02 Private budgeting

Private budgeting, in the literal sense.

Most budgeting apps mean “we encrypt it” when they say private. Numari means the data never leaves your phone, because there is nowhere for it to go. Here is what that buys you, what it costs you, and how to verify both without trusting us.

Two claims, kept separate

It would be convenient to blur these together. We will not.

• This website makes zero third-party requests. No analytics, no cookies, no tracking pixels, no external fonts, no CDNs. Open your browser's network inspector on this page and count. That is a fact about the site you are reading.
• The app parses everything on your device. Pasted text, receipt photos, PDF and CSV statements are all read on the phone. That is a fact about the app.

Neither one proves the other. A site with no trackers could still ship a chatty app. We are telling you both, separately, so you can check them separately.

No account, so no server, so no breach

There is nothing to sign up for. Open the app and start tracking. We cannot email you, because we do not know who you are. There is no backend holding a copy of your spending, which means there is no database for anyone to leak, subpoena, or buy.

This is not a promise about our security practices. It is a statement about architecture. The safest data is the data that was never collected.

No bank connection, and no Plaid

Numari never asks for your bank login, and no aggregator sits between you and your account. You bring transactions in yourself — paste a message, photograph a receipt, or import a PDF or CSV statement — and every row waits for your approval.

There is also no email reading. No Gmail integration exists, and none is planned: reading your mailbox would mean handing us a Google account, which is precisely the thing Numari refuses to ask for.

How to check any budgeting app, including this one

Do not take a privacy page at face value. Four checks, in rising order of effort:

1. Read the store privacy label. On the App Store, look at “Data Linked to You”. An app that collects nothing has very little to declare.
2. Look at what it asks for. An app that reads your bank texts needs an SMS permission. An app that watches notifications needs a notification listener. An app that links your bank needs your bank login. If none of those are requested, none of them are happening.
3. Run the airplane-mode test. Turn off every radio and use the app. If the features you care about still work, they were never leaving the device.
4. Watch the network. On a website, the browser's inspector is enough. For an app, a network monitor will show you what it talks to, and how often.

Numari's own answers: nothing to declare beyond the optional live rates; no SMS, notification or bank permissions requested at all; parsing and receipt recognition work in airplane mode. The one thing that will not work offline is live exchange rates, which are off by default and send only currency codes and dates.

Apply the same four checks to us. If a check would fail, we would rather cut the claim than the check.

What you give up

A local-only tracker is not free of cost, and pretending otherwise would undo the point of this page.

• No automatic sync between your phone and anything else. There is no cloud copy.
• No server-side backup. If you lose the phone without a backup file, the data is gone.
• No transactions appearing on their own. Every row is one you brought in and approved.
• On Android, receipts written in Cyrillic cannot be recognised from a photo, because the on-device recogniser Numari uses has no Cyrillic model. Paste the text instead.

If those trades are wrong for you, a bank-linked cloud tracker is a reasonable choice, and we would rather you pick one than be quietly disappointed by this one.

Questions

What does “private” actually mean here?

Two separate things. This website loads nothing from anyone else: no analytics, no cookies, no tracking pixels, no external fonts or CDNs. And the app has no account and no server, so your transactions are never sent anywhere. Both are checkable, and you should check them rather than take our word.

If there is no cloud, what happens when I lose my phone?

You lose the data, unless you exported a backup. That is the honest trade. Numari can write a full backup file, and your phone’s share sheet decides where it goes — Files, a cable, a drive you control. Restoring on a new phone is one import. Numari never sends a backup anywhere on its own.

Do you make money by selling data?

We could not if we wanted to. The app never sends us your transactions, and we do not know who you are — there is no account. Numari is free to use, with an optional Pro subscription billed by the App Store or Google Play. You pay with money or you do not pay; either way you do not pay with data.

Does the app ever use the network?

Once, optionally, and never with your data. Live exchange rates are off by default. If you turn them on, the app asks for public rates using currency codes and dates. It does not send amounts, merchants, notes, or anything that identifies you.

Will there ever be sync?

No. Numari has no sync and no cloud, and that is exactly how your data stays on your device. Moving to a new phone takes one file: export a backup, carry it however you like, import it on the new device. Nothing passes through us.