Privacy Policy

This explains what Otterli collects about you, why, who else sees it, and what you can ask us to do about it. We've written it as a plain account of how the site actually works, because a policy you can't check is worth very little.

Otterli is run from the United Kingdom, and we are the data controller for everything described here. You can reach us about anything on this page at support@otterli.com. If you'd like a postal address for a formal request, ask and we'll provide one.

The short version

• You can plan meals without an account, and we never store a password either way. If you create an account, you sign in with a one-time code we email you, or with Google.
• If you don't sign in, your plan, pantry and preferences are saved to an anonymous guest account tied to a cookie in your browser — that's what keeps them across a reload. A guest account is deleted after 60 days without a visit. Creating an account adopts its data instead of copying it.
• A Free account is deleted after 24 months without signing in or using it. We email you once, 30 days before, so you can keep it by signing in. Core accounts with a live subscription are never removed this way.
• The personal details we ask for are limited: your email address if you create an account, plus a name and username if you set them up. Marketing email is opt-in: the sign-up box adds you to our updates and offers lists, and you can turn either off in Settings → Notifications or with the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. Sign-in codes, receipts, billing notices and the weekly picks you asked for are service emails and need no consent.
• Account setup also asks a few cooking preferences — who you cook for, allergens, ingredients you avoid, cuisines, meals you cook, and roughly where you shop. You choose them, they're only used to filter recipes and build your first week, and you can change or delete them at any time.
• Analytics and session recordings happen only if you accept cookies. If you decline, we count the visit anonymously and nothing else.
• We don't sell your data, run adverts, or share anything for marketing.

What we collect, and why

Everything Otterli collects is in this table, along with the lawful basis we rely on under the UK and EU GDPR.

That's the complete list. Apart from what Polar collects at checkout to take a payment and work out tax, we don't ask for your address or date of birth, and we never see your card details. The only health- or diet-related information we hold is what you choose to set yourself — allergens, dietary flags, and ingredients to avoid — so recipes can be filtered for you.

Cookies and your choice

When you first visit, a banner asks whether you accept analytics cookies. Until you choose, and permanently if you choose Essential only, we set no analytics cookies and store nothing on your device for analytics.

If you choose Essential only we still count the visit, but anonymously. PostHog combines your IP address, browser details and a secret that changes every day into a one-way hash, then discards the IP address once the day's figures are worked out. It can't be reversed, and because the secret changes daily it can't link you from one day to the next. No profile is built and no recording is made.

If you accept, PostHog sets a first-party cookie so a returning visit is recognised, and records how you use the site — pages viewed, clicks and form submissions, errors and page performance, and session recordings, a replay of your visit showing scrolling, clicks, and typing into non-sensitive fields. We use these to find where the planner is confusing. Recordings are kept for 90 days.

You can change your mind whenever you like using the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page. Withdrawing takes effect immediately and deletes any analytics cookie already set. Refusing costs you nothing — every part of Otterli works the same either way.

Our Cookie Policy lists every cookie and storage item by name, with its purpose and lifetime.

Exporting a meal plan (Core)

Export is part of Core. When you enter your email address and export a plan, two things happen:

• We email you the plan as a PDF with a grocery list.
• We send ourselves a notification containing your email address and the meals in the plan, with the day each was placed on, plus your measurement and servings settings.

The export form no longer carries a marketing checkbox, and an export never adds you to a marketing list. Marketing email is only sent after the separate opt-in described in Marketing emails and consent.

Seven days later we send one short follow-up asking how the plan went. It is a single scheduled email, not a subscription — we don't create a contact record for you, and there is nothing else that follows it.

None of this happens unless you export. The follow-up is a service message about the plan, not marketing. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops marketing emails without affecting the plan or your account emails.

Marketing emails and consent

We only send marketing email if you tick "Send me Otterli updates and offers" when you create an account, or turn updates or offers on later in Settings → Notifications. That one choice adds your email address to two lists: updates (news and new features) and offers (the occasional deal). We keep a record of when and where you agreed, as proof of consent.

You can turn updates or offers off separately, or both, in Settings → Notifications, or with the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. Turning one off removes you from that list; turning both off clears the consent record. Marketing email stops immediately. Turning a switch back on adds you to that list again with a fresh consent record.

Service emails are different: sign-in codes, receipts, trial and billing notices, security messages, the inactivity warning, plan exports and the weekly recipe picks included with Core are about your account or a feature you asked for, so they don't need marketing consent. Weekly recipe picks has its own switch in Settings → Notifications, so you can stop it without touching marketing email.

The weekly recipe picks email is on by default for Core members and during a trial, and only goes to a verified address. You can stop it at any time with the switch in Settings → Notifications or the unsubscribe link in the email, which works in one click without signing in. Stopping it does not affect your marketing choices, and turning marketing off does not stop it.

