Subtrack privacy policy

Last updated: 28 September 2026

Subtrack is a subscription tracker that keeps your data on your own devices. It has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking, and Plainly Studio, its developer, never receives any of your data.

What the app stores

The subscriptions, categories and settings you enter, stored on your device (and in Android’s own backup of your phone, if it’s on: see below).

Finding subscriptions (optional)

Subtrack can suggest subscriptions it finds in your bank activity and receipt emails. All of it happens on your device:

• Bank statements. If you import a statement file, it is read on your device and not kept. Only purchases (money going out) are used: their date, amount and description.
• Bank notifications (off by default). If you allow notification access, Subtrack reads notifications from supported banking apps only (CommBank, ANZ, ANZ Plus, Westpac, NAB, ING, Up and Macquarie) to spot purchases. Notifications from every other app are ignored without being read or stored. You can turn access off at any time in Android’s settings.
• Shared receipts. Text you share to Subtrack fills in a new subscription for you to check. It is not kept after that.
• Receipt emails from a Google Takeout export. If you import an export of your email (the .zip Takeout provides, or an .mbox file), it is read on your device and not copied. Only billing emails (from subscription services, or with subjects such as “receipt” or “invoice”) and emails you forwarded (“Fwd: …”, to read the receipt inside) are read beyond their sender and subject. The address most of the export was delivered to (your own) is stored on your device, so that receipts you forwarded yourself are shown as yours; it’s kept when you disconnect a receipts mailbox, and deleted with Forget under Find subscriptions or when you uninstall the app.
• A receipts mailbox (optional, off by default). If you connect a mailbox (such as a Gmail account that your main account forwards receipts to), your device connects directly to that mailbox’s mail server over an encrypted connection, every few hours and when you open Find subscriptions. It only reads: nothing is marked as read, moved or deleted. Only the sender, subject, date, message ID and size of each new email, and the mail server’s check of its sender, are downloaded to decide which are bills, and only the start of billing emails and forwarded emails is downloaded (the first 512 KB of each: enough for the receipt, not large attachments). The mailbox’s address and app password, and your main address once Gmail’s sealed note on a filter forward has shown it (so that hand forwards from anyone else aren’t read), are stored on your device only (the mailbox screen shows your main address, and can forget it), the password encrypted with a key kept in Android’s Keystore (in your device’s secure hardware, where it has it), and both are excluded from backups. Disconnecting the mailbox deletes them.

Only receipts for subscriptions are kept: from a service Subtrack recognises, or one that states how often it bills and says it's for a subscription, membership or plan. One-off invoices and orders, offers, failed or reversed payments, cancellations, free trials not yet paid for, introductory and one-time discounted prices, gift prices, tips, pay-later instalments, gambling deposits, money paid to you or given away (health fund benefits, payouts, pay, rent received, donations), investments, super contributions, loan and lease repayments, and emails from people’s own addresses that you didn’t forward are recognised as best Subtrack can, and read and discarded. This is a wide net, not a guarantee: an unusually worded email can still be kept, and you can dismiss any suggestion it makes. From a receipt, only what it says about the subscription is kept: the service (or, for one Subtrack doesn’t recognise, the sender’s name), the price, the email’s date, the billing cycle and dates it states, and the sender’s domain (for example netflix.com), plus, for a receipt forwarded by hand, the address it was forwarded from. The email itself is never stored. These are kept for up to 13 months, like payments, and deleted with Forget.

Transfers and payments to people, super contributions, loan and card repayments, BPAY bills and everyday spending such as groceries and fuel are recognised and skipped, and never stored. All other purchases (including direct debits) are stored on your device for up to 13 months, so that yearly subscriptions can be spotted: the payment’s description as your bank shows it (the merchant, and often its location), with the card numbers banks add (whole, or masked like ••1234 or xx1234), card endings and value dates removed, the amount, the date, and which bank’s app or which account’s statement it came from (an anonymous tag, never the account number). Your answers to suggestions (for example “not a subscription”) and which subscription a merchant belongs to are kept so the same suggestion isn’t made again: the merchant, the price, the date of its last payment and opaque references to its payments. They go once that merchant hasn’t been seen for 13 months. You can delete all of it at any time under Settings → Find subscriptions, with Forget next to the stored payments.

None of this is ever synced or sent anywhere, and it is excluded from Android’s backup to your Google account and from transfers to a new phone. Only subscriptions you choose to add are saved like any other, and synced if you use home server sync, along with a note of where each came from (a statement, a notification or a receipt).

What leaves your device

• Exchange rates. Once a day the app downloads European Central Bank reference rates from Frankfurter. The request contains no personal data; like any web request, it reveals your IP address to that service.
• Home server sync (optional, off by default). If you set it up, the app syncs with a server you run yourself on your home network. Everything is encrypted on your device with a key derived from your passphrase before it is sent, so the server stores only data it cannot read. Plainly Studio has no access to your server or your data.
• Receipts mailbox (optional, off by default). If you connect one, your device signs in to your mail provider (for example Gmail) with the address and app password you entered, to read new receipts. Nothing is sent to Plainly Studio or to your sync server.
• Backups (optional). If you export a backup, the file goes wherever you choose to save it.
• Android’s backup (if your phone has it on). Like any app’s, Subtrack’s subscriptions, categories and settings are included in Android’s backup to your Google account and when you move to a new phone. Plainly Studio has no access to it. Bank activity, receipts, the receipts mailbox’s settings and sync secrets are left out.

Notifications

Renewal and trial reminders, and new-subscription suggestions, are generated on your device. No notification content is sent anywhere.

Your data, your control

Uninstalling the app deletes its data from your phone. If you use home server sync, you can delete the synced data from your server at any time.

Contact

Questions about this policy: support@plainly.au