Privacy Policy

Overview

TechCompare ("we", "our", or "us") operates this website. The site, including all calculators and comparison tools, runs almost entirely in your browser. Most tools can be used without signing in and without transmitting any personal data to us. Signing in (via Google or GitHub) is optional and unlocks cross-device sync of your favorites, saved tool states, and recent tools.

Data we do not collect

We never ask for and never store:

• Passwords. We do not offer email + password sign-in, and we never see or store any password you use elsewhere.
• Payment information (the site is free to use).
• Tracking cookies for advertising. We do not set any first-party advertising cookies.
• The contents of anything you type into a calculator. Tool inputs stay in your browser and are never transmitted.

If you choose to sign in (optional), we do collect the data described in the "Accounts and user data" section below. If you never sign in, the only data we receive about you is the hashed, anonymized data described in the page ratings, Ask assistant, and log files sections.

Accounts and user data

Signing in is optional. If you do sign in, we use Google and GitHub as the authentication providers. We never see the password you use on Google or GitHub - the OAuth flow hands us a verified token only.

When you sign in for the first time, we receive and store the following data from your chosen OAuth provider:

• Your email address (as returned by Google or GitHub). Used to identify your account and to send you the transactional emails described below.
• Your display name (the name Google or GitHub has on file for you). Shown on your account page only - never displayed publicly.
• A stable internal identifier (your TechCompare user id). Used to link your favorites, saved states, and recent tools to your account.

As you use TechCompare while signed in, we also store:

• Favorites: which tools you have favorited, so they follow you across devices.
• Saved tool states: any tool configuration you explicitly save (with a label you choose). The label and the URL search params for the saved state are stored on our servers under your user id.
• Recent tools: the last 10 tools you visited, tracked automatically. Used to show "Pick up where you left off" on the homepage.
• Settings: your unit preference (centimeters or inches) and homepage customization settings.

Anything you type into a tool's input fields is not stored on our servers unless you explicitly click "Save this configuration" - and even then only the URL search params (which encode the tool's state) and the label you give it are stored, never raw input strings you typed in.

We do not sell your data. Your authentication provider (Google, GitHub, or Discord) sends us your verified email and display name only during sign-in, and Supabase stores your account data on our behalf as our backend provider. Your account data is visible only to you and to our team for support and abuse response.

Marketing emails and consent

When you sign in for the first time, we show you a one-time welcome modal that asks whether you want to receive occasional emails about new tools and major features. The checkbox is unchecked by default - your consent is opt-in, not assumed.

We only send you marketing emails if you explicitly opt in. We never send marketing emails to users who have not opted in, regardless of whether they have an account.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us (using the email in the Contact section below) or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email we send. We will remove your email address from our marketing list within a reasonable timeframe (typically within 7 days).

Transactional emails (such as account deletion confirmation or security notices, if we ever send them) are not marketing. They are sent as part of operating your account and you cannot unsubscribe from them without closing your account.

We do not currently send any emails at all (no marketing, no transactional). Email sending will only start once we have configured a transactional email provider. This section describes the rules we will follow when we do.

Google, GitHub, and Discord as authentication providers

When you click "Continue with Google", "Continue with GitHub", or "Continue with Discord", you are momentarily redirected to that provider's domain to choose which account to use. The provider then sends us a verified token containing the data described in the "Accounts and user data" section above. Their handling of your sign-in is governed by their own privacy policies, not ours:

• Google Privacy Policy
• GitHub Privacy Policy
• Discord Privacy Policy

For your safety, we have enabled "manual linking" in Supabase Auth so that if you later sign in with two of these providers using the same verified email address, the identities automatically merge into one TechCompare account. You do not need to take any action for this to happen - the merge happens based on email matching by Supabase's auth server.

Right to access, correct, and delete your data

Under the GDPR (European Economic Area) and similar laws in other jurisdictions, you have the following rights:

• Right of access (Article 15): you can request a copy of all the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification (Article 16): you can correct inaccurate personal data we hold about you.
• Right to erasure (Article 17): you can request that we delete your account and all associated data.
• Right to data portability (Article 20): you can request a machine-readable export of your account data.
• Right to withdraw consent (Article 7): for any processing based on your consent (such as marketing emails), you can withdraw that consent at any time.

If you are in a jurisdiction with similar data protection laws - for example, California's CPRA, Virginia's VCDPA, or Colorado's CPA - the same access, correction, and deletion rights apply, and you can exercise them through the same channels below.

To exercise any of these rights, you can use the self-service controls on your account page at /account, or you can email us at the address in the Contact section below and we will respond within 30 days.

The "Delete my account" button on your account page permanently deletes your account and all favorites, saved states, recent tools, page ratings, and profile settings. This action cannot be undone.

The "Download my data" button on your account page produces a JSON file containing all the data we have stored about you.

How long we keep your data

We keep your account data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, all associated data is permanently deleted within a few seconds (the deletion is cascading and immediate). We do not retain backups of deleted account data beyond Supabase's standard database backup rotation (typically a few weeks of point-in-time recovery snapshots, after which deleted data is gone for good).

If you do not sign in for 24 months, we may close your account and delete its data, with a 30-day notice email if we have your marketing opt-in (we will not email you about account closure if you have not opted in - we will simply delete the account after the 24-month threshold). This inactivity rule does not apply to stored data that is required for legal compliance.

Local calculators and tools

Every comparison, unit conversion, and calculator on the site runs locally in your browser. Inputs you type into those tools are never transmitted to us. Your saved preferences (unit choices, theme, favorites, saved tool states) live in your browser's local storage when you are not signed in, and are synced to our servers when you are signed in. You can clear local data from your browser settings at any time without contacting us.

