Privacy

Last updated 5 October 2026

What stays on your device

Your binder, what you paid, your want list, your price watches, conversations, and the value history the app records over time live in the app's own storage on your device. Selected information can be sent when you use Hound, and price refreshes show the card catalogues and our server which cards you hold, as described below. Deleting the app can remove this local data.

When you scan a card, or choose a photo for the scanner to identify or measure, the app also keeps a still of it on your device (cropped to the card where it finds one, otherwise the whole photo), capped at your newest 40 captures so the library can't grow without bound. Holohound never sends these photos anywhere itself; the card-matching step that reads them runs entirely on the device. Beside them, the app keeps an on-device log of what it identified in each saved scan, including any grading company, grade and certificate number it read from a slab's label; that log is not limited to the newest 40. Like the app's other on-device data, the photos and the log can be included in your iPhone backups, as described below.

Profile → Collection backup lets you save a separate JSON backup and preview a backup before explicitly replacing your collection. A backup includes your full acquisition history, including cards you later removed: the date each was added, whether it came from a scan or an import, what you paid, its condition, finish and language, and any grading company, grade and certificate number recorded at the time. It also includes your current costs, sales, listed-for-sale flags, counts of removed copies, tags, wish list, price watches with their alert thresholds, pending scans, and records of up to your three most recent collection imports. Each import record holds the imported file's name, card and copy counts, the values the import wrote and the earlier values it replaced, kept so the import can be undone, and it keeps them even if you later edit or remove those cards. A backup also includes preferences, conversations, value and centering history, your profile image, and card descriptions for offline recovery. Scan photos, the scan log, diagnostics reports, your install id, your Hound data-sharing choice, Hound allowance and Pro purchases are not included. Use Restore Purchases for Pro.

The exported JSON file is not encrypted; store and share it only somewhere you trust. Holohound has no iCloud sync or cloud backup service of its own in this build, and we cannot restore your collection from our servers. The app does not exclude its on-device data, including your collection, scan photos and scan log, from iPhone backups, so iCloud Backup or a backup to a computer can include it, depending on your device's settings. Keep a separate backup if you want to recover your collection after losing the device or deleting the app. Deleting the app does not delete backup files you saved elsewhere.

What leaves your device

Card images and card data

Card artwork and card details are fetched as you browse, from a different catalogue for each game: TCGdex for Pokémon, Scryfall for Magic, YGOPRODeck for Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcast for Lorcana, and gcg-api for Gundam. Like any request to any website, whichever catalogue you are browsing receives your IP address and can see which cards were requested. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Gundam card images are fetched through our own server, which requests that card's image on the app's behalf, so the image host sees our server rather than your device. We never send a catalogue your collection as a list, and these requests carry no identifier from us, but they can still reflect it. When you open the app, it periodically refreshes prices by asking TCGdex for each ungraded English Pokémon card in your binder and Scryfall for each ungraded Magic card, one card per request, so those catalogues can see which of those cards you hold. The app also asks the catalogues about the sets you own cards in, looks up the cards in a collection file you import, can re-request your cards after an app update, and, when you open a set or ask Hound about a set (described below), can fetch that set's card list and then details of cards you are missing from it.

Holohound also links out to graders, marketplaces and sold-listing pages — including PSA, Beckett, CGC, SGC, TCGplayer, eBay and Cardmarket — when you tap a link. A PSA, Beckett or CGC certificate link includes the certificate number you recorded; without one, it opens the grader's lookup page, as the SGC link always does, where you type the number yourself. Check listings on TCGplayer and Find a copy open the card's TCGplayer product page. The eBay, TCGplayer and Cardmarket searches in Buying tools include the card name, set and number and, when you recorded them, its finish and language; they do not include a grade. On the Sell screen, Sold comps opens an eBay sold-listings search for the listing title the app writes for the card — its name, number, set or set code, rarity, its finish when the card has only one, "Japanese" for a Japanese printing, and the game, never its condition or grade — and Open eBay sell opens eBay's own listing page. View sale on a sold-price row opens the web page the sold-listings feed supplied for that sale. Search links open a search page; they do not mean Holohound has fetched or verified a seller's offer. Links open in your web browser or, if you have that company's app installed, in its app, where the visit can also be linked to the account you are signed in to. Those sites and apps receive what the link contains and your normal request, including your IP address, and are covered by their own privacy policies. Building a link sends nothing to these sites; a page is opened only when you tap.

