Your car's data stays yours.
Caliper is built so your vehicle data stays yours. Here's exactly what that means: every feature that sends something off your phone, what it sends, and where it goes.
The short version
Caliper has no account, no advertising and no tracking, and nothing it collects is linked to you. Everything you log is stored on your iPhone and, if you turn it on, in your own iCloud. The developer never sees it, unless you choose to send feedback or diagnostics.
Some features need a server to do their job: the AI features, local fuel prices, and the trip on your Lock Screen. The app also sends anonymous usage counts, so the developer knows how many people use Caliper, on which versions and in which countries. Each one sends a specific, limited piece of data, only when that feature runs, and the developer's servers store none of it. Every one of them is listed below, with exactly what it sends.
What Caliper collects
Nothing beyond what each feature needs. Caliper sends data only when a feature you use needs it, as described under "Features that use AI" and "Other things Caliper sends". The developer keeps only what you choose to send: feedback, diagnostics, car link compatibility results, and language or country requests.
Where your data lives
All vehicle data, including service logs, fuel records, trips, mileage, photos and receipts, is stored on your iPhone. If you turn on iCloud sync, the data is copied to your own private CloudKit container. Apple manages that container; the developer cannot read, query, or access it.
iCloud sync
iCloud sync is optional and off until you enable it. When enabled, sync runs between your devices using your Apple Account. The developer receives no copy of any synced data and has no key to decrypt it.
Features that use AI
These features only run when you use them. Each sends its data to a server the developer runs on Vercel, which passes it to Anthropic's Claude AI model and returns the result. Nothing is stored on the developer's side.
Anthropic acts as a processor. Its commercial terms do not let it train models on this data. It may keep API inputs for a limited period for safety, under its own terms, described in Anthropic's privacy policy.
Smart document scanning
When you scan a service receipt, fuel receipt, vehicle registration or roadworthiness certificate with Pro, Caliper sends the scanned page images to the developer's server, which forwards them to Claude. The same happens when you import your service history, and when you scan a dealer's lease offer in the Deal evaluator. Along with the images, Caliper sends the document type, your distance unit and your language and region setting. Claude reads the document and returns structured fields such as the shop name, date, odometer reading, line items and total. Caliper then shows you those fields to check before anything is saved.
Before a page leaves your phone it is reduced in size and stripped of metadata, including any location data the camera attached.
Receipts and registration documents can carry your name, address, licence plate or VIN. If you would rather those never leave your phone, don't use cloud scanning: the free on-device scan reads the document with Apple's text recognition and sends nothing. Insurance documents, lease contracts and finance agreements are always read on your phone and are never sent.
Car photo recognition
When you add a photo of your car and Caliper recognises it, it sends the photo with its location metadata removed, the year, make, model and trim you've entered, your country and region setting, and a usage token. It's free for your first car, up to a small allowance, and part of Pro.
Odometer reading from a photo
When you take a photo of your dashboard to read the odometer, Caliper sends the photo, your distance unit and a usage token. Free users get a small allowance; it's part of Pro.
Car specifications and tyre sizes
When you open a car's Fuel and engine or Tyres screen and Caliper doesn't know those details yet, it looks them up. It sends the car's year, make, model, trim and engine, the fuel type for specifications, your country and region setting, and a usage token. Free users get a small number of lookups. Tyre lookups use a web search run by Anthropic.
Fault code explanations
With Pro, when you ask what a fault code means, Caliper sends the code, the car's year, make, model and engine, your app language and a usage token. The explanation uses a web search run by Anthropic.
Ask about your car
When you ask about a car's service history, Caliper sends your question and that car's relevant service records: dates, categories, shop names, odometer readings, coverage, costs, notes and line items. It also sends your distance unit, your language and a usage token. It never sends your name, VIN, licence plate or location, and nothing from your other cars or your trips.
Ask about your manual
When you ask a question about your car in your own words, Caliper searches that car's owner's manual, stored and indexed on your phone. It then sends the question as typed, the text of the manual pages that match (at most six pages: four for most questions, six when the question is in a different language from the manual), the car's make, model and year, the app's language and distance-unit setting, and a usage token. Claude writes a short answer that quotes the manual word for word with the page number; Caliper checks every quote against the page before showing it. It does not send the whole manual, your name, your service history, your trips, your location, or your other cars.
