Spenlow
Android · in closed testing on Google Play

Your money, tracked on your phone — and nowhere else.

Spenlow is a personal expense tracker for Android. Transactions, budgets, accounts and categories are stored in an encrypted database on your device. There is no account to create, no server that holds your records, and no sync.

Two features can send data off the phone, and only when you switch them on yourself: an encrypted Google Drive backup that uploads ciphertext your passphrase alone can open, and Web Access, which serves your data to a browser on your own Wi-Fi. Both are off by default. Neither sends anything to us — Spenlow has no server of its own.

What Spenlow does

Everything below runs on the device, against the local encrypted database.

  • Record in seconds

    Add an expense, income or transfer by hand, or place a home-screen tile for the spends you repeat and log them in one tap.

  • Bank SMS, parsed on device

    Optional. Spenlow reads transaction alerts from your bank and drafts the entry for you to approve. The parsing happens on your phone; the message text is never stored and never sent anywhere.

  • Budgets that warn you

    Per-category monthly budgets with progress, history and alerts before you overspend. Notifications never carry an amount.

  • Accounts and transfers

    Track cash, bank and wallet balances. Move money between them without either side counting as spending.

  • Recurring rules

    Rent, subscriptions and salary generate themselves on schedule, into a review inbox you approve.

  • Your data, exportable

    Export everything to CSV, XLSX or JSON, and import it back. It is your ledger — you can always take it out.

Encrypted Google Drive backup

A phone can be lost. Spenlow can keep an encrypted copy of your ledger in your own Google Drive, so a new phone can restore it. This is off until you turn it on, and turning it on asks for two things: which Google account to use, and a passphrase you choose.

  • Encrypted before it is uploaded. The backup is encrypted on your phone with a key derived from your passphrase. Google receives ciphertext only.
  • Spenlow never sees your passphrase or your data. There is no Spenlow server for it to reach. If you forget the passphrase, nobody can restore the backup — including us.
  • One scope, and it is the narrow one. Spenlow requests https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appdata and nothing else. That grants access to a hidden application-data folder Spenlow creates for itself. It cannot list, read or touch any other file in your Drive.
  • Backup, not sync. Each backup replaces the one before it. It copies one direction — phone to your Drive — with no merge between devices.
  • Nothing goes to us, ever. Not the files, not their names, not how many there are. None of it appears in diagnostics either.
  • Yours to revoke. Turn backup off in the app and optionally delete the files; or revoke Spenlow's access at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Full detail — what is backed up, what leaves the device, how to delete it — is in §7 of the privacy policy.

Web Access, on your own Wi-Fi

Reviewing a month is easier on a laptop keyboard. Switch Web Access on and your phone runs a small server on your local network that a browser can reach — after you pair it by scanning a QR code shown on the phone.

  • Off by default, and not even downloaded until you ask for it.
  • A pairing code exists only while the screen is open, and dies five minutes later or on first use.
  • Pairings live in memory only. Switching Web Access off disconnects every browser.
  • It refuses to start without Wi-Fi or a hotspot, is not reachable from the internet, and makes no outbound request of any kind.
  • Local network traffic is not encrypted — use it on networks you trust. This is spelled out in §5 of the privacy policy.

The promise, stated exactly

"Private" is easy to claim, so here is the precise version — including the parts that qualify it.

  • Your financial data never leaves the device unencrypted. Amounts, merchant names, categories, account names and balances are stored encrypted on the phone and are never uploaded to us.
  • There is no account and no server. Nothing to sign up for, nothing of yours held anywhere by us.
  • No ads, no ad networks, no advertising ID. The advertising and attribution permissions that analytics libraries add on their own are stripped out of the app deliberately.
  • Diagnostics are opt-in and carry no financial data. Crash reports and screen timings, off unless you turn them on, and erased on your device the moment you turn them back off.
  • Your data is never sold, rented or shared. We do not receive it in the first place.

Read the full privacy policy and the terms of service.

Contact

Questions about Spenlow, its privacy policy, or a data request — seenivasant.dev+spenlow@gmail.com.

Spenlow is built by an independent developer. It is currently in closed testing on Google Play and is not yet publicly listed.