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Mealpenny
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Privacy Policy

Effective October 9, 2026

The short version. Mealpenny on the web stores your planning answers and weeks on our servers so they're there when you come back. An account is optional and uses only your email address. No ads, no third-party analytics, no tracking across sites, and we don't sell or share your information. Two optional features send text you type to an AI provider, Anthropic, to answer it. Download or delete everything from Settings.

This policy covers the Mealpenny website and web app at next.mealpenny.com and mealpenny.com ("Mealpenny", "we", "us"). Mealpenny is intended for users in the United States.

1. What we store

When you plan without an account

We set a random guest cookie so we can keep your week. Under that random id we store your answers and your week on our servers:

  • Your weekly dinner budget, household size, and ZIP code if you enter one
  • Foods to skip, maximum cooking time, and the "Anything else?" note if you write one
  • Your week's dinners, swaps, "Cooked" marks and grocery-list checks

Your ZIP code is used only to pick your U.S. Census region (Northeast, Midwest, South or West) for price estimates.

Your taste and dinner feedback

If you answer the optional "Your taste" questions, we store your answers (cuisines and proteins you love or avoid, spice level, whether kids eat with you, cooking confidence and equipment), what you write in "Dinners your household always loves" and "Tell us about your household", and what we read from that text (matching recipes, cuisines, proteins and ingredients). When you mark a dinner cooked and answer "Make it again?", we store your answer for that recipe. We use all of this only to choose and explain your dinners. It works the same for guests and accounts, moves into your account when you sign up, and is included in Download my data and removed by Delete account. You can change your answers and remove favorites in Settings → Your taste.

When you create an account

  • Your email address, used to send you sign-in codes and to identify your account
  • Your saved weeks and plan defaults
  • A sign-in session, stored as a one-way hash, that keeps you logged in for up to 30 days

When you sign up or log in, the week you planned as a guest moves into your account.

Usage counts

We count simple product events in our own database (for example, "planned a week" or "opened the grocery list") to see what works. These are not shared with anyone, and there are no third-party analytics, advertising pixels or tracking scripts on the site. Our servers keep short technical logs (route, status, timing) without IP addresses or what you typed.

2. AI features (Anthropic)

Three optional features use Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, PBC, which processes the text on our behalf:

  • "Anything else?" on the planning form: the note you type is sent to Anthropic to turn it into filters (like "no mushrooms").
  • "Ask about this recipe": your question and that recipe's ingredients and steps are sent to Anthropic to write one short answer.
  • "Your taste": the two optional text boxes ("Dinners your household always loves" and "Tell us about your household") are sent to Anthropic to match them to our recipes and ingredients. Your quiz answers and dinner ratings are never sent; they're used by our own planner.

We send only that text, never your email or account id. Anthropic does not use it to train its models under its commercial terms, and keeps it only for a limited time for safety and abuse monitoring. We record only how many AI requests were made and their cost, not what you wrote. If you don't use these boxes, nothing is sent to Anthropic. Answers are written by AI and can be wrong.

3. Service providers

  • Cloudflare hosts the site and its database, and delivers our emails (sign-in codes and waitlist confirmations).
  • Anthropic processes the text you send to the AI features (section 2).

4. Waitlist

If you join the iPhone app waitlist, we store your email address and the date, ask you to confirm it, and then send you one email when the app launches. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link.

5. What Mealpenny does not do

  • No ads and no advertising or tracking cookies
  • No third-party analytics or session recording
  • No selling or "sharing" of personal information, as those terms are used in U.S. state privacy laws
  • No location access (a ZIP code is optional and typed by you)

6. Your choices: download and delete

  • Download your data: Settings → Download my data gives you a JSON file of your account, weeks and defaults.
  • Delete your account: Settings → Delete account deletes your account, weeks and defaults right away.
  • Guest data: guest weeks are tied only to a random cookie. Clearing your cookies disconnects them; email us if you want them deleted sooner.

7. Children

Mealpenny is a general-audience service for household meal planning and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

8. Security

Connections use HTTPS. Sign-in codes and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, codes expire after 10 minutes, and sign-in attempts are rate-limited.

9. Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the effective date above. For material changes we'll also tell account holders by email.

10. Contact

Questions or requests: support@mealpenny.com. Mail to this address is forwarded by Cloudflare Email Routing to our inbox, and we use it only to answer you.