Your recipes belong to you
Privacy and ownership at Sharp Cooking
Sharp Cooking is a private cooking system. Your recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, and personal notes are yours — not ours to sell, share, or monetize. This page explains what that means in practice and why it matters.
What does "private recipe storage" mean? It means your recipes are not public, not indexed by search engines, not used for advertising, and not treated as content for someone else's platform.
Why does recipe privacy matter?
Your recipe collection says a lot about you. What you cook, how often you cook, what you eat, what ingredients you buy, how you've modified recipes over time, what you're planning for the week. On most platforms, that data gets analyzed, packaged, and sold to advertisers.
Sharp Cooking doesn't do that. We treat your cooking data the way you'd treat handwritten recipe cards — as personal belongings, not content to be indexed. Here's a deeper look at why private recipe storage matters.
What we do differently
Your recipes are not public
Recipes you save in Sharp Cooking are private by default. They aren't published on the web, aren't indexed by Google, and aren't visible to other users unless you explicitly share a specific recipe with a specific person.
We block AI scrapers and search engines
We actively block web crawlers — Google, Bing, GPTBot, Claude-Web, and others — from accessing your recipe collection. Your recipes aren't training data for someone else's AI model. Your dinner plans aren't someone else's data point. See how this compares to other tools in our guide on private vs. public recipe platforms.
No tracking cookies
We don't build an advertising profile about you. Our analytics use Plausible, which is cookieless, GDPR-compliant, and privacy-first. We see aggregate page views and device types. We don't see individual behavior, browsing history, or personal details.
No data sales
Your recipe data, account information, and usage patterns are never sold to data brokers, advertisers, or third parties. We use your data only to provide the service — syncing your recipes, authenticating your account, and sending you the emails you've asked for. We've written more about data ownership in food apps and why it matters.
You control sharing
When you want to share a recipe — sending your chili recipe to a friend, texting holiday cookies to family — you generate a shareable link or QR code. The recipient doesn't need a Sharp Cooking account. Sharing is limited to prevent abuse and copyright violations.
You share when you choose, with who you choose. No public profiles, no recipe feeds, no algorithm deciding who sees your content.
The platform risk
Most recipe tools are built on business models that depend on your data.
When you store recipes on a free platform — Pinterest, Instagram saves, browser bookmarks, a recipe app backed by ad revenue — you're relying on someone else's business model to keep your recipes accessible.
Platforms change. Features get removed. Free tiers get restricted. Companies get acquired. Recipe websites add more ads and popups. Bookmarks break when URLs change.
Sharp Cooking is built as a durable home for your recipes — a place where your recipes stay usable, regardless of what happens to other platforms:
- Export anytime. Download your full recipe collection whenever you want. Your data isn't trapped.
- Delete anytime. Remove your account and all associated data permanently. No retention tricks, no "we keep it for 90 days" delays.
- No lock-in. We want you to stay because the product is useful, not because leaving is hard.
If you want to protect what you've already collected, here's how to back up your recipes safely.
What we use your data for
We use your data to run the product — not to build a profile about you.
Only what's necessary to run the service:
- Store and sync your recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists across devices
- Authenticate your account via magic links or passkeys
- Send notifications you've opted into (shared recipe alerts, security notices)
- Improve the product using aggregate, anonymized usage data
- Prevent abuse (spam, bulk sharing, terms violations)
We don't analyze your recipes for advertising. We don't sell behavioral data. We don't share your information with data brokers.
The legal details
This page explains our philosophy. For the complete legal privacy policy — including cookie policy, third-party services, GDPR/CCPA rights, data retention, and how to exercise your rights — read the full Privacy Policy.