Readwise Privacy Policy
TL;DR: We’re funded by our readers, not by advertisers or outside investors. Our business model has never been to sell data, and it never will. We collect your account details, the content you save, and the usage and error data that helps us build better software. Readwise Highlights and Readwise Reader are private by default. Readwise Books lets you share your reading with other readers, and your activity there is public unless you make your account private. You can opt out of marketing emails and export your data from Readwise Highlights and Readwise Reader at any time.
This Privacy Policy explains what information Readwise, Inc. (“Readwise,” “we,” or “us”) collects when you use Readwise Highlights, Readwise Reader, Readwise Books, or Readwise Bookshop, how we use it, and the choices you have. To see what applies to the apps you use, go to How each app handles your information.
1. Agreement
By using the Service, you agree to this Privacy Policy. You may see it in several places, such as when you create an account, check out, or redeem a title, and in your app settings. If you do not agree with it, please do not use the Service. This Privacy Policy is part of the Terms of Service. Agreeing to it does not waive any privacy right you have under the law.
This Privacy Policy does not cover websites, apps, or services we don’t control, even when we link to them in our apps, emails, or recommendations. They have their own privacy policies, and we encourage you to read them before you share information with them.
This policy uses terms defined in the Terms of Service, such as “Service” and “Third-Party Services,” and in the Bookshop Terms, such as “Partner Publisher” and “Digital Content”.
2. Information we collect in all our apps
This section covers what we collect in every app and in our store. What each one collects on top of this, how it uses it, and who can see it is described in How each app handles your information.
Information you provide to us
- Account information, such as your first and last name, email address, and phone number.
- Your content, such as the highlights, notes, documents, books, and files you save, create, or upload in our apps.
- Communications, such as questions, feedback, and other messages you send us.
- Marketing preferences, such as which emails you want to receive.
- Anything else you choose to share, which we use as described in this Privacy Policy or as explained when you provide it.
Information we receive from third parties
- Third-Party Services. When you connect a Third-Party Service to import or export content, we receive data from your account there and usually store a sign-in token so the connection keeps working. Each app’s connections are described under that app in How each app handles your information. See also Third-Party Services in the Terms of Service.
- Payment processors and app stores. Stripe processes our payments, and its privacy policy at stripe.com/legal covers your card details. Stripe may share your name, the last digits of your card, and your billing information with us. If you subscribe through the Apple App Store or Google Play, the store tells us the status of your subscription, but not your payment details.
- Sign-in providers. If you sign in with a Third-Party Service, such as Amazon or Apple, it sends us information such as your name and email address.
- Social media. We run pages on platforms such as X, Meta, and LinkedIn. When you interact with those pages, you or the platform may share information with us, which we handle under this Privacy Policy. The platform’s own privacy policy covers what it collects.
Information collected automatically
We and our service providers may automatically collect information about your device and how you use the Service and our communications, such as:
- device information, such as your operating system and version, device manufacturer and model, browser type, screen resolution, memory and storage size, processor usage, device type, and language settings;
- connection and location details, such as your IP address, unique identifiers, mobile carrier, network type, and general location, such as city, state, or region, based on your IP address; and
- activity and usage, such as the pages or screens you view and for how long, navigation paths, the page that sent you to us and the first page you visited, features used, access times, session length, and whether you open our marketing emails or click links in them.
We do not collect your precise location.
Cookies and tracking technologies
We and our service providers collect that information with these technologies:
- Cookies. Small text files your browser stores. They identify your browser, keep you signed in, remember your preferences, enable features, measure performance, and help us understand how the Service is used.
- Local storage. Browser and app storage, such as HTML5 storage, that holds larger amounts of data, such as session status, reading settings, and sign-in data.
- Web beacons. Also called pixel tags or clear GIFs. They tell us when a page or email is viewed or a link is clicked, for example to measure email open rates.
- Third-party tools. Services such as Google Analytics, which may use cookies or similar tools to collect information about your device and activity. They handle that information under their own privacy policies, for example how Google uses data.
Device permissions
Our apps may ask for optional permissions, for example, to send you notifications, to use your camera to photograph book pages or scan a book’s barcode, to choose photos from or save images to your photo library, or to use your microphone to record a voice highlight or dictate a question. If you allow notifications, we store a notification token for your device. Granting a permission is always your choice, and you can change it at any time in your device or browser settings.
Content across our apps
One Readwise account works across all of our apps, so content you create in one app can appear in another. For example, highlights you make in Readwise Reader or Readwise Books are also saved to your Readwise Highlights library, and EPUBs you upload to Readwise Reader appear in your Readwise Books library.
3. How we use your information
We use personal information for the purposes below. Where the law requires a legal basis, we rely on the one noted for each purpose. How each app uses your information is described under that app in How each app handles your information.
To provide the Service
We need this information to perform our contract with you under the Terms of Service. We use it to:
- create and maintain your account, and keep your content in sync across your devices and apps;
- save, import, and export your content, and run the features you choose to use, including AI features as described in the AI Policy;
- process subscriptions and purchases, deliver titles and print orders, and manage digital rights; and
- respond to your questions and requests, and send you service messages, such as security alerts, updates, and account notices.
