Privacy Policy

Effective October 17, 2026

Split Guru is an iPhone app for splitting a restaurant bill with friends: scan the receipt, pick what you had, see what everyone owes and chat about it. It is made by Ruslan Butov (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what the app keeps on your iPhone, what reaches our server, who else handles it, and how to delete it. Questions go to support@butov.dev.

What stays on your iPhone

• Bills. Receipt photos, what the app read from them, the items, the people at the table and everyone’s share are saved on your iPhone. Our server keeps no copy of your saved bills; only a live table you share passes through it (below). Bills are not restored when you sign in on another iPhone, so deleting the app deletes them. Your iPhone’s own backups may include them, as with any app.
• Reading receipts. Receipts are read on your iPhone with Apple’s text recognition. New reading rules download from our server; that download carries no data about you.
• Your profile photo stays on your iPhone. Friends see your initials.
• Camera, photos and contacts. The camera is used to scan receipts and take photos for chats. When you pick photos or a contact card, iOS gives the app only what you picked. Split Guru does not read your photo library or your contacts.
• Face ID, if you use it to lock your past bills, is handled by iOS. We never see your face data.

Your account

To use chats and tables over the internet you sign in with your phone number. We keep:

• your phone number, to sign you in and keep your account yours;
• the name you choose, which friends see in chats and at tables;
• account and device identifiers created by the app, so the server knows which iPhone is which and that a message really comes from you.

To deliver your six-digit sign-in code, your phone number and the code go to Telegram’s Gateway service, which sends the code to you in Telegram.

Chats and tables

• Chats. Messages and photos you send are stored on our server so they reach your friends and come back when you sign in on another iPhone. They are encrypted on the way and stored encrypted by our hosting provider, but they are not end-to-end encrypted: the server, and we as its operator, can read them. We look at chats only to handle a report, to keep the service working, or when the law requires it.
• Live tables. When you host or join a table over the internet, the bill’s items, the names of the people at the table and who had what go through our server so every phone shows the same bill. A closed table is deleted from the server about 30 days after it closes.
• Nearby. Without the internet, phones at the same table talk to each other directly over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That traffic does not pass through our server.

Reports and blocks

• When you report a message or a person, we receive the reason, the text you saw, which chat and message it was, and who reported it. We use reports to remove content and accounts that break our terms, and delete each report about 180 days after we have dealt with it.
• When you block someone, the block is saved with your account and we are told about it, so we can look into that person. They are not told.

Better receipt reading, only if you allow it

The app asks once, when you first set it up. Both of the options below start off, and you can change each one at any time in You → Privacy and Security. Turning one off stops further sending and drops anything still waiting to be sent.

Share scans to improve reading

After a scan, the app sends us the receipt photos (without location or other photo metadata), the text your iPhone read, how the app read the receipt and, once you confirm the bill, the confirmed amounts. It never sends who was at the table or who had what. We use these scans to test and train how the app reads receipts. A receipt can show what is printed on it, such as the place, the time, the server’s name or the last digits of a card.

Improve receipt reading with AI

When a receipt is hard to read, the text your iPhone read from it (never the photo, and never who was at the table) goes through our server to OpenAI, which suggests a reading. We ask OpenAI not to store the request. Under OpenAI’s API terms it is not used to train their models, though OpenAI may keep it for up to 30 days to detect abuse.

Who else handles your data

We use a few service providers, each only for the job below:

• Supabase runs our server: database, sign-in, file storage and server functions. It is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the United States.
• Telegram delivers sign-in codes.
• OpenAI reads hard receipts, only if you allow it.
• Apple distributes the app through the App Store and TestFlight, and shares crash reports with us only if you agreed to that in iOS.
• Google Firebase Hosting serves this website.

We do not sell or rent personal data, show ads, use third-party analytics or tracking, or share data with data brokers. We would disclose data to authorities only when the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• Your phone number, name and identifiers: until you delete your account.
• Chats: messages stay while the chat is in use. We may delete chat photos older than a year.
• Live tables: about 30 days after the table closes.
• Reports: about 180 days after we have dealt with them.
• Shared scans: on our server until you delete your account, and we may delete them sooner. Some are copied, without your account or device identifiers, into the private set of receipts we test and train with; email us and we will remove yours.
• Our providers keep short-lived technical logs, such as IP addresses and request times, for security and troubleshooting.

Deleting your account

Go to You → Privacy and Security → Delete Account. This removes you from every chat and table, and deletes your phone number, name and account, your blocks, and the photos and records of the receipts you shared. We keep only your retired device identifier, so that nobody else can take it over.

What stays: messages you already sent stay in the chats you shared and on your friends’ phones, as when someone leaves a chat; reports about you stay for the time above; and copies of shared scans already in our private test set stay until you ask us to remove them. Bills on your iPhone stay there until you delete them or the app.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it, by writing to support@butov.dev with the phone number on your account. We may ask you to confirm the number before we act. Depending on where you live, for example in the European Union, the United Kingdom or California, you may have further rights, such as to object to or restrict how we use your data, and to complain to your data protection authority.

We handle your account, chats and tables because you asked us to provide the app. Shared scans and AI reading rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in the app. Reports, blocks and technical logs serve our legitimate interest in keeping Split Guru safe. Your data is processed in the United States.

Security

Everything between the app and our server travels over encrypted connections. Your sign-in stays in the iPhone’s Keychain. The server checks every request against your account and device, so people see only the chats and tables they belong to.

Children

Split Guru is not made for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes

When this policy changes, we will publish the new version here and change the date at the top.

Contact

Ruslan Butov, developer of Split Guru: support@butov.dev