Prices

Every price in the app names the feed it came from, on the card itself, because the feeds are not the same and do not mean the same thing. Pokémon: TCGplayer market prices in US dollars and Cardmarket prices in euro, both supplied through TCGdex, never converted into one another. Magic: TCGplayer prices in dollars, supplied through Scryfall. Yu-Gi-Oh!: TCGplayer's lowest-printing figure, supplied through YGOPRODeck — a floor, not a market price. Lorcana: Lorcast, in dollars; Lorcast names no marketplace behind its numbers, so neither do we. Gundam: no price feed exists yet, so the app shows no price at all rather than an invented one. Holohound is not endorsed or certified by TCGplayer, Cardmarket, TCGdex, Scryfall, YGOPRODeck, Lorcast or gcg-api.

When you open a Pokémon card's report, the app asks our server for the daily TCGplayer prices it has recorded for that product, which our server collects from tcgcsv.com. That request carries the product number and, like any web request, your IP address — nothing else. The app also fetches a small settings file from our server that carries nothing about you.

Sold-price lookups

When its sold-listings feed is connected, the app can show recent sold prices for a card, including graded sales. That feed is not always connected and does not cover every card, and when the app cannot get sold prices for a card it says so on that card. Whenever you open an English Pokémon card, even while that feed is not connected, the app sends our server the card's catalogue id, its name, number and printing, the grading company and grade if the card is graded, the random install id described below, and — if you subscribe to Pro — the Apple-signed record of your subscription. Our server counts lookups per IP address per day, so one network cannot run up unlimited lookups, and asks our sold-listings data provider (currently Scrydex, which supplies eBay sold-listing data) for that card. The provider is sent the card, not your install id, your IP address or your collection. The app also refreshes these figures by itself: when you open it, it looks up each graded English Pokémon card you hold, at most once a day per card, so our server (and, while the feed is connected, the provider) receives those lookups even if you do not open the card.

Hound, the AI companion

Before the first message is sent, the app asks you to allow Hound data sharing and names Anthropic, the AI provider. If you allow it and send a message, our server receives and forwards the following to Anthropic to generate the reply:

• The message you type; any photos you deliberately attach (up to three per message, each scaled so its long edge is at most 1,024 pixels and re-encoded as a JPEG); and the text of up to the last eight messages of the conversation. Photos from earlier messages are not sent again.
• The card you opened Hound from: its game, name, set, number and rarity; whether it is marked as owned and how many copies the holding has; its recorded condition, finish and language; what you paid and how many copies that cost covers; the grading company and grade if the copy is recorded as graded (not the certificate number); centering measurements when available; and, when the card's report is showing sold prices from the sold-listings feed, a summary of them by grade.
• Price references, including amount, currency, source, quote type, printing coverage, the source-provided date and the app's separate price-check time when available. Missing dates or prices remain unknown.
• A binder summary: how many cards and copies you hold, how many are listed for sale, and how many sit outside the priced total and why; the total value and a price date; what you paid, how many cards that covers, and their paper gain or loss; the names and values of your eight most valuable priced cards; and progress on up to six sets. When a message appears to ask about a set the app can identify, it may also send that set's progress, a count of the cards you are missing from it, and up to ten of those missing cards, highest-priced first, with their numbers and prices. To find them, the app looks the set up itself in the card catalogues, so a catalogue can receive requests for its list of sets, that set's card list and cards you are missing from it; those requests go from your device to the catalogue, not to Anthropic. Your complete collection is not sent.
• Offers you choose to ask Hound about: seller labels, currency, item and delivery costs, taxes or fees, quantities, and whether you confirmed that the card details match. Calculated comparison totals may be included so Hound can explain them.

Comparing entered offers on your device sends nothing to AI. Asking Hound about a comparison prepares a message; you still choose whether to send it. These are figures you entered, not fetched listings. Avoid entering personal or sensitive information in seller labels or messages.

Our server also receives the IP address the request comes from, catalogue and holding identifiers for the selected card, your random install id, and, if you have Pro, your App Store subscription record. It uses the install id and IP address for the daily counts described below, and the subscription record, with the install id, for the checks described under Holohound Pro. If our server turns down Pro for a Hound message or sold-price lookup, because the subscription record cannot be verified or is no longer current, or because the subscription is already in use on five other installs, it logs the first eight characters of the install id and the reason (for a Hound message, with a short detail from the subscription record, such as when it expired or which product it names), and in the last case the first eight characters of the subscription's one-way hash, so refused subscriptions can be diagnosed. Those identifiers, your IP address and the subscription record are not sent to Anthropic, which receives the request from our server rather than from your device. We do not store the conversation on our servers. Anthropic's commercial data-retention policy describes its handling of API inputs and outputs, including its standard deletion period and exceptions for safety, legal requirements or other agreed retention. Its retention is separate from the conversation stored on your device.

