Privacy Policy

Last updated: 31 August 2026

The short version

Monestra does not collect your data. There is no server to send it to.

Everything you enter — accounts, balances, holdings, policies, goals, salaries, documents — is stored on your device, and synced between your own Apple devices through your iCloud account if you are signed into one. It is never transmitted to the developer. The developer cannot read it, cannot recover it, and has no copy of it.

There is no Monestra account, no sign-up, no login, no analytics, no tracking, no advertising, and no third-party software development kits in the app.

If you joined the mailing list on our website, that is a separate thing and Section 3a explains it. It has no connection to the app, which cannot identify you.

The rest of this policy explains that in detail, including the one optional feature that connects to the internet and exactly what it sends.

1. Who is responsible

Monestra is developed and published by Aneri Parikh, a sole proprietor based in India.

• Support, and privacy or data protection queries: support@monestra.app

For the purposes of Indian law, the Grievance Officer is Aneri Parikh, reachable at support@monestra.app. Complaints are acknowledged promptly and resolved within one month of receipt.

2. What Monestra stores, and where

Monestra stores the information you choose to enter, which may include account balances and institution names, investment holdings, insurance policy details, owned assets and their documents, savings goals and contributions, compensation and vesting schedules, subscriptions, details of household staff you pay, travel history, and any documents or photographs you attach.

It is stored on your device, in a storage area provided by the operating system and reachable only by Monestra and its own components. Certain particularly sensitive fields — such as stored phone numbers and payment hints — are additionally encrypted by Monestra using a key held in your device's Keychain.

None of this is transmitted to the developer, under any circumstances. There is no backend service, no hosted database, and no mechanism by which the developer could obtain it.

Sync across your own devices

Since version 1.0, Monestra keeps your records in step across the Apple devices signed into your iCloud account. It does this through CloudKit, Apple's own service, writing to the private database of your personal iCloud account.

What that means precisely, because the distinction is the whole point:

• The data is stored by Apple, on Apple's servers, under your Apple Account — in the same way your Notes, Reminders and iCloud Photos are. Apple processes it as a provider of the service to you, under Apple's Privacy Policy.
• It is not sent to the developer, and the developer cannot read it. A private CloudKit database is accessible only to the account that owns it. Monestra operates no server and holds no key to your records.
• It is encrypted in transit and at rest by Apple. If you have Advanced Data Protection switched on for your Apple Account, the CloudKit copy is end-to-end encrypted, meaning not even Apple can read it.
• Because this is your own private database rather than data collected by the developer, it does not change Monestra's App Store privacy label, which reads "Data Not Collected."

Turning it off. Sync follows your device's iCloud settings. Switch Monestra off under Settings ▸ [your name] ▸ iCloud (or System Settings ▸ [your name] ▸ iCloud on a Mac), or sign out of iCloud, and Monestra keeps working entirely on that device without syncing. Monestra reports what it is actually doing under Settings ▸ Backup & Restore ▸ Where your data lives, which shows the mode the app really started in rather than the one it asked for.

Where the data lives on the device. Monestra's store is kept in a shared App Group container so that Monestra's own components — such as a future home-screen widget — can read the same database. The container belongs to Monestra and is not readable by other developers' apps.

3. What Monestra sends over the internet

By default, Monestra makes no network requests at all. You can verify this: the app records every request it has ever made in Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Network activity.

One optional feature can connect to the internet. It is off by default and must be switched on explicitly in Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Market data & currency. When enabled, and only then, Monestra may contact:

These requests necessarily reveal your device's IP address to the service, as any internet request does. They carry no amounts, no balances, no quantities, no names, and no identifiers. Neither service receives anything that identifies you as a Monestra user, and neither sends anything back to the developer.

Prices and rates are daily, end-of-day figures. Monestra does not provide, claim to provide, or poll for real-time market data.

You choose one price provider at a time, and only that provider is ever contacted. Where you supply your own API key, your use of that service is governed by your agreement with that provider, not by this policy.

Searching for a holding is a separate request, and it sends more than a price lookup does. A price lookup sends only symbols you have already saved; a search sends the words you type, including searches you abandon without saving anything. Monestra therefore only searches when you press Search — never as you type — and records every such request in the network activity log, where it is listed separately from price lookups. Nothing you type is stored, on the device or anywhere else.

You can turn the feature off at any time, and Monestra immediately stops making requests.

3a. The website and the mailing list

Everything above concerns the app. The website at monestra.app is separate, and it does one thing this policy has to account for.

If you enter your email address on the site, it is stored so we can tell you when Monestra is released.