If the question is in a different language from the manual, Caliper first sends the question, the car's make, model and year, the manual's language, the app's language setting and a usage token to a second step. That step rewrites the question into the manual's own words so Caliper can search it; it sends no manual pages. Manuals come from a public list of manufacturer manual links that Caliper downloads whole from Apple's CloudKit, so nothing about your car is sent to find one, and the manual itself downloads straight from the manufacturer's website. You can also choose a PDF, or use one already saved in the car's documents in the app. The manual is processed and stored on your phone; the whole manual is never uploaded.
Deal evaluator coaching
When you ask for an explanation of a lease deal comparison, Caliper sends the verdict and the deal's figures with their labels, such as the monthly payment, term, fees and the calculated difference, plus your language and its own usage token. It does not send the lease document or anything about you.
Usage limits
Pro features have a daily limit; Ask about your manual has a monthly one. To count it, Caliper sends a usage token: a random value the app creates fresh each day, or each month for the manual. The server can count today's uses with it, but because the token changes every day (every month for the manual), it can't connect one day's requests with another's, or with you. The Deal evaluator uses a separate token of the same kind.
Free allowances, for car photos, odometer readings, specifications and tyre sizes, are counted on your phone, not on the server. The server keeps today's counts only in memory, and they expire within two days.
Other things Caliper sends
Fuel prices
To suggest local fuel prices, Caliper sends the car's country and region and, if you've already allowed location, the name of your nearest city. For nearby stations (in Germany and the UK) it sends an area about 5 km across, never your exact position. These go to a function the developer runs on Cloudflare. Nothing about you is stored; it keeps prices per area so it doesn't fetch them twice.
Trip on your Lock Screen
With Pro and automatic trips, when a trip starts in the background, Caliper sends the trip's Live Activity details to a small relay the developer runs on Cloudflare, which passes them straight to Apple's push service. The details are your car's name, the start time, the trip's running time, distance and purpose, and the push token Apple assigns to that Live Activity. Nothing is stored and no location is sent.
Diagnostics
Diagnostics are sent only if you tap Send in Settings › Diagnostics. In TestFlight beta builds, if you agree, they are also sent about once a day; App Store builds never send them automatically. The diagnostics file holds your app and iOS version, iPhone model, permission settings, your active car's name, the last week of drives with their times and distances, and the trip-detection log, plus any note you add. It holds no places, addresses or coordinates, and the VIN is masked. When you tap Send, the file is emailed to the developer: it goes to a small relay the developer runs on Cloudflare, which passes it to the email service Resend. The relay keeps no copy; Resend sends the email on the developer's behalf, and it stays in the developer's inbox until it's deleted. Each report you send gets a short reference code to quote if you write in; it identifies the report, not your phone. The daily beta upload, and any report the relay can't take, is stored in a CloudKit database only the developer can read, until it's deleted.
Feedback
When you send feedback from the Contact & Support form, Caliper sends what you type, the category, your app and iOS version, iPhone model, language, and whether you have Pro. No email address is asked for. It is stored in a CloudKit database only the developer can read, until it's deleted.
Car link compatibility
Sharing is off until you turn it on, or you can send a one-off result after a connection test fails. Caliper sends which readings your car's port answered (make, model, year, adapter, protocol and supported readings), your app and iOS version, the date, and a random key made for that car. Never the VIN. These results are shared so the list of tested cars can grow.
Language and country requests
When you tap to ask for a language or a country, Caliper sends the request with your app and iOS version and your region setting.
Records saved in CloudKit
Apple's CloudKit attaches a random identifier, specific to Caliper, to every record saved there: feedback, diagnostics, compatibility results and requests. It is pseudonymous: the developer can't see your name or Apple Account from it.
Reference data
Caliper downloads public files, such as known issues and car-maker data, from calipercar.com, and checks a settings file on the developer's server. These requests carry nothing about you or your car.
Services Caliper asks directly
Some lookups don't go through the developer at all. To check US recalls and decode a VIN, Caliper asks the US NHTSA directly, sending the make, model and year, or the VIN. Canadian recalls are the exception: Caliper sends the make, model and year to a small function the developer runs on Cloudflare, which answers from a daily copy of Transport Canada's public recall file. It keeps no logs and stores nothing about the request. Trip weather comes from Apple Weather, which receives the trip's location. Manual PDFs download from the manufacturer's website. To tell you when a newer version of Caliper is on the App Store, and to turn features on or off without an app update, the app asks taool (kit.taool.com) when it opens, sending only which app is asking and the platform: nothing about you or your car. taool sees your phone's IP address, as any server does. taool also receives the anonymous usage counts described below.
