Cinch is a wardrobe app. It works by looking at photographs of your clothes, so this policy is mostly about photographs of your clothes. It describes what actually happens in the app, not what a template says usually happens.
When you sign in with Apple, Cinch receives your name and an email address. Apple may give you a private relay address instead of your real one, and Cinch works exactly the same either way. Your name is provided by Apple only on the very first sign-in and is stored at that moment or not at all.
You can also sign in with an email address instead. In that case Cinch receives the address you type and sends a sign-in code to it, and that address is what identifies your account.
Each garment you add is stored as an image in a private storage bucket that only your account can read. Images are never public unless you explicitly make a specific item public through a future sharing feature.
Category, colors, pattern, material, brand, how formal a piece is, how warm it is, and a one-line description. You can correct any of it.
Cinch can put a shop's own photograph of a piece on your garment, so a coat you photographed on a hanger looks like the coat. You can also add a piece by describing it, or by pasting the link it came from, instead of photographing it. Nothing here happens on its own: a search runs only when you start one, and a picture is saved only when you pick it.
Two different things leave the app for this, and they are worth keeping apart.
Matching a piece you photographed. Cinch creates a link to your own photograph that works for five minutes, and sends it, with a line of the garment's details, to an AI model that has a web search attached, so the model can look for where the piece is sold.
Describing a piece instead. The words you type — "black midi dress, Reformation" — are sent to Datafeedr, a company that licenses product listings from shops and their networks. This is not a web search and no AI model reads those words. The pictures that come back are the shops' own, supplied by them to be shown alongside a link to what they sell. No photograph goes with your words unless you attach one to show the true color, and that one is shrunk to 256 pixels on your phone before it is sent and is never stored by Cinch.
One search still runs, and it is a different company. Naming the brand of a piece from a photograph you took is a judgement a product catalog cannot make, so that request — and only that one — runs a web search carried out by Exa on OpenRouter's behalf. This matters, and we would rather write it down than let it be assumed: Cinch tells OpenRouter to route its AI requests only to model providers that are not allowed to train on what they receive, and that restriction does not extend to the search. OpenRouter says so itself — its data-retention enforcement "does not apply to plugins and tools you choose to enable, such as web search". So the words that search is made of, and the pages that come back, are handled under Exa's own policy, not under anything Cinch can hold anyone to on your behalf.
Cinch's server downloads the picture you choose. While you are looking at the results, though, your phone loads those pictures from the shops' own servers, exactly as a web page would — so those shops see a request from your device. They are told nothing about you or your closet.
Some of those links can earn Cinch a commission. Where a shop runs an affiliate programme Cinch belongs to, the link you tap carries a code identifying Cinch — never a code identifying you. Cinch does not pass your name, your account, or anything about your closet to the shop or to the network, and it deliberately does not use the per-click tracking field both networks offer for exactly that purpose. A link that pays nothing is not marked differently in how it behaves; a paid one is labeled Paid link where it appears. Nothing can be bought inside the app, and Cinch is never paid to place a particular piece in front of you.
When you match a piece you had already photographed, Cinch records which shop the picture came from and prints it on the garment. Removing the listing photograph brings back your own, which is never altered or deleted.
Cinch lets you build your closet by talking instead of photographing. If you choose to, the app records you describing your clothes and uploads that recording to a private storage bucket only your account can read.
The recording is sent to a third-party model provider to be turned into text. It is deleted as soon as that succeeds — Cinch keeps the words, never the audio. If the transcription fails, the recording is kept so you can retry without describing everything again, and it is deleted automatically within 24 hours whether or not you come back. Deleting your account removes any recording immediately.
The text is then read by a model to work out which garments you named. Unlike outfit suggestions — where a model only ever sees a shortlist the app already built on your phone — this is a path where a model does receive a description of your wardrobe, because that is the whole of what you asked it to read. The resulting transcript is kept as part of your closet, so each garment can show you the words it came from.
Used to fetch the local forecast so outfit suggestions suit the weather. Coordinates are rounded to roughly 0.7 miles before they leave your device and are not stored. If you decline, Cinch falls back to a default city and tells you on screen that it has done so.
If you connect your calendar, Cinch reads the titles and times of today's events so it can suggest one outfit that works across all of them. All-day entries are ignored. Event titles are included in the request to the AI provider. Cinch does not read past or future days, does not read event notes, attendees or locations, and does not store your calendar.
Anything you write about your plans, such as "dinner at 7 then drinks", is sent to the AI provider along with the outfit options so it can pick sensibly.
Which outfits you like, dislike, and wear; when you wore them; and the reasons you give. This is what the app learns your taste from. Cinch also keeps a technical record of each AI request — tokens used, cost, response time, and whether it succeeded — to monitor reliability and spend.
You can connect Pinterest so the Stylist can draw inspiration from your own boards. You approve this on Pinterest's own sign-in page; Cinch never sees your Pinterest password. The access is read-only, limited to your boards and Pins.
What Cinch keeps is the connection itself — an access credential, stored encrypted on Cinch's server. What Cinch deliberately does not keep is anything from Pinterest: your boards and Pins are fetched live each time you ask, shown to you with a link back to Pinterest, and let go. They are not copied into Cinch's database, not cached, and not sent to any AI model. The outfit built alongside a Pin is assembled on your phone from your own clothes.
