Last updated 16 October 2026
Autotab is a car record book. The records are yours, they live on your device, and we have built it so that we cannot read them.
The short version. Your records stay on your device and, if you turn it on, in your own private iCloud. From version 3.1 the app sends anonymous usage statistics — counts, never your records — which you can turn off in Settings. There is no advertising code of any kind in the app. If you turn on iCloud sync, your records go to your own private iCloud database, which Apple does not give us access to.
Everything you enter — cars, fill-ups, invoices, documents, photos, odometer readings, service history — is saved in a database on your device.
If iCloud sync is on (Settings ▸ iCloud sync), that database is mirrored to the private area of your personal iCloud account so your other devices can see it. This is the same mechanism Apple's own apps use. We are not a party to it: we cannot query it, export it, or see that it exists. Apple's handling of it is covered by Apple's Privacy Policy.
Deleting the app removes the local copy. To remove the iCloud copy as well, turn off iCloud sync before deleting, or delete Autotab's data from iOS Settings ▸ your name ▸ iCloud.
Autotab AI only ever sees what you ask it to look at, at the moment you ask. That means: a workshop invoice or document you scan, a screenshot or a CSV file of another app's history you import, a dashboard warning light you photograph, and — from version 2.0 — the live engine readings and stored fault codes you ask about, a drive recording you ask to have analysed, and your car's VIN and details, with the country your phone's region is set to (so the versions sold in your market are considered), when you ask for its spec sheet. Each is sent for reading and a structured answer comes back. Nothing is sent in the background, and these, with Chat with your car below, are the only features that send your content anywhere.
Chat with your car (from version 2.5). When you send a question, whether typed in the app, tapped on the CarPlay Car doctor screen or asked through Siri, Autotab sends it together with a text summary of that car's records, so the answer can come from them: the car's name, make, model and year, its odometer and health score, its maintenance plan and the next months' estimated costs, recent services with their dates, costs and workshop names, running costs and fuel economy, the last fill-up, the latest tyre and battery checks, your documents' titles and expiry dates and, if an OBD-II adapter is connected to that car, its current readings and fault codes. From version 3.5 it also includes that car's last 100 trips — when each started, how far and how fast it went, the fuel it used and the range of its engine readings — and its last 100 driving scores, so you can ask about your driving. The last few messages of the conversation go with it so a follow-up question makes sense. The VIN, the number plate and any photos or invoice images are not included. Nothing is sent until you ask. Your conversations are saved only on your device and are not synced to iCloud.
It goes from your device directly to Anthropic's Claude API, on Autotab's paid business account — chosen over a free tier precisely because paid API traffic is not used to train models. Anthropic handles it under its commercial terms. Autotab has no server in between: we never receive what was sent or the answer, and keep no record of either. Drive reports and spec sheets are kept only in your own records on your device and, if you use it, your private iCloud. Your Sparks balance is counted on your device.
An invoice usually contains your name, a vehicle registration and sometimes an address. That is why it goes straight to the reader and nowhere else. If you would rather nothing left the device at all, do not use invoice scanning — every field it fills in can be typed by hand.
When Autotab tailors a maintenance plan to your car, the car's make, model, year and engine are sent to the same service. Nothing about you is included. For a spec sheet, the VIN is also looked up in the U.S. NHTSA's public vehicle database, which returns the manufacturer's record for that car.
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Camera | Photographing invoices, your car, and dashboard warning lights. |
| Photo library | Choosing an existing photo instead of taking one. |
| Location | Finding service centres near you, and measuring speed, distance and lap times during a performance run. Location is used on the device and is not sent to us. Searches for nearby places are handled by Apple Maps. |
| Motion | Measuring acceleration, braking and cornering during a performance run and, from version 3.5, while you drive with an OBD-II adapter and your iPhone in a mount, how smoothly you brake, corner and take bumps, for your driving score. Measured on the device; the readings are kept with your drives, on your device and in your own iCloud if you use it, and are never sent to Autotab. |
| Bluetooth & local network | Talking to an OBD-II adapter plugged into your car. Vehicle data read this way stays on the device unless you ask Autotab AI about it. |
| Face ID | Unlocking the app when app lock is on. Authentication happens in iOS; Autotab is only told yes or no. |
| Notifications | Reminding you when a service or a document is due. |
Subscriptions and purchases are handled entirely by Apple. We never see your card, your billing address, or your Apple Account. Apple tells the app which products you are entitled to, and nothing else.
From version 3.1, so we can see which features are used, whether OBD-II adapters connect reliably on every kind of car, and what the AI costs to run, the app sends two kinds of anonymous record to our own server. You can turn this off at any time in Settings ▸ Privacy ▸ Share anonymous usage statistics; turning it off deletes anything not yet sent and sends one last record — the same app and system fields, nothing more — so that we stop counting that install.
Each record carries only a random number created for this purpose alone, not linked to your Apple Account, your device's identifiers or your iCloud. It never includes your VIN, number plate, names, notes, amounts, locations, photos, conversations or anything else in your records. Our server does not read or store your IP address or any other detail of the request. We use these figures only in aggregate, to improve Autotab and to keep its AI costs in check, and we never sell or share them. Records are kept for as long as they are useful for those comparisons, and are not combined with any other data. Because nothing in them identifies you, we cannot pick out yours; turning the setting off stops them.
There are none. Autotab contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, and no third-party frameworks at all. The anonymous statistics above are sent by Autotab's own code to Autotab's own server. We do not use the Advertising Identifier, we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, we do not build a profile of you, and we have nothing to sell or share.
Autotab is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Because your records are held on your own device and in your own iCloud account, you already have direct access to all of them: you can export any car to CSV, back up everything to a file, edit any record, and delete any record or the whole app at any time. If you are in a jurisdiction with statutory data rights and you believe we hold something about you, write to us and we will answer.
If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and note the change in the app's release notes.
Email support@autotabapp.com and we will reply.