Privacy policy
What Zenbu stores about you, why, and how to get rid of it.
Last updated: 2026-09-28
Zenbu collects as little as it can get away with. There is no advertising, no analytics, no tracking pixels and no third-party marketing on this site — the data described below exists because a feature would not work without it. This policy explains what is stored, who processes it, and how you can export or erase it.
1.What we collect
How much we hold depends entirely on whether you have an account.
If you browse without signing in, we store:
- A random identifier in a signed cookie, so your free search allowance can be counted
- One row per semantic search, holding a one-way hash of the query — not the text itself — and a timestamp
If you have an account, we additionally store:
- Your email address, display name, profile picture and sign-in provider, held by our authentication provider
- Your library and custom lists, plus a permanently reserved public username and visibility choices if you configure a public profile
- Your search history: the text of each semantic search, the filters applied, how many results it returned and when it ran
- Any feedback you send us, together with the account that sent it
- Your subscription state if you buy Premium: status, plan, billing dates and Stripe's identifiers — never your card number
- Your adult-content preference and the time you confirmed that you are at least 18 years old
We do not collect your address, phone number or date of birth, and we do not ask for a password: sign-in is by Google or by a one-time email code.
2.Why we use it
Each piece of data exists for a specific reason:
- Your email and identity: to sign you in and to keep your library attached to you
- Your library and preferences: to show your own lists and settings to you; a public profile exposes only your chosen username and the lists you deliberately publish, never your sign-in name, photo or email
- Your searches: to enforce the allowance your tier includes, and to show you your own history
- Your subscription state: to give you the Premium access you paid for
- Your feedback: to fix what is broken and decide what to build next
We do not build advertising profiles, we do not sell data, and we do not use your searches to train any AI model of our own.
3.AI processing of your searches
This is the part worth reading carefully. When you run a semantic search, the text you type is sent to OpenAI, which converts it into a numerical representation and — for some queries — reorders the results by relevance. If you use voice dictation, your audio clip is sent to OpenAI to be transcribed and is not stored by us afterwards.
OpenAI processes this as our provider, under its own API terms. Please avoid typing anything into the search box that you would not want processed by a third party — a description of the anime you are looking for is what the field is for.
The anime catalog itself was assembled in advance from the AniList API. Your individual searches are never sent to AniList.
4.Who else processes your data
We do not sell, rent or trade personal data. It is shared only with the providers that make the service run:
Our processors are:
- Neon — database hosting, and the authentication service that holds your account
- OpenAI — semantic search, result reranking and voice transcription
- Stripe — payments, subscriptions and the billing portal
Each is bound by its own data-processing terms. We may also disclose data where the law genuinely requires it.
5.Cookies
Zenbu sets no advertising or analytics cookies, so there is no consent banner to dismiss. The only cookies are the ones the site needs to function:
Those are:
- A session cookie set by our authentication provider once you sign in
- A signed, anonymous identifier that counts a visitor's free searches, valid for about a year
- One preference cookie remembering your preferred anime title format
You can clear these in your browser at any time. Clearing them signs you out and resets browser-only preferences; your adult-content setting remains attached to your account until you change it or delete the account.
6.How long we keep it
Retention follows the purpose:
- Account data: until you delete your account
- Search history: until you delete individual entries, clear it, or delete your account
- Search-usage records: for as long as needed to enforce the allowance; a visitor's records expire after twelve months without activity
- Billing records: kept as long as tax and accounting law requires, even after an account closes
Deleting your account removes your library, history, feedback, preferences and account record immediately and permanently.
7.Your rights
Under the GDPR you can access, correct, export, restrict or erase your personal data, object to its processing, and withdraw consent. Two of these are built into the product and need no request:
Directly in the app:
- Export: download your library as a JSON file from Settings
- Erasure: delete your account and everything attached to it from Settings
- History: delete individual searches, or clear the whole history, from the history page
For anything else — a full copy of your data, a correction, or a question about how something is processed — write to [email protected]. We will respond within one month. If you think we have handled your data badly, you may complain to your national data protection authority; in Spain that is the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos.
8.Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit, the visitor identifier cookie is cryptographically signed to prevent tampering, and access to production data is limited to those who need it. Card details never reach our servers: Stripe handles them end to end.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
9.Children
Zenbu is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. Adult content is available only to signed-in Premium accounts whose holder has confirmed they are at least 18 and deliberately turned it on; it is hidden everywhere else. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will remove it.
10.International transfers
Some of our providers process data outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Where that happens, the transfer relies on the safeguards the GDPR provides for it, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
11.Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when what we do with data changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version, and significant changes will be notified to signed-in users before they take effect.
12.Contact
For any privacy question or request, write to [email protected].
The other half of the agreement: