Last updated: 16 September 2026
Climbr is a household budgeting app. You photograph a receipt, the app reads it on your phone, and you keep track of what you spend against budgets you set. This policy explains what happens to the information involved, in plain terms.
It is written to describe what the app actually does. Where something is unusual — and a couple of things here are — it says so rather than burying it.
Climbr is made and published by Bryant Rowley, an individual developer. There is no company behind it.
If you have a question about anything here, or want to make a request about your data, email nationalcolorleague@gmail.com. That address is read by one person — me — and it is the only route in.
When you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive a user identifier and the display name you choose to share. If you use Sign in with Apple's "Hide My Email", we never see your real address — that is between you and Apple.
We use this only to know which household you belong to and to label who entered what, so "Added by Sam" means something.
So the people in your household see the same figures, the following sync to our database and are visible to every member of that household:
We deliberately do not store full card numbers. The app is built so it cannot: the database rejects any record containing a field it does not expect.
Two things are stored only on your device and are never uploaded:
Receipt photographs. Other members of your household see the details you logged and a marker where the photo would be — never the photo. This is not a setting; the app has no ability to send them. You can turn photo storage off entirely in Privacy & data.
Remembered places. If you turn on receipt reminders, the app notes the approximate location of places where you have recorded a purchase, so it can ask "receipt from the supermarket?" when you leave one. That list, and the counts attached to it, stay on your phone. No record is kept of when you were anywhere. Turning reminders off, muting a place, or erasing your data deletes them.
Because these live on your phone, they are included in your own iPhone backups, in the same way as any other app's files. That backup is yours, not ours; we never see it.
Receipt reminders are optional and off unless you turn them on. With them on, your device notices when you have spent time somewhere and left, so the app can ask whether there is a receipt. That happens on your phone.
There is one setting that sends location off your device: "Look up shop names with Apple Maps." It is off by default. With it on, the location of a place you have not logged before is sent to Apple's mapping service to get its name, subject to Apple's own privacy policy. With it off, no location information leaves your device by any route.
We use Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore) to sign you in and to store your household's records. Google processes that information on our behalf, under Google's terms, and holds it on their servers. As part of signing you in, Google's authentication service records technical information such as IP address for security and abuse prevention. Google's privacy information: https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy
If you use Sign in with Apple or Google Sign-In, that provider knows you signed in to Climbr. If you turn on Apple Maps shop lookup, Apple receives the locations it is asked about.
That is the complete list. No advertising networks, no analytics providers, no data brokers.
We keep your household's records for as long as the household exists.
You can take your data out at any time. Privacy & data → Export my data writes CSV and JSON files you can save or send anywhere. Receipt photos are not included, because including them would move them off your device through the share sheet — which is the one thing this app promises not to do. Your photos are in the app's own storage and in your device backup.
You can delete everything at any time. Privacy & data → Delete my account and data removes your household's records from our database, deletes your account, and erases everything stored on the device — including receipt photos and remembered places. If you signed in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke the connection. This cannot be undone.
If you leave a household, or are removed from one, the household's shared records stay with the household.
Climbr is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with information, contact us and we will delete it.
You have the right to know what information we hold about you, to get a copy of it, to correct it, and to have it deleted. The app gives you all of that directly, without having to ask anyone: Privacy & data → Export my data, and Privacy & data → Delete my account and data. We would rather you did not have to write to us to exercise a right.
For anything the app does not cover, email nationalcolorleague@gmail.com and we will respond within 45 days.
California's privacy law (the CCPA, as amended by the CPRA) gives residents specific rights. Climbr is a one-person project and almost certainly falls under the revenue and volume thresholds at which that law applies — but the rights below are ones we honour regardless of whether we are legally required to, because there is no good reason not to.
We do not collect or process sensitive personal information as that law defines it, and we do not use personal information for automated decision-making or profiling.
Climbr is available in the United States only. If that changes, this section has to be revisited before it does — other countries, particularly in the EU and the UK, require disclosures this document does not make.
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and say so in the app before the change takes effect.
Bryant Rowley — nationalcolorleague@gmail.com