What we don't do

• We don't sell or rent your personal data, and we don't share it for anyone else's advertising.
• There are no advertising networks, social media pixels, or third-party trackers anywhere on Otterli.
• There are no affiliate links on the site, so no affiliate network receives anything about you.
• We never see or store your card details — payments go straight to Polar.
• We don't make automated decisions about you or profile you in any way that has a legal or similarly significant effect.
• You need to be 13 or over to use Otterli, and 18 or over, or have a parent or guardian's permission, to buy Core. We don't knowingly collect anything from under-13s. If you believe a child has given us their email address, tell us and we'll delete it.

Who else sees your data

We use three outside providers. All act as our processors — they hold data on our behalf, under contract, and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

• PostHog — analytics and session recording. We use their EU instance, so this data is stored on servers inside the European Union.
• Resend — email delivery and our marketing lists. They see your address for account emails (sign-in codes, billing and trial notices, the inactivity warning and setup reminders), plan exports, the weekly recipe picks, and marketing email only if you opted in. Resend is based in the United States, so your email address is transferred there. That transfer is covered by the standard contractual clauses in their data processing agreement, which is the safeguard UK and EU law requires.
• Polar — payments and subscription management. Polar is our merchant of record for Core: it sells the subscription, takes payment and handles tax, so it also handles your billing details under its own privacy policy. They receive your email and billing details when you start a trial or subscribe; card details go straight to them and never reach us.

Everything else — the recipe search, the content database, the newsletter list, our caches, and our server logs — runs on infrastructure we operate ourselves. It isn't handed to anyone else.

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, but we'll tell you unless we're legally prevented from doing so.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR you can ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy.
• Correct anything that's wrong.
• Delete what we hold. If you have an account you can do this yourself — see Deleting your account below. Otherwise it usually means removing your email address from our mailing list and any export notifications.
• Restrict or object to how we use it, including anything we do on the basis of legitimate interest.
• Receive it in a portable format you can take elsewhere.
• Withdraw consent at any time, for analytics or for marketing. This doesn't affect anything done before you withdrew it.

Write to support@otterli.com and we'll respond within one month. We won't charge you, and we won't treat you differently for asking.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled it, you can complain to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, or to the data protection authority in your own EU country. We'd rather you came to us first, but you don't have to.

Guest accounts

If you use the planner without signing in, we keep what you build — your week, your pantry and the preferences you pick — in an anonymous guest account. It's tied to a cookie in your browser, not to your name or email address: we don't ask for either until you create an account.

An unused guest account is deleted. After 60 days without a visit it is marked for deletion and removed 7 days later, with everything in it. The gap is deliberate — it gives us a week to undo a mistake — and any visit before then clears the mark and keeps the account.

Creating an account takes over the guest account's data rather than copying it, so the plan you built before signing up is still there afterwards and the anonymous record is gone.

Inactive Free accounts

A Free account that has not been signed in to or used for 24 months is deleted. We email you once, 30 days before, with a link to sign in. Signing in or using Otterli at any point — even after the warning — keeps the account and clears the warning.

If the 30 days pass without a sign-in, we delete the account and everything in it through the same deletion path described below. This never applies to an account with a live Core subscription (trialing, active or past due), or to a Core member.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Password & Security → Delete account. Asking doesn't delete anything straight away: we email you a confirmation link, which works once, for 24 hours, and only while you're signed in to the account being deleted. If you didn't ask for it, ignore the email and nothing changes.

Opening the link deletes, immediately and permanently:

• your account: your email address, your profile, name, username and photo, and how you sign in
• My Kitchen, your tastes and your pantry
• your saved recipes, cookbooks and recipes you added
• your meal plans and grocery lists
• your subscription, if you have one, is cancelled straight away, and your customer record at our payment provider is deleted
• every signed-in session, on every device, plus any finish-setting-up reminder still waiting to be sent

Two things are separate from your account and aren't removed by it. If you joined our mailing list, unsubscribe from any newsletter or write to us. And if you allowed analytics, the usage events already recorded stay in PostHog under a random ID, not your email address; write to us if you'd like those removed too.

Our database keeps a short recovery history so we can undo an accident on our side. Your deleted data stays in it until it rolls off, and those backups roll off within 24 hours.

If you're outside the UK and EU

This policy describes everything we collect, wherever you are, and we apply the same choices and the same cookie banner to everyone. Your local law may give you additional rights — write to us and we'll do our best to honour them. We don't sell or share personal information in the sense those terms are used in US state privacy laws.

Keeping it safe

The site is served over HTTPS, our providers are chosen partly for their own security posture, and access to the small amount of personal data we hold is limited to the people who run Otterli. We collect as little as we can, which is the most effective protection available to a site this size.

No system is perfect. If something goes wrong in a way that puts your data at risk, we'll tell the ICO within 72 hours and tell you directly where the law requires it.

Changes and contact

If we change how we use your data, we'll update this page and change the date at the top. If a change goes beyond what your existing cookie choice covered, we'll reset that choice and ask you again rather than quietly extending it.

Questions about any of this: support@otterli.com. See also our Cookie Policy and Terms.