Where the servers run
The developer's AI server is a small function hosted on Vercel. Fuel prices, the Canadian recall lookup, the Lock Screen relay and the diagnostics relay run on Cloudflare. None of them has a database of user content. The AI server's logs record only that a request happened, its status and timing, and the document type or page count; never the content, and never usage tokens.
Every request to the developer's servers carries your phone's IP address. Vercel and Cloudflare see it and may log it briefly, and the server uses it in memory to limit repeated requests. Vercel, Cloudflare, Anthropic and Resend act as processors on the developer's behalf, under their data-processing terms, and do not receive your data for any purpose other than handling the request.
Purchases and subscriptions
Subscriptions and any other in-app purchases are processed by Apple. The developer receives only the standard transaction confirmations Apple provides: random identifiers used to verify your purchase, which don't say who you are. No payment details, name, or email is shared with the developer.
Anonymous usage counts
So the developer knows how many people use Caliper, which versions they run and where in the world they are, the app checks in with taool (kit.taool.com) when it opens, and then at most every six hours. Each check-in sends:
- an identifier Apple gives Caliper for your Apple Account, and the date you first downloaded Caliper. Apple signs it so it can't be faked; it is specific to Caliper and doesn't say who you are;
- the version of Caliper, the version of iOS and the kind of device;
- the App Store country you buy apps in, Caliper's language, your preferred language and your phone's region.
That's all. It never includes your name, email, cars, trips, places, receipts, location or anything else you log.
Once a week, Caliper also sends the developer's own server (on Cloudflare) a short report of totals: how far your trips covered since the last report (the first report covers everything logged so far) and how many trips, and for each car its make, model, year and whether it is petrol, hybrid or electric, with its distance. It also says your App Store country, the version of Caliper and whether you have Pro. It carries no identifier at all, and never a VIN, plate, car name, photo, route, place, date of a trip, receipt or cost. The server keeps these reports only to add them up, such as the total distance driven with Caliper or how many people drive each model, and deletes them after 25 months.
Neither is linked to you: the developer sees totals, not individuals, and neither is used for advertising or to track you across other apps or websites. You can turn both off in Caliper's Settings, under Privacy, with Share anonymous usage stats.
Caliper has no advertising SDK, no crash reporter that sends data to the developer, and no tracking of any kind. Beyond what is described on this page, the app sends nothing.
What Apple sees
Apple may collect standard App Store Connect analytics, such as download counts, anonymised usage figures and crash reports, under Apple's privacy policy. The developer sees these in aggregate, never tied to an individual user.
Children
Caliper is not meant for children and does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.
Sign-ups on the website
This section is about the website, not the app. If you ask to join the beta with the form at calipercar.com/beta, the site sends what you enter (your email address, iPhone model, car, country, province or state, whether you have an OBD2 adapter and, if you fill them in, your name and where you heard about Caliper) to a small function the developer runs on Cloudflare. It stores the sign-up in a Cloudflare database and emails it to the developer, who adds your email address to Apple's TestFlight to send the invite. Cloudflare also notes the country the request came from, estimated from your IP address; the IP address itself is not stored. The form also sends the website you arrived from (its address, without anything after a “?”) and any campaign tag on the link you followed (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign), so the developer can tell which posts reach people. Your browser keeps these only for that visit, and they are not used to follow you anywhere else.
These details are used only to run the beta: to send your invite and to follow up about your car. They are not shared, sold or used for marketing, and they are deleted when the beta ends, or sooner if you ask at support@calipercar.com. Cloudflare acts as a processor on the developer's behalf.
If you only ask to hear when Caliper launches, the site sends just your email address, stored and emailed to the developer the same way. It is used for one email when Caliper is on the App Store, and the list is deleted once that email has gone out.
The Android waitlist on the home page works the same way: only your email address, kept for one email if Caliper ships on Android and deleted after that, or sooner if you ask.
