Does ReceiptIQ AI upload my receipt photos?

September 30, 2026 · ReceiptIQ AI · Xinzhou Liu

Short answer: No, not by default: in the iPhone app, text recognition runs on your phone, the photo stays on it, and only the recognised text is sent to our server for the AI step. The one place a photo is sent is the browser demo on this website, once and not stored, and the few other exceptions are listed below.

What happens when you scan a receipt

1. You photograph the receipt, or share an image of one into the app. The photo is kept on the iPhone (whether it is kept at all is the "Keep Receipt Images" setting).
2. Text recognition runs on the iPhone and turns the photo into text.
3. That text, not the image, is sent to our server. The server returns the store, date, every item with its price, tax, and a category per item.
4. The result is saved on the phone.

What is sent, and what is not

Sent with a scan

• The text recognised on the receipt: everything legible on it, not only the total.
• The device's language and country setting, so the answer is localised.
• A device identifier, used for rate limiting and fair use; the privacy policy says it cannot be used to identify you personally.
• Anonymous counts with each scan: how many receipts this device has scanned, the install day, how often the plan page was opened and the free limit reached, the time-zone offset, and the answer to the one-time question about what you mainly use the app for. They contain no receipt content, name, email or payment details.

Not sent

• The receipt image, by default.
• Your name, email address or any other identity information through the scan.

On our server

The privacy policy states that no copies of receipt text or images are stored on our servers. The text is passed on to an AI service provider to be sorted into store, items and categories; the provider and its terms are named in the privacy policy (Section 4), and receipt data is not sold or used for advertising. Before anything is sent, the app shows a consent screen, and you can withdraw consent in Settings and keep using manual entry.

The exceptions, all of them

• Report a Problem. If you report a receipt, the photo and the recognised text are attached only after a consent dialog. Support may look at your data to solve a problem only with your explicit consent.
• An opt-in setting, off by default. Settings → Developer Options → Server Mode: Beta → "Send Receipt Image (Beta)" sends a resized copy of the image (at most 512 px, about 150 KB) together with the text. The privacy policy says it is not stored. It is not part of normal use, and since version 2.4.4 the first-run consent screen no longer mentions it.
• The browser demo on this website. On Try one receipt the photo is sent once, resized to at most 1600 px, read, and shown to you. The photo and the result are not stored. Each use is counted without content (day and hour, country, language, success or not, a random browser identifier), and a hashed copy of the IP address is kept for two days to limit the demo to a few tries a day (the page says five). The iPhone app does not work this way.
• Voice and bank statements. Voice input sends the transcribed text. Importing a bank statement sends the text of the transaction rows; for a PDF only the rows, the period and the printed totals, with card and account numbers masked on the phone first.
• Family sync. Receipts and their photos move directly between your family iPhones, with no server in between.
• iCloud backup. Off unless you switch it on; it goes to your own iCloud account, not to us.

Can it work with nothing sent?

Manual entry, browsing and export work offline. Scanning a new receipt needs a network connection, with one exception: an optional On-Device AI mode (Beta), off by default, which does the reading step on the phone. It needs an iPhone 16 or newer with iOS 26 or later, is English-only and less accurate than the normal mode, so it suits receipts in English.

What we do not claim

We do not say that everything stays on the phone. The photo does; the text of the receipt does not. If that matters for a particular receipt, use manual entry or the on-device mode.

Frequently asked questions

Does ReceiptIQ AI upload my receipt photos?

No, not by default. Text recognition runs on your iPhone, the photo stays on it, and only the recognised text is sent to our server for the AI step. Photos leave the phone only if you report a problem and consent, if you switch on an optional beta setting, or if you use the browser demo on the website.

Does ReceiptIQ AI store my receipts on a server?

The privacy policy states that no copies of receipt data are stored on our servers. The data is saved on your iPhone, and optionally in your own iCloud account or on your family's iPhones.

What is different about the browser demo?

In the browser demo the photo is sent to our server once, resized, to be read, and it is not stored. The iPhone app does not upload the photo.

Can I use ReceiptIQ AI without sending anything?

Manual entry works without sending anything. Scanning needs a network connection, except in the optional On-Device AI mode (Beta) on an iPhone 16 or newer with iOS 26 or later, which is English-only and less accurate.

Is the text of my receipt shared with anyone else?

The text is passed on to an AI service provider to be classified. The privacy policy names the provider and its terms, says the data is not sold and is not used for advertising.

More answers

• Privacy policy
• Offline, no-cloud scanning: what works without a connection
• Family sharing with no cloud
• Can I export my receipt data?
• Does ReceiptIQ AI support German receipts?