A translator that never asks who you are
No account, no email address, no analytics. Translation runs on your iPhone in all 58 languages. And where something does have to leave the phone, this page says what, when and to whom — rather than leaving you to find out.
There is no account
Not an optional one — there is no way to make one. No name, no email address, no phone number. Nothing to breach, nothing to sell, nothing to hand over if anyone asks.
What you type is never transmitted
Typed text and its translation stay on the device, in every one of the 58languages. Not sent and read-but-discarded: not sent.
Your scans stay in the app
The photos you scan and their translations live in the app's private storage on your phone. They are not uploaded or backed up to us, and deleting the app removes them.
No analytics, at all
There is no analytics product in the app. Nobody is measuring which features you use or how long you spent on a screen.
What does leave the phone, and where it goes
A translator that claimed nothing ever leaves your device would be lying to you. Four things do. This is all of them.
| What | When | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| A photo you scanned | In 33 of the 58 languages, when you have a connection. 17 your iPhone cannot read at all; 16 it reads badly enough to be worth sending. Offline, those 16 are read on the phone instead. | Google Cloud Vision, to read the text. Not stored afterwards, and not used to train Google's models. |
| Audio you spoke | When your iPhone has no offline speech pack for that language, which is most of them on most phones. | Apple, to transcribe — exactly as iOS dictation does everywhere else. It never reaches us. |
| A scan you report as wrong | Only when you tap Report mistranslation, and only that one scan. | Us, so the translation can be improved. Nothing is sent unless you press the button. |
| Advertising data | While you are using the free version. A pass or subscription turns it off. | Google AdMob: an advertising identifier, your IP address, and which screens you opened. Never your translations, photos or typing. |
The translating itself always happens on your phone — even when a photo had to be sent to have its text read. The full detail, including the language lists and what Google and Apple do with what they receive, is in the privacy policy.
The private version is the paid version, and we would rather say so
SofiLingo is free to try, and the free version carries Google AdMob advertising. Google's software takes an advertising identifier, your IP address — enough to place you to roughly a city — and an outline of which screens you opened. It never receives a translation, a photo or anything you typed, and we never build a profile of you.
In the UK and EU you are asked to consent before any advertisement is requested, and asked again by Apple before anything is personalised. Decline and you still get the app.
A Holiday pass at $4.99 removes every advertisement for its 14 days, and the data collection with it. That is the honest shape of the trade, and it seemed better to put it on the page than to let you discover it in a policy.
The one thing counted on a server
Cloud scans are limited so the free tier can exist, which means something has to count them. What is stored is an anonymous identifier made when the app is installed, how many such scans it has made and on what dates, and which plan it is on. It is not linked to a name, an email, a device or an advertising identifier, and counts older than 60 days are deleted. It says nothing about you except how many photos you have had read.
Questions
Does SofiLingo translate on the device?
Yes. Translation itself always runs on your iPhone, in all 58 languages, using models you download. That is true whether the text came from typing, from speech or from a photo: the translating never happens on a server.
So nothing ever leaves my phone?
No — and any translation app telling you otherwise is worth doubting. What you type never leaves the phone. A photo does, in 33 of the 58 languages, when you have a connection: your iPhone cannot read those scripts well enough on its own, so the image goes to Google Cloud Vision to have its text read, and is not stored afterwards. Spoken audio can go to Apple to be transcribed, exactly as iOS dictation does.
Do I need an account?
There is no account and no way to make one. SofiLingo never asks for a name, an email address or a phone number, which means there is no profile of you to leak, sell or subpoena.
What does the free version collect?
The free version carries Google AdMob advertising, and Google’s software takes an advertising identifier, your IP address — which places you to roughly a city — and an outline of which screens you opened. It never receives your translations, photos or typing. In the UK and EU you are asked for consent before any of it. A Holiday pass or a subscription turns advertising off entirely.
Are there analytics in the app?
None. There is no analytics product in SofiLingo. The only thing counted on a server is how many cloud scans an anonymous installation identifier has made, so the free tier can be limited, and those counts are deleted after 60 days.
Read the policy, then decide
The full privacy policy is generated from the app's own documentation and is the one the App Store points at. Nothing on this page is meant to spare you reading it — it is meant to make reading it unsurprising.
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