Log files

As with most websites, our hosting provider maintains short-lived server access logs that include your IP address, user-agent, and requested URL. These logs exist for availability and abuse-response purposes, are not copied into any database we control, and are retained according to our hosting provider's policy.

Local storage

Your browser's local storage is used to remember preferences (such as unit settings). This data stays on your device and is never transmitted to us. You can clear it from your browser settings at any time.

Realtime color sync

The Color Sync tool lets you compare colors across multiple devices in realtime. When you create or join a session, the color, gradient, and spectrum settings you choose are transmitted through Supabase Realtime to every other device in the same session. This is opt-in: the tool only sends data when you actively create or join a session with a code.

The only data transmitted is the color state itself (HSL values, gradient parameters, and cycle timing) plus a random 4-character session code. No personal data, account information, or identifiers are sent. Session codes are random, not tied to accounts, and the realtime channel is ephemeral: nothing is written to any database and the channel closes when the last device leaves.

Supabase processes these realtime messages as a message broker under their own privacy policy. If you do not create or join a session, no data is transmitted for this feature.

WebGPU benchmark submissions (opt-in account linking)

The WebGPU benchmark page lets you submit your device's performance score to the public leaderboard. By default submissions are anonymous (a hashed device fingerprint is used to deduplicate). If you are signed in, you can optionally check "Link this submission to my account," which attaches your TechCompare user id to that submission. Your benchmark submission then appears on your account page. This is one-way: you cannot unlink a submission after the fact without contacting us (so you cannot dodge moderation by unlinking).

See the third-party services section for how Supabase processes benchmark submissions under their privacy policy.

Page ratings and feedback

Every page on TechCompare includes a star rating widget in the footer. When you rate a page (1 to 5 stars) and optionally submit feedback text, we store the rating, the optional feedback you typed, a SHA-256 hash of your browser fingerprint, and a salted SHA-256 hash of your IP address. We do not store your raw IP address or your raw fingerprint - only the hashes, which cannot be reversed to identify you.

If you are signed in when you submit a rating, we also store your TechCompare user id alongside the rating (instead of relying on the fingerprint hash for deduplication). This lets you change or retract your vote later from the rating widget on the page. If you are not signed in, the fingerprint and IP hash remain as the deduplication mechanism and you cannot retract your vote without contacting us.

Aggregate ratings (the average score and total vote count per page) are baked into the page at build time so search engines can read them, and are also fetched live when the page loads so real visitors see up-to-date numbers. Your individual vote is never displayed publicly. Feedback text is visible only to our team for review and is never published with any identifier.

AI tool assistant

The "Ask TechCompare" assistant (the "Ask anything" bar on the homepage and the /ask page) lets you describe what you want to do in plain language. When you use it, your question and the back-and-forth conversation are sent to our server (a Supabase Edge Function) and then to DeepInfra, our AI inference provider, which determines which tool fits your question and what values to prefill it with. The AI's response tells your browser which tool to open and with what parameters - no tool input is ever sent anywhere until you land on the tool page itself.

The only data transmitted is the query text you type into the assistant. No account information, no data from other tools, and no personal identifiers are added by TechCompare. However, you control what you type - if you voluntarily enter personal information (such as your name or email) into the Ask bar, that text will be sent to DeepInfra as part of your query. We do not add, attach, or store any personal identifiers to your queries. Avoid typing personal or sensitive information into the Ask assistant. DeepInfra processes the query text under their own privacy policy and terms of service, and they do not store, sell, or train on API inputs. Conversation state lives only in your browser tab and is not stored on our servers after the request completes.

Due to sanctions, the Ask assistant is not available in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, or Belarus. Visitors from those regions see a "not available" message instead of the assistant. All other TechCompare tools remain fully available in those regions - only the AI assistant is blocked.

Third-party services

Site assets are served by our hosting provider (Vercel). This provider processes data strictly on our behalf and under their own security controls. We do not embed third-party advertising scripts on the site.

We use Supabase as our realtime message broker for the Color Sync tool, as the backend for our benchmark leaderboard, and as the backend for page ratings. Supabase processes realtime messages, leaderboard submissions, and page rating submissions under their own privacy policy. The Color Sync feature sends only color state and a random session code (see the "Realtime color sync" section above); no personal data is transmitted. Page ratings send only hashed identifiers (see the "Page ratings and feedback" section above).

We use DeepInfra as the AI inference provider for the Ask assistant. When you use the Ask feature, your query text is sent to DeepInfra to determine which tool fits and what values to prefill. DeepInfra processes this text under their own privacy policy and terms of service. DeepInfra does not store, sell, or train on API inputs. No personal data is sent to DeepInfra - only the query text you type into the assistant. See the AI tool assistant section above for details on what happens to your queries.

We use two cookieless analytics services to understand which tools people find useful and to monitor page performance:

• Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights - tracks aggregate pageviews and Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) without cookies or cross-site tracking. No personal identifiers are collected.
• Ahrefs Analytics - a lightweight, cookieless analytics script that counts pageviews and referral sources. It does not set cookies or build cross-site user profiles.

Neither service uses cookies or builds cross-site user profiles. Both collect only aggregate, anonymized data (pageview counts, country-level location, and referrer URLs) that cannot be traced back to an individual user.

Community links

The site links to our Discord community in the footer. Discord has its own privacy policy and data practices that are separate from ours. We do not control what Discord collects when you visit their platform.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced by updating the "Last updated" date below.

Contact

For privacy questions, data requests, or general support, email techcompare.app+support@gmail.com.

To responsibly disclose a security vulnerability, please contact techcompare.app+security@gmail.com instead. See our security.txt for the canonical disclosure policy.