A copy of each sign-up is also kept in a Google Sheet in the developer's own Google account, so the lists can be read in one place. The same rules apply to the copy: it is used only for the purposes above and deleted along with the sign-up. Google stores the copy in the developer's account under its own terms.
Who is responsible
Caliper is made and run by Philip Ledingham in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, as Caliper Car, a sole proprietorship registered in British Columbia. He is responsible for the personal data described here (the controller, in the terms of Europe's GDPR and Brazil's LGPD) and can be reached at support@calipercar.com.
Why your data is used
Data that a feature sends to do what you asked, such as a scan, a lookup, fuel prices or the trip on your Lock Screen, is used to provide that feature to you. Feedback, diagnostics, Car link compatibility results, language and country requests, and the beta, launch and Android sign-ups are sent only when you choose to send them, and rest on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. IP addresses in short-lived server logs and in limiting repeated requests are used in the developer's legitimate interest in keeping the servers secure and working. The anonymous usage counts and weekly totals are used in the developer's legitimate interest in knowing how many people use Caliper, which versions, countries and cars to support, and how far Caliper drivers have driven; you can object at any time with the switch in Settings.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of the personal data the developer holds about you, and ask for it to be corrected, deleted, restricted or sent to you in a portable form. You can also object to its use and withdraw any consent you gave. Write to support@calipercar.com. Most of your data is on your iPhone and in your own iCloud, where you can see and delete it yourself, and the developer can't reach it. For what he does hold, such as feedback, diagnostics or a sign-up, say which one you mean (a diagnostics reference code helps), because there is no account to look you up by.
You can also complain to a data-protection authority: in the EU or the UK, the one where you live; in Brazil, the ANPD; in Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Where your data is processed
The developer is in Canada. The services listed above run in the United States and other countries: Vercel, Cloudflare, Anthropic, Resend and taool handle requests on their own servers, and Apple keeps CloudKit records on its own. The European Commission recognises Canada as giving adequate protection. Transfers from the EU, the UK or Brazil to the service providers are covered by their data-processing terms, which include the standard contractual clauses approved for such transfers.
Philip's contact card
This is also about the website. calipercar.com/philip is the developer's contact card, usually opened from a QR code. To see whether the card is useful, the page tells a small function the developer runs on Cloudflare when it is opened and which of its buttons are tapped (for example Save contact, Instagram or Join the beta), and whether it was reached from the QR code or a shared link. Each record also holds the country Cloudflare estimates from your IP address and the kind of device (iPhone, Android, Mac and so on). The IP address itself is not stored, and the page sets no cookies. To count people rather than taps, the record carries a code made from your IP address, browser and the date with a secret; it changes every day and cannot be turned back into your IP address. The records are kept for counting only and are deleted after 13 months.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a material way, the new version will be posted here with an updated effective date below, and the change log says what changed.
31 October 2026: Canadian recall lookups now go to a recall index the developer runs on Cloudflare, built from Transport Canada's public recall file, instead of to Transport Canada directly.
27 October 2026: Caliper now sends anonymous usage counts to taool and weekly anonymous totals of distance and cars to the developer, which replaces "no analytics"; you can turn both off in Settings. The taool check also turns features on or off without an app update.
26 October 2026: added the check with taool that tells you when a newer version of Caliper is out.
25 October 2026: added Philip's contact card.
22 October 2026: Caliper is now run as Caliper Car, a business registered in British Columbia. Nothing about how your data is handled has changed.
14 October 2026: named who is responsible for your data, and added why it is used, your rights and where it is processed. A change to the policy no longer counts as accepted just because you keep using Caliper. The minimum age is now 16.
14 October 2026: published German, French (France), Swedish and Portuguese (Brazil) versions.
14 October 2026: diagnostics you send are now emailed to the developer, through Cloudflare and Resend, with CloudKit as the fallback.
13 October 2026: described every feature that sends data, removed the permanent per-install identifier from usage limits, and stopped sending places and install IDs in diagnostics; the beta form can also take your name and where you heard about Caliper, and sends the site you arrived from.
12 October 2026: published an Italian version.
28 September 2026: added Sign-ups on the website, for the beta, launch and Android lists.
26 September 2026: published a French (Canada) version.
24 September 2026: added Ask about your manual.
1 September 2026: added the "Features that use AI" section to describe smart document scanning, Ask about your car and Deal evaluator coaching.
Contact
Privacy questions: email support@calipercar.com.