Privacy Policy

Applaude AI LLC. ("Applaude," "we," "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, share, and protect your personal information when you use our Answer Engine Optimization platform at applaude.ai. This page describes our practices. It is not a claim that we have completed a third-party GDPR or CCPA audit, and it is not a Data Processing Agreement.

Account Information: Name, email address, company name, and job title provided during registration.

Payment Information: Billing details processed securely by Stripe. We do not store credit card numbers on our servers.

Brand & Tracking Data: Brand names, competitor lists, tracking questions, key messages, and brand URLs you provide for AI visibility tracking.

AI Platform Response Data: Responses received from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity in response to your tracking questions. These responses contain publicly available AI-generated content.

Usage Data: Pages visited, features used, session duration, device information, IP address, and browser type collected automatically for service improvement.

Cookies & Analytics: We use essential cookies for authentication and optional analytics cookies to understand usage patterns.

We use collected information to:

• Provide and operate the AI visibility tracking service
• Generate visibility scores, rankings, and analysis reports
• Process payments and manage subscriptions
• Send service-related communications (reports, alerts, account updates)
• Improve and optimize our platform and analysis algorithms
• Monitor for security threats, fraud, and terms violations
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not use your personal data or brand tracking data to train AI models. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

For users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and UK, we process personal data under the following legal bases:

• Contract Performance: Processing necessary to deliver the Service you subscribed to
• Legitimate Interest: Service improvement, security monitoring, and fraud prevention
• Consent: Marketing communications and optional analytics (you may withdraw consent at any time)
• Legal Obligation: Tax reporting, regulatory compliance, and responding to lawful requests

We share data with the following categories of service providers:

• Clerk: Authentication and user management (USA)
• Stripe: Payment processing (USA, PCI-DSS compliant)
• Supabase: Database storage for reports and tracking data (USA)
• Netlify: Application hosting and serverless functions (USA)
• Sentry: Error tracking and performance monitoring (USA)
• AI Platform APIs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity (for executing tracking queries only)

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or governmental request.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us. We will respond as required by applicable law.

Applaude is based in the United States. If you are located outside the US, your data is processed in the US. Contact us with questions about transfers. This page does not claim a specific transfer mechanism beyond what our processors publish.

We encrypt data in transit (TLS) and at rest, authenticate accounts, rate-limit API endpoints, and monitor errors with Sentry. This page does not claim a third-party audit, customer DPA, or that multi-factor authentication is required on every account.

Applaude is not directed at individuals under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we become aware that we have collected data from a child, we will delete it promptly.

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. Material changes will be communicated via email or in-app notification. The "Last Updated" date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.

For GDPR inquiries, you may also contact your local data protection authority.