Protein Hunter helps you find high-protein meals and record what you eat. This page explains exactly what leaves your device and what does not.
Your daily log — the meals you add, the portions you chose, and any workouts or activity you record — is stored on your device, and is never sent to us or visible to us. The same is true of your saved meals, pantry list, daily targets and avoid list. We hold no copy of any of it, and there is no account to hold it against.
If you switch on Wearables in Profile, Protein Hunter reads data that your watch or activity app (for example Apple Watch, WHOOP, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura, Samsung Health or Strava) has saved to Apple Health on iPhone or Health Connect on Android. It is off until you switch it on, and your phone asks your permission for each type of data.
Protein Hunter's use of information received from Health Connect adheres to the Health Connect Permissions policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data read from Apple Health is used only as described above, in line with Apple's HealthKit guidelines.
A copy of that same data is kept in your own cloud storage, so you do not lose a year of logging by changing phone or reinstalling the app:
This copy belongs to you, not to us. It goes to Apple or Google under their terms, never to our servers, and we cannot read it. It holds your log, saved meals, targets, avoid list and character — never your photographs, never your location history, and on iPhone never the data read from Apple Health. Deleting the app removes the copy on the phone; the one in your own cloud goes when you delete the app's data from your Apple or Google account settings.
Search queries. When you run a hunt, the text of your request and your chosen filters (areas, radius, price, cuisines, pantry ingredients) are sent to our server and processed by Anthropic's Claude AI to generate restaurant or recipe suggestions. Queries are used only to answer your request and for abuse-prevention rate limiting.
Cached results. To reduce cost and speed up the app, our server may store the results of a search and reuse them for a later, similar search in the same area. What is stored is the query text, the area, and the answer — never who asked. Restaurant results are kept for about a day, recipes for about a week.
Location. If you tap "Add my location", your device location is used to add a search zone. It is used in-app to find nearby results and sent to our server only as part of a search request. You can always type an area instead — location access is optional. If precise location is unavailable, an approximate location derived from your IP address (via ipapi.co) may be used and is always labelled "(approx.)". We never track location in the background.
Nutrition lookups and barcodes. Generic dish names (e.g. "chicken shawarma") and scanned product barcodes are sent through our server to USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts to ground the macro figures. No personal data is included, and results are cached so the same product is only ever looked up once.
Place autocomplete. Text you type in the area field is sent to the Photon (OpenStreetMap) geocoding service to suggest places. No personal data is included.
Meal photos. If you photograph a meal to estimate its nutrition, the picture you take or choose is sent to our server and analysed by Anthropic's Claude AI. Photos are processed for that single request and are not stored by us. Camera and photo library access are used only when you tap the photo button.
Recipe photos. If you photograph a recipe in Dine In so the app can read its ingredient list, that picture is sent to our server and read by Anthropic's Claude AI, the same as a meal photo. It is processed for that single request and is not stored by us. This is a Premium feature and it only ever runs when you tap to add a photo.
The ingredient names you then confirm are looked up in USDA FoodData Central, exactly as if you had typed them — that lookup is free and sends no photo. If an ingredient is not in that database you can choose to have it estimated by Claude, and only then is that ingredient's name sent on. Typing your ingredients instead sends no photo at all, and is free.
Voice search. If you tap the microphone, speech is converted to text by your phone's own speech service — Apple on iOS, Google on Android. Depending on your device and settings, those services may process the audio on their own servers under their own privacy policies. Only the resulting text reaches Protein Hunter; we never receive or store audio. The microphone is used only while you dictate.
Subscription status. If you subscribe, the purchase is handled by the App Store or Google Play and managed through RevenueCat. We receive an anonymous identifier used solely to confirm whether your subscription is active. We never see your name, email or payment details.
The free tier shows banner ads supplied by Google AdMob. AdMob may use your device's advertising identifier to serve and measure ads, subject to Google's privacy policy.
On iOS, the app asks your permission before any tracking identifier is used; if you decline, ads still appear but are less relevant. You can change this at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. On Android, you can reset or delete the advertising ID under Settings → Privacy → Ads.
Subscribers see no ads at all.
Restaurant and recipe suggestions are generated by AI and labelled as such in the app. They may be inaccurate — verify opening hours, menus and ingredients before relying on them. Nutrition figures are estimates scaled to an assumed portion, not laboratory values.
Allergies: the avoid filter works from estimated ingredient data. It cannot confirm what a kitchen actually serves and cannot account for cross-contamination. Never rely on it alone — always confirm directly with restaurant staff.
Protein Hunter is a food search and logging tool, not medical or dietary advice.
Your log, saved meals, pantry, targets and avoid list live on your device and in your own iCloud or Google backup — deleting the app removes the copy on the phone, and your Apple or Google account settings remove the backup. Server-side request logs are kept briefly for abuse prevention and then discarded. Cached search results expire automatically as described above. To ask about or request deletion of any data, contact us at the address below.
Protein Hunter is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them.