failed attempts of the current day under the same hash. The hash is made with a secret key that the server holds. A nightly job deletes it about a day after 7 days have passed since the last use. We also keep, under a separate keyed hash of the network address (not the address itself), the number of free AI uses from one network for the current day (deleted the next day) and the server’s overall AI call and cost totals, which contain no personal data. Nothing else linked to you is kept. If you write to us, our email provider holds the correspondence and we keep it for as long as needed to answer you and to show that we handled your request.

9. Your rights

You have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, and to withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing done before it. You can object at any time to processing based on our legitimate interest. You need to give an email address to have an account; without one you can still use the app on your device. Write to info@sous-chef.eu; to get a copy of your data, ask by email from the address of the account.

You can also lodge a complaint with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (www.dpa.gr).

10. Storage on your device and cookies

The website and the app do not use cookies. The app stores your recipes, sign-in and settings on your device (the browser’s or the app’s local storage) so that it works offline too. This is necessary for it to work and is not used for tracking.

11. Children

SousChef is for adults. An account requires an age of at least 18, and we do not knowingly keep accounts of minors. If you learn that a minor has an account, write to us and we will delete it.

12. Changes

If something material changes, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.