• Only your email address is collected. No name, no company, no profile.
• It is used for that purpose alone. It is never sold, rented, shared, or used to build a profile, and it is not connected to anything in the app — the app has no account and no way to identify you.
• It is stored by Buttondown, our mailing provider, acting as our processor. Buttondown is based in the United States, so this involves a transfer outside India and the EEA, made under its standard data protection terms.
• You can leave at any time. Every email carries an unsubscribe link, which removes your address. You can also write to the address in Section 1 and ask us to delete it.
• We keep it until you unsubscribe, or until the release mail has gone out and the list is no longer needed — whichever comes first.

The site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads no third-party scripts or fonts. Nothing is requested from any other server; every image and style is part of the page. The form sends your address to Buttondown only when you submit it, and nothing before.

4. What Monestra never does

• No analytics, telemetry, usage statistics, or crash reporting.
• No advertising, advertising identifiers, or tracking of any kind, across apps or otherwise.
• No third-party SDKs, trackers, or embedded services.
• No Monestra account, and therefore no email address, password, or profile.
• No sale, sharing, rental, or disclosure of your information to anyone, for any purpose. There is nothing to sell.
• No access to your contacts, camera roll, location, microphone, or health data, except where you explicitly attach a document or photo to a record — which then stays on your device like everything else.

5. The on-device assistant

Monestra includes an AI assistant. It runs entirely on your device using Apple's on-device Foundation Models. Your questions and your financial figures are never transmitted to the developer, to Apple's servers, or to any other party for processing.

Conversations are not saved. Closing or clearing a conversation destroys it; there is no history, and nothing about your conversations is stored or synced.

The assistant is provided as a beta feature. It can be wrong. See our Financial Disclaimer.

6. Backups

Monestra can create backups of your data. These stay under your control.

• On-device snapshots are stored in the app's own storage, encrypted with a key held in your device's Keychain. Because they live in the same store as your records, they sync across your own devices in the same way and under the same terms (see Sync across your own devices above).
• Exported backup files (.monestrabackup) are encrypted with a passphrase you choose. Monestra does not store, transmit, or have any means of recovering that passphrase. If you lose it, the backup cannot be decrypted by anyone, including the developer.
• Where you save an exported backup — iCloud Drive, another cloud service, a computer — is your choice, and that service's privacy policy then applies to the file.

7. Your rights

Because the developer holds none of your data, most data-protection rights — access, correction, erasure, portability, objection, restriction — are things you exercise directly and immediately, inside the app, without asking anyone:

• Access and portability: every record is visible in the app, and the Reports and backup-export features produce copies you own.
• Correction: edit any record.
• Erasure: delete any record, or use Settings ▸ Backup & Restore ▸ Danger zone ▸ Erase all data. Deleting the app removes everything it stored.

There is no request to make and no waiting period, because there is no third party holding your information.

If you believe the developer holds personal data about you and wish to exercise a right in respect of it, contact support@monestra.app. You also have the right to complain to your data protection authority — in India, the Data Protection Board; in the EU or UK, your national supervisory authority.

8. Children

Monestra is not directed at children and collects no information from anyone, including children.

9. Security, honestly stated

Monestra protects your data with a biometric lock (Face ID or Touch ID), value masking, encryption of specific sensitive fields, and passphrase encryption of exported backups.

We would rather be accurate than impressive, so two things are worth stating plainly:

• Monestra's biometric lock and value masking are access controls, not encryption of the whole database. The main data store is protected by your device's own operating-system protections and full-disk encryption, and by Monestra's encryption of specific sensitive fields — but it is not, as a whole, separately encrypted by Monestra.
• The synced copy and the on-device copy are protected differently. The copy in your private iCloud database is encrypted by Apple in transit and at rest, and is end-to-end encrypted if you have Advanced Data Protection switched on. The copy on your device is protected as described above. Neither copy is readable by the developer.
• Your device's own security is what ultimately protects your data. Use a device passcode, keep the operating system updated, and enable full-disk encryption (FileVault on Mac; on by default on iPhone and iPad with a passcode set).

There is no realistic scenario in which a breach of the developer exposes your financial data, because the developer holds none.

10. If this ever changes

If a future version of Monestra introduces any feature that transmits your personal data off your device to the developer, that change will be described in this policy before the feature ships, announced in the release notes, and — where the law requires it — made subject to your explicit consent.

The commitments in Sections 2 and 4 are the point of the product, not a temporary position.

11. Changes to this policy

Material changes will be reflected in the "Last updated" date above and in the app's release notes. The current version is always available at https://monestra.app/privacy and inside the app at Settings ▸ About ▸ Legal.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy, and general support: support@monestra.app