Disconnecting, from Privacy & data inside the app, deletes the stored credential immediately; deleting your account does too. You can also revoke Cinch's access from Pinterest's own security settings at any time.
Cinch uses a small number of providers. Each receives only what it needs to do its job.
| Provider | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Your account, garment records, and images | Database, file storage, and sign-in. Hosted in the United States. |
| OpenRouter | Garment images via a link that expires after five minutes; the weather; your plans; event titles; when you ask for a listing photo, the same kind of link plus a line describing the piece; and, if you describe your closet out loud, the recording itself and then the text it became | AI tagging, outfit reasoning, matching a garment to a product listing, and transcribing a voice walkthrough. OpenRouter passes requests to the underlying model provider that serves the chosen model. |
| Datafeedr | The words describing the garment you are looking for. No account, no identifier, and nothing about your closet | Searching a licensed catalog of product listings, so a piece you describe can be matched to a shop's own photograph of it. This is not a web search and the words are not sent to any AI model. |
| Exa | The words of one search — the descriptor used to name the brand in a photograph you took. No account and no identifier | The web search inside a brand match, run by OpenRouter as a plugin. OpenRouter states that its own data-retention enforcement does not apply to plugins, so this search is governed by Exa's policy. Describing a piece in words does not reach Exa. |
| Only if you connect it: the sign-in you complete on Pinterest's own page, and read-only requests for your boards and Pins, made when you ask the Stylist for board-led inspiration | Drawing inspiration from boards you already keep. Board and Pin content is fetched live, displayed with attribution, and not stored by Cinch — and it is never sent to an AI model. | |
| The shops, and their affiliate networks | A request from Cinch's server for the picture — and, while you are choosing, a request from your device for each picture shown. On a paid link, a code identifying Cinch. Never a code identifying you | Showing you the product photographs, saving the one you pick, and — where Cinch belongs to a shop's affiliate programme — attributing a commission. The per-click field both networks offer for identifying an individual visitor is deliberately left empty. |
| Open-Meteo | Rounded coordinates only — no account, no identifier | Weather forecast. |
| Apple | Sign-in credentials | Sign in with Apple. Governed by Apple's own privacy policy. |
| Superwall | Your account identifier, which plan you are on, and the fact of a purchase, renewal or cancellation. No garments, no images, no closet | Showing the membership screen and recording which tier your account is entitled to. Apple, not Superwall, takes the payment — card details never reach Cinch or Superwall. |
| PostHog | Your account identifier and which screens you opened — for example that a closet reached ten pieces, not what is in it. No garments, no images, no names | Counting how the app is used so we can tell which parts are working. This is product analytics, not advertising: nothing is shared with an ad network and nothing follows you into other apps. |
| Resend | Your email address and the message being sent | Delivering sign-in codes and account emails. |
Nothing is sold. Nothing is shared for advertising. Cinch has no relationship with any data broker.
These pages set no cookies and run no JavaScript at all, so there is no analytics here, no tracking pixel, and nothing to opt out of.
If you leave your email address in the form on the home page, that address is stored so we can write to you once about Cinch. It is not connected to any Cinch account, it is not sold or shared, and it is not added to any other list. Nothing is sent to you automatically, including a confirmation.
That form is public and unauthenticated, so it has to be protected from being flooded. To do that, the IP address of the request is combined with a secret and hashed, and only the hash is kept, next to a count of recent submissions from it. The IP address itself is never stored and never reaches the database. Those counters are deleted after seven days.
Ask at the address below and your entry on the waitlist is deleted.
Before any photograph is sent to an AI provider, Cinch asks you in the app and explains what is sent. If the providers or the categories of data change, you will be asked again rather than being opted in silently.
That consent covers every door a photograph can leave by: tagging, matching a piece against a product listing, and the color swatch you can attach to a description. If you withdraw it, all of them stop, and so does the stylist chat. Outfit suggestions carry on — those are built on your phone and never needed the AI.
Until you delete it. There is no automatic expiry, because a wardrobe is meant to be a long-lived record. Delete your account and everything goes — the photographs in storage as well as the rows in the database.
One thing does expire on its own: a voice recording. It is deleted the moment the transcription succeeds, and within 24 hours regardless. That is the only piece of your data Cinch destroys without being asked, and it is destroyed because keeping it was never the point — the words were.
Open Profile → Delete account. This removes every photograph you uploaded, every garment record, your outfit history, any voice recording that has not already been deleted, and everything the app has learned about your style. It happens immediately and cannot be undone. You do not need to email anyone.
Depending on where you live — including the UK, the European Economic Area, and California — you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data, and to object to certain processing. Deletion is available directly in the app. For anything else, contact us at the address below and we will respond within 30 days.
Cinch does not sell personal information and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under California law.
Cinch is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
Data is encrypted in transit. Garment images live in a private bucket with per-user access rules enforced at the database level, so one account cannot read another's files. Image links given to the AI provider expire after five minutes. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.
If this policy changes materially, the date at the top will change and — where the change affects what is sent to AI providers — you will be asked to agree again inside the app.