You can change your choice in Profile → About & legal → Hound data sharing. Choosing Not now (shown as Turn off once sharing is allowed) prevents new Hound messages from being sent; scanning, your binder and price references keep working. Changing the choice does not recall a request already sent or delete data already received by Anthropic.

The install id and daily counts

The app generates an id for your install from random characters and the time it was created. It is not a login, and it is not your Apple ID or an advertising identifier. It is sent with every Hound message and every sold-price lookup, and our server uses it, together with the IP address the request arrives from, to keep daily counts: how many Hound messages an install and a network have sent that day, and how many sold-price lookups a network has made. The allowances reset at midnight UTC, but each day's tallies, keyed by the full install id and IP address, stay on our server; nothing deletes them automatically. The counts are tallies against those ids and addresses; they are not joined to your collection, and the app sends us no password, no email address and no profile details. Our server, the records it keeps and its logs are hosted by Fly.io.

Holohound Pro

If you subscribe, Holohound Pro is sold and billed by Apple through the App Store. We never see your name, your Apple ID, your card or your billing address. When you subscribe, Apple gives the app a signed record of the transaction, and the app sends that record with each Hound message and sold-price lookup, so our server can check against Apple's certificate that the subscription is real and current before applying Pro's limits.

To stop one subscription being shared across strangers' phones, our server keeps a one-way hash of the subscription's original transaction id, together with up to five install ids that have used it and when each last did. If Apple notifies our server that a subscription period was refunded or revoked, or that a refund was reversed, the server keeps that period's status and dates, stored under one-way hashes of its transaction ids and with no automatic deletion, so a refunded period no longer unlocks Pro. An install id that has not used the subscription for 30 days stops occupying one of those five seats. The service checks for expired seats across stored subscriptions during startup and request handling, at most once per hour during normal operation; removal therefore depends on service activity and a successful storage write. Seat cleanup does not delete the refund records or the daily counts described in this policy. To ask about server-held information or request its removal, email us; what removal can and cannot cover is described under Your choices. For a subscriber, the install id and its daily Hound count are linked on our server to the subscription.

What we never collect

• No name, email address or phone number — there is nothing to sign up for.
• No payment details — Apple handles every purchase.
• No advertising identifiers, no ad networks, no cross-app tracking.
• No analytics or crash-reporting SDK is present in this build. If something breaks, Profile offers a "Share diagnostics" report — it is assembled on your device, you choose where it goes in the share sheet, and the app never transmits it anywhere itself.
• No location, contacts, or microphone access is requested, and no photo-library permission: a photo you choose to attach is picked with the system photo picker, which hands the app only that photo.

Camera

The app requests camera access to identify the card in front of it — asked for in context, when you first start the camera (on the Scan screen, or by choosing Take Photo when adding a picture), never on launch. Recognition runs entirely on your device against an index of card images bundled with the app: the app uploads nothing the camera sees while you are scanning, and no video ever leaves the device. The stills it saves from your scans stay on the device, though an iPhone backup, if you use one, can include them, as described under What stays on your device.

The one exception, and it is yours to make: if you deliberately attach a photo to a message to Hound, that photo is sent with the message, exactly as described above. Nothing attaches a photo on your behalf.

Children

Holohound is not directed at children under 13, and its App Store age rating will be set by Apple from our content questionnaire when the app lists. It asks no one for a name, an email address or contact details, and it has no social features and no chat with other people. Hound is an AI, not a person and not another user; what a message to it sends is listed in full above.

Your choices

You can export your collection to a CSV file or save a Collection backup from the Profile screen without a subscription. A CSV is a collection export; use Collection backup when you want the additional preferences, conversations and history described above. Deleting the app can remove your local collection, scan photos and install id, but it does not remove exported files from wherever you saved or shared them. If you subscribed, cancel Holohound Pro in your Apple ID's subscription settings — deleting the app does not cancel it — and the install stops counting toward the subscription's five places 30 days after it was last used, as described above. For a question about anything our server holds, or to ask for it to be removed, email us. Because there are no accounts, our server's records are not tied to your name, email address or Apple ID. Removal works only from your exact install id, and this version of the app does not show you that id or put it in a backup or diagnostics report, so at present we cannot find or remove server records for your install. If an install can be identified, removal covers that install's daily Hound counts and its subscription seats. It does not remove the daily tallies kept against IP addresses, the refund records (which are not linked to an install), our server logs, or copies in our host's storage snapshots.

Changes

If what the app does changes, this page changes on the same day. The date at the top is the honest one.

Contact

support@hypersage.ai