To improve and personalize the Service
This is in our legitimate interest in building better and safer software. We use your information to:
- troubleshoot, test, and research how the Service is used;
- recommend books, documents, features, or readers to follow, based on your interests and activity; and
- notify you about activity relevant to you.
To send marketing
With your consent, or as otherwise permitted by law, we may send newsletters, promotions, and other marketing by email, in the app, or by other means. You can withdraw your consent at any time, as described in Your controls and settings.
For safety, security, and legal compliance
This is in our legitimate interests, and sometimes required by law. We use your information to:
- detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and unauthorized or illegal activity, and enforce the Terms of Service;
- keep our systems secure;
- comply with legal obligations, such as keeping transaction records or responding to lawful requests; and
- defend against legal claims and disputes.
We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects, without your explicit consent.
4. Sharing of personal information
We do not sell your personal information. We may share it in the cases below. What each app shares, and with whom, is described under that app in How each app handles your information.
With other users
Other people can see what you share or make public, along with your name or profile.
With Third-Party Services
If you connect a Third-Party Service:
- as an export destination, we send it the content you choose to export; or
- through our APIs or MCP servers, as AI assistants do, it can read and change the content you give it access to.
Either way, that service handles your content under its own terms and privacy policy.
For Google services you connect, Readwise’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
With AI providers
When an AI feature or background task runs, we send our AI providers only the text, images, or audio it needs. Our agreements do not allow them to use it to train their models. The AI Policy describes the kinds of providers we use and how they may handle that data. Our team may review AI chat conversations and other AI requests to monitor quality and fix problems.
With service providers
We share personal information with companies that help us run the Service, under contracts that require them to protect it and use it only on our behalf. These include providers of:
- hosting, infrastructure, and databases;
- fetching and processing web pages, documents, and audio;
- analytics and error monitoring;
- email and messaging;
- customer support and content moderation;
- identity verification and fraud detection; and
- payment, tax, and order fulfillment.
With publishers
Publishers get information only about their own Digital Content titles. When you buy one of their ebooks or audiobooks in Readwise Bookshop, they receive a sales report with the order details, the price, and your general location. They may also get dashboards with public ratings and reviews, the passages readers highlight most, and aggregated or de-identified reading data from Readwise Books. Sales reports and dashboards never include your name, email address, or payment details.
For legal and compliance reasons
We may share personal information with professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors, and insurers, as needed for the services they provide to us. We may also share it if the law requires it, or if we believe in good faith that it is reasonably necessary to:
- respond to lawful requests from public authorities;
- protect the rights, property, or safety of Readwise, our users, or others; or
- investigate and enforce possible violations of the Terms of Service.
We give a government agency information about the books you browse, buy, or read only with a court order, unless you agree or someone faces imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.
Business transfers
If Readwise is involved in a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, or similar transaction, including bankruptcy or dissolution, your information will likely be transferred as part of it, following applicable law. We will make reasonable efforts to require the recipient to honor this Privacy Policy. This does not give us the right to sell your information, and we do not want that right.
5. Your controls and settings
You can manage how your personal information is collected, used, and shared:
- Account information. View and update it at any time in your account settings.
- App controls. Controls for a single app, such as exporting your data or making your Readwise Books account private, are listed under that app in How each app handles your information.
- Third-Party Services. Disconnect any Third-Party Service in your account settings.
- Email preferences. Choose which emails you receive in your account settings.
- Marketing emails. Unsubscribe using the link in any marketing email, or by contacting us.
- Cookies and tracking. Set your browser to refuse or delete cookies, though some features may not work without them. You can also opt out of analytics with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. We do not currently respond to “Do Not Track” signals from browsers.
- Delete your account. Delete it in your account settings or by contacting us. Deleting your account is permanent, and we can’t restore it, so export anything you want to keep first. You also lose the titles you bought from Readwise Bookshop and any unused store credit. Deleting your account ends a subscription you pay us directly, but not one you pay through the Apple App Store or Google Play, so cancel that in the store first. Some records may be kept for legal, tax, or security reasons, as described in Data retention.
6. How each app handles your information
Each app collects different information and shows different things to other people. You only need to read the parts for the apps you use.
Readwise Highlights
Readwise Reader
| What we collect |
The documents you save, such as articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos, X threads, and emails you forward to your personal Reader email addresses, plus your highlights, notes, tags, and reading progress. Our browser extension sends us information only when you use it to save or highlight a page. It does not track the websites you visit. |
| Third-Party Services |
When you import from another read-later app, we receive the documents and highlights you saved there. When you connect X, we store a sign-in token so we can import your bookmarks. When you set up Send to Kindle, we store your Kindle email address so we can send documents to it. |
| How we use it |
When you save a link, our servers or our content-processing providers fetch the page. When you use Ghostreader, