Terms of use

Who you are agreeing with

Protein Buddy is made by Melloway, Inc. Installing the app, or using this website, means accepting these terms. If you do not accept them, the remedy is simple and costs nothing: do not install the app, and stop using the site.

If you are under 13, or under the minimum age of digital consent where you live, you need a parent or guardian to agree on your behalf.

Protein Buddy is not medical advice

This is the clause that matters most, so it comes before the housekeeping. Protein Buddy is a tracker for healthy people who want to eat enough protein. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and nothing it shows you is a substitute for advice from a doctor or a dietitian.

Protein targets are estimates built from published research on healthy adults. They do not know about your kidneys, your liver, your pregnancy, your eating disorder history or your medication. If you have a condition that makes protein intake a clinical question, ask a professional what your number should be and use the app to hit that number instead of ours. If you feel unwell, stop and get medical help rather than logging it.

What we provide, and what we do not promise

We provide the app and the site as they are, and we work to keep them accurate and available. We do not promise they will be free of bugs, available without interruption, or correct in every food entry.

Food data deserves its own warning. Barcode lookups, the food database and the AI photo and voice analysis all produce estimates. Packaging changes, databases carry errors, and a photo cannot see the oil in the pan. Treat every number as close rather than exact, and check the label when precision genuinely matters.

Your account and your conduct

You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your sign-in details to yourself. Please do not break the app or use it against other people: specifically, do not try to breach or probe our security, scrape or bulk-extract our data, resell access, reverse-engineer the app except where the law expressly allows it, upload anything unlawful, or use the service to harm anyone.

We can suspend or close an account that is being used this way. If we do, and the circumstances allow it, we will tell you why.

Paying for things

The app is free to download. Barcode and manual logging are free and unlimited. AI photo and voice analysis come with a one-time free allowance, and continued AI use is a subscription.

Purchases made inside the app are handled by Apple or Google. Current app prices live on the store listing. Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel through your Apple or Google account. Refunds for those purchases are granted under the store's policy, though if a charge looks wrong, write to us and we will help you find the right route.

Purchases made through the Protein Buddy web checkout are handled by RevenueCat and its configured payment processor. The checkout shows the exact price, billing period, trial terms, taxes and renewal schedule before you confirm. You can manage or cancel a web subscription through the customer portal linked from your purchase email.

30-day money-back guarantee for web purchases

Your first purchase made directly through the Protein Buddy web checkout has a 30-day money-back guarantee. If the paid shortcuts are not right for you, contact us within 30 calendar days of that first charge and include the email used at checkout. We will refund that first web charge through the payment provider. The guarantee can be used once per person and does not cover later renewals, abuse, duplicate purchases or purchases made through Apple or Google, which remain subject to their refund policies.

The Lifetime plan

“Lifetime” means the commercial lifetime of Protein Buddy, not your own. A Lifetime purchase gives you access to the app's then-current paid features for as long as we continue to offer Protein Buddy as a product.

It is tied to the store account that bought it, is for one person, and cannot be transferred or resold. It covers the paid features of this app. It does not automatically include separate apps, or add-on features we may price separately later, particularly where those carry a per-use cost we pay to someone else.

AI photo and voice analysis is subject to reasonable fair-use limits, which are published in the app because that is where they can be kept current. We may adjust them with notice. Deliberate abuse, automated bulk use, or sharing one purchase across many people may be throttled or, in a serious case, end your access.

If we discontinue Protein Buddy, or change it materially, we will give at least 30 days' notice, and your Lifetime access ends when the service does. Beyond any refund the law requires or the store chooses to grant, a Lifetime purchase is not refundable on discontinuation. If your access is ended for a breach of these terms, no refund is due.

What the AI can and cannot do

Photo, voice and Protein Scout estimates are produced by a large language model. They are estimates, they are sometimes materially wrong, and they should be treated as a starting point rather than an answer. Portion size in particular is genuinely hard to judge from an image.

Do not rely on these estimates for anything that matters medically. In particular, the app is not an allergen checker and cannot tell you whether a food is safe for you. If you have an allergy, an intolerance, a medical condition, or any clinical reason to control what you eat, read the label and ask a professional. Do not use an AI estimate for that decision.

You are responsible for what you upload: you confirm you have the right to send us the photo or recording, and that it does not contain other people's personal information you have no right to share. How that content is handled, including that analysed photos are stored, is described in the privacy notice.

Who owns what

We own the app, the site, and the words and design in them. You own the data you put in: your logs, your weights, your targets. You keep that ownership, and you give us only the permission we need to run the service for you, such as storing your entries and syncing them to your devices and, if you turn it on, to your platform health app.

Privacy

How we handle data is a separate document. The privacy notice covers both the app and this website, including what the app keeps on your device, what happens when you sign in, and the identifiers used for advertising measurement.

Limits on our liability

Nothing here removes rights you have by law, and in many places consumers have rights that cannot be signed away. Those come first, and nothing in this section is intended to limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows: we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Because the everyday tools are free, for many people that figure is zero, which is the honest consequence of not charging for them.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. That choice does not take away protections you have under the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in.

Talk to us first. If something goes wrong, email us and give us 30 days to sort it out. Most problems end there, and it is faster for both of us than any formal process.

If that does not resolve it, and to the extent the law where you live permits it, disputes are settled by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, and you and we each waive a jury trial and any right to bring or join a class action. You can still take an eligible claim to small-claims court instead.

If you are a consumer in the EEA or the UK, the paragraph above does not apply to you. You keep the right to bring proceedings in the courts of your own country of residence, and to rely on your local consumer protection law. Nothing here limits rights that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes and endings

You can stop at any time by deleting the app. We may change these terms when the product or the law changes; when a change genuinely affects your rights we will give notice in the app rather than quietly editing this page, and the date at the top always tells you when it last moved.

We may also discontinue the service. If we do, we will give reasonable notice and a way to export your data.

Questions

If any part of this is unclear, or you think we have got something wrong, email hello@heyproteinbuddy.app. A person reads it.