Privacy policy

Last updated October 6, 2026

PodReader turns articles you save into episodes in your own podcast feed. This page explains what we collect, why, where it goes, and the choices you have. We do not sell your data and we show no ads.

What we collect

• Your account. Your email address, your password (stored by Firebase Authentication, never by us in plain text), and your settings such as voice and appearance.
• Your library. The links you save, the text we fetch from them, the episodes we make, your listening progress, and your usage for billing.
• Billing. If you subscribe, Stripe handles your payment details. We never see your card number. We keep your plan, your usage, the cost of the AI processing for your requests, and the Stripe customer reference. We keep the usage and the costs under a random billing ID, not under your account ID.
• Shared commentaries. If you share a commentary, anyone with the link can listen to it and see its title, its summary, the name of the host, and the article it is about. The link does not show your name or email address. It stops after 30 days, or sooner if you stop sharing it.
• The waitlist. If you join the waitlist on a shared commentary, we keep your email address and the link you came from, only to send you an invitation.
• Error reports. When the site breaks in your browser, it sends us the error message, the stack trace and the page path (no query string). We use these only to fix bugs.
• Usage analytics, only if you accept. Page views (the path only) and a few events such as "saved an article" or "changed plan", with your screen size and language. See below.

Usage analytics

We ask before we measure anything. If you accept, your browser sends events to our own server, which forwards them to Google Analytics. Your browser never loads a Google script for this. Our server passes your IP address to Google only so it can estimate your country and city; Google Analytics does not store IP addresses. We do not send your name, email address, account ID, or the content you save.

If you accept, we also run Firebase Performance Monitoring, which measures how fast pages load. It stores an installation ID in your browser.

If you accept, we store a random analytics ID in your browser so that repeat visits count once. If you decline, or later turn analytics off in Settings, we send nothing, and we remove these IDs. Your choice stays on the device where you made it.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as "decline" and do not ask.

Storage on your device

We set no advertising cookies. Some storage is needed for the site to work: Firebase Authentication keeps you signed in, and we remember your appearance and your analytics choice. The analytics and performance IDs described above exist only if you accept.

Who processes your data

• Google Cloud and Firebase host the site, the database, file storage, sign-in and our server logs.
• Google Vertex AI (Gemini) reads the articles you save to write and voice the episodes. It runs in our own Google Cloud project, under Google Cloud terms that do not let Google train its models on this data.
• Google Analytics receives usage events, only if you accept.
• Stripe processes payments.

We also record traces of the AI steps (the prompts and the results) on servers we run in our own Google Cloud project, so that we can find and fix bad episodes.

Our providers store data in the United States.

How long we keep it

• Your account and library: until you delete your account.
• Shared commentaries: 30 days, or until you stop sharing them or delete your account.
• The waitlist: until you ask us to remove your address.
• Usage analytics: Google Analytics keeps event data for 2 months.
• Server logs and error reports: about 30 days.
• Billing records: we keep them after you delete your account, for accounting and audits. They are your plan periods, your usage, and the cost of the AI processing, under a random billing ID. When you delete your account, we delete the only link from your account to that ID. Stripe keeps the invoice history, because the law requires it, and the Stripe customer keeps the billing ID.

When you delete your account in Settings, we delete your account, your library, your settings, your podcast feed, and your sign-in. Your billing records stay, with no link to your account. The text and audio of a public article can stay, because other users can save the same link, but nothing in it points to you.

Your choices and rights

• Turn usage analytics on or off at any time in Settings, under Privacy.
• Delete your account and its data in Settings, under Account.
• Ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it, by email to privacy@podreader.app. We answer within 30 days.

Analytics events carry no account ID, so we cannot link them to you, and deleting your account does not need a separate request to Google.

Children

PodReader is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

We will update the date above when this page changes. If a change affects what we measure, we will ask for your choice again.

Contact

Questions about privacy: privacy@podreader.app.