Privacy Policy

• Your email address, to create and secure your account. If you sign in with Google, the name and email Google shares for that.
• The recordings you upload, only for as long as it takes to transcribe them (see below).
• The transcripts, translations, summaries and titles made from them, and any edits you make.
• Basic details of each recording: its file name, size, length, and the options you chose.
• Your daily usage (minutes transcribed, number of translations and summaries), to apply each account’s allowance.
• Your browser’s time zone (for example Africa/Addis_Ababa) and the country it belongs to, so we can count roughly where people use Researchite from. We don’t use your IP address or your location for this.
• If you buy hours or a plan: what you bought, the hours left, and Paddle’s customer and subscription numbers. Card details go to Paddle only — Researchite never sees them.
• If you pay in birr with Telebirr: what you bought, the amount, a reference code, the transaction number you enter from Telebirr’s message, and when we confirmed it. Your Telebirr PIN is never asked for.
• A one-way fingerprint of your email address (a code it can’t be turned back into), so the free trial is used once per person.
• Settings you save, such as an interview guide, and any problem reports you send us, including the line you reported.
• In a project: its study plan, which KoboToolbox project holds its survey data, the survey results you choose to keep (summaries such as percentages and test results — never respondents’ answers) and the mixed-methods joint display.
• In a project’s literature: the papers you add (their published details and abstracts), your evidence table and notes, and the literature review and discussion. If you upload a paper as a PDF or Word file, its text is kept with the project for the evidence table and drafts; the file itself is deleted once its text is read.
• Data files you open in a project (Excel, CSV, or ODK Central or SurveyCTO exports) are read in your browser and never uploaded — we receive nothing from them, only the summaries you choose to keep.
• If you convert a questionnaire to a Kobo/ODK form: the questionnaire file (or text you paste) for as long as it takes to convert — then it is deleted — and the form made from it, until you delete it.
• Feedback you send with “Send feedback”: what you wrote, its type (problem, idea, question) and the address of the page you sent it from — never anything from your recordings.
• Your notifications (recording ready, project shared, themes found, time running low) — the newest 50.
• If you answer the three optional questions after signing in: what best describes you, what you’ll use Researchite for, and how you heard about us. We look at them only as totals, to understand who uses Researchite.

When you create an account, your email address is checked against a list of temporary (“throwaway”) email services, which can’t get the free trial, and your email domain’s public mail-server record is looked up to spot new ones. The check happens on our server; only the result for the domain (not your address) is kept, for a month. You confirm your address with a link we email you, which works for 24 hours.

1. Your browser uploads the recording in small pieces to private, temporary storage.
2. Our background service joins the pieces, cleans the sound, and cuts it into short parts. The uploaded pieces are deleted as soon as this is done. Uploads that are abandoned partway are deleted within 24 hours.
3. Each part is sent to Google’s Gemini AI service to be transcribed. We use Google’s paid service, and Google states that content sent to it is not used to improve its products. Google deletes the audio parts from its systems within 48 hours.
4. For focus groups with numbered participants, short cut parts are kept privately while the transcription runs, so voices can be matched across the recording, and are deleted when it finishes.

Researchite does not keep a copy of your audio after transcription. Only the text is saved, to your account.

On your own device: your browser keeps a copy of the recording so you can play it back next to the transcript. It stays on your computer and is never uploaded again. You can remove it with Delete → “Audio copy in this browser”. Private or incognito windows don’t keep it.

Recording in your browser: Researchite uses your microphone only after you press Start recording, and only on this site. While you record, a copy is saved in your browser’s own storage every few seconds, so a dead battery or a closed tab doesn’t lose it. That copy stays on your device, is offered only to your account, and is removed once transcription has started (or when you delete it). When you choose Transcribe, the recording is uploaded and handled exactly as above.

When you translate, summarise, improve, or align a transcript, or ask for suggested codes, coding, theme descriptions or a findings draft in a project’s analysis, its text (never the audio) is sent to the same paid Gemini service. So is a questionnaire you convert to a Kobo/ODK form; use the blank questionnaire, never collected answers. A question you ask about your interviews (Ask your interviews) goes to the same service with the study’s transcript lines, and the question and its answer are kept in the study until you delete them or the study. A question you ask the help assistant goes to the same service with excerpts from our Help and guides, to answer it; the question isn’t stored, and only your latest 30 answers are kept with your account.

• Google — Firebase — account sign-in, and secure storage of your saved transcripts and settings.
• Google — Gemini API (paid) — turns audio into text, makes translations and summaries, suggests analysis, reads questionnaires to make Kobo/ODK forms, and drafts the evidence table, literature review and discussion from the papers you choose — and answers questions put to the help assistant.
• Google — Firebase App Hosting and Cloud Storage — hosts the Researchite website and the temporary storage for uploads.
• Paddle — sells hours and plans as our reseller (merchant of record): it takes the payment, handles sales tax and sends receipts. It receives your email address and payment details, never your recordings or transcripts.
• Ethio telecom — Telebirr — if you pay in birr, moves the money from your Telebirr to ours; we see what Telebirr shows any recipient (the amount, the sender’s name and number, the transaction number). To confirm payments automatically, our phone forwards Telebirr’s messages to Researchite, which keeps only the transaction number and amount of money received, and deletes them after 2 days unless they match a purchase. A message that can’t be read is kept with names and phone numbers removed, for 30 days at most.
• Trigger.dev — runs the background processing that prepares and transcribes recordings.
• Resend — sends Researchite’s emails: confirming your address, resetting your password, and telling you a recording is ready (unless you turn that off) — only its name and a link, never what was said.
• Cloudflare — Web Analytics — counts visits to the website: which pages are opened, the country, the kind of device and browser, and the site a visitor came from. It uses no cookies, doesn’t follow anyone from site to site, and never sees your recordings or transcripts. We see only totals.
• KoboToolbox (only if you connect it) — if you connect your KoboToolbox account to send forms there, we keep the server address, your Kobo username and your Kobo API key — on our server only, never shown again — and use them only to create the forms you send and, when you open a project’s survey data, to read it from your Kobo account. That data passes to your browser for analysis and is not stored by Researchite; only the summaries you choose to keep are. Disconnect deletes the key.
• Europe PMC, Crossref and OpenAlex (paper databases) — when you search for papers or add one by its DOI or PubMed id, only your search words or that identifier are sent to them, from our server — never anything from your recordings, transcripts or survey data.
• ImprovMX — forwards email sent to support@researchite.com to our inbox, so it handles the messages you send us there.

We don’t sell your data or use it for advertising. It’s used only to provide Researchite’s tools to you.

• Audio: deleted from our temporary storage once processed (an upload that was stopped partway is deleted within a day); deleted by Google within 48 hours.
• Transcripts, translations, summaries, titles, settings and Kobo/ODK forms: until you delete them or your account.
• Papers and their text, the evidence table and the literature drafts: with their project — until you remove them, or the project or your account is deleted.
• Questionnaires uploaded for conversion: deleted once the form is made (and within a day in any case).
• Daily usage totals, hours, problem reports, feedback and your answers to the optional questions: while your account exists, and deleted with it.
• Telebirr payments: while your account exists. When it’s deleted, confirmed payments are kept as bookkeeping records without your account or email address (as the law requires); the rest are deleted.
• Notifications: the newest 50; older ones are removed, and all of them with your account.
• When an account email (confirm your address, reset your password) was sent, under a one-way code of the address, so the forms can’t be used to flood an inbox: deleted automatically after a day.
• The free-trial fingerprint of your email address: kept after an account is deleted, so a new account with the same address doesn’t get a second trial. Paddle keeps payment records as the law requires.
• Projects: until their owner deletes them or their account. When you share a project, the people you add can read and export the recordings in it — yours and theirs.
• Your password is never visible to us — it’s managed by Firebase Authentication (or by Google, if you sign in with Google).

• Delete any part of a recording — its translation, summary, or audio copy — or the whole recording, at any time.
• Download all your data, or delete your account with everything in it, from your Account page.
• If you upload recordings of other people, you need their consent for this processing — see our Terms of Use.

All traffic to Researchite is encrypted (HTTPS). Recordings in temporary storage are private, and every request that reads or changes your transcripts is checked against your signed-in account, so only you — and the co-researchers you share a project with — can reach your data through the app.

If how we handle data changes in a meaningful way, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.

Email support@researchite.com and we’ll get back to you.