Privacy Policy

findalternative.net (“we”, “the site”) is a product-discovery directory that helps people find alternatives to software, hardware, gadgets, appliances, hosting and games. For anything in this policy, contact privacy@findalternative.net.

You can browse the entire site without an account. If you never sign in, we collect only the usage data described below.

If you create an account (by email and password, or via GitHub or Google):

• Your email address, and a display name and avatar if your provider supplies one.
• An encrypted password, if you signed up with one. We never see or store it in readable form.
• Content you create: reviews, product submissions, votes, saved items, comparison lists and stacks.
• If you claim a product listing: the work email address you verify with, and the domain-control proof you complete.

If you subscribe to the newsletter, we store your email address and whether you have unsubscribed. Nothing else.

As you use the site, whether signed in or not:

• Search queries you type, so we can find gaps in the catalogue and fix searches that return nothing useful.
• Outbound clicks — when you follow a link to a product's own website, that click is counted.
• Aggregate page analytics — page views and general performance, collected by Vercel Analytics, which does not use cookies and does not build a cross-site profile of you.
• Google Analytics — pages visited, approximate location, device and browser. We have disabled advertising signals and ad personalisation, and IP addresses are anonymised.
• Microsoft Clarity session recording — mouse movement, clicks, scrolling and a replayable reconstruction of the pages you viewed, used to find broken layouts and confusing navigation. Clarity masks text you type by default, and we never intentionally record form contents.

We do not collect payment details, we do not ask for your address or phone number, and we do not buy personal data about you from anyone else.

Cookies we set ourselves:

• Session cookies that keep you signed in. Without these, accounts cannot work.
• A theme preference remembering whether you chose light or dark mode.

Third-party cookies are also set by the analytics tools listed above (Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity)— but only once you accept the cookie banner shown on your first visit. Neither tool loads before that choice is made, and if you decline, they never load at all; you can browse, search, save items and vote either way.

You can change your mind at any time by clearing this site's cookies in your browser, which brings the banner back on your next visit. You can also block these tools independently with your browser's tracking protection, an ad blocker, or by opting out via Google's opt-out add-on. We do not run advertising cookies.

Some outbound links to products are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you sign up or buy after clicking. Some listings are paid placements, which are always labelled as featured or sponsored where they appear.

When you click an affiliate link, the destination site may receive a referral identifier telling them the visit came from us, and may set its own cookies under its own privacy policy — which we do not control. We do not pass your name, email or account details to advertisers or affiliate partners.

Full details of how this affects what you see are on our advertising & affiliate disclosure page.

Where the UK/EU GDPR applies, our legal bases are:

• Contract — account data, because you cannot have an account without it.
• Consent — the newsletter. Withdraw it any time using the unsubscribe link in any email.
• Legitimate interests — search logs, click counts and aggregate analytics, used to keep the catalogue accurate and the site working. This is limited to what the site needs to function and improve, and is not used to profile you.

We do not sell your personal information. We share only what each of these needs to do its job:

• Stack Auth — authentication and account management.
• Neon — the database holding the catalogue and your account content.
• Vercel — hosting and privacy-preserving analytics.
• Resend — transactional email and the newsletter.
• Google (AI Studio), Groq and Ollama — the models used to write and categorise listings. These receive product data, never your personal information or your account content.
• Google Analytics — aggregate traffic measurement.
• Microsoft Clarity — session recordings and heatmaps.

We may also disclose information where the law compels us to, or to protect the site and its users against fraud or abuse.

Reviews you post are public, shown with your display name. Your email address is never displayed publicly. Votes and saved items are private; only the totals are shown.

• Account data — until you delete your account.
• Reviews and submissions — these stay after account deletion, but are detached from your identity, so the catalogue does not lose contributions other readers rely on.
• Newsletter address — until you unsubscribe.
• Search queries and click counts — kept as usage statistics and not linked to your account.

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of what we hold about you.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your account and personal data.
• Stop sending you email — instantly, via the unsubscribe link.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests.

Email privacy@findalternative.net and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge. If you are in the UK or EU you may also complain to your data protection authority; if you are in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA.

Our providers operate globally, so your data may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Where required, transfers rely on the standard contractual clauses those providers offer.

The site is not intended for children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU/UK). We do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us and we will remove it.

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are never visible to us. Access to production data is limited to the site's operator. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise — but if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.

If we make a material change we will update the date at the top and, for anything that meaningfully affects your rights, tell newsletter subscribers by email rather than relying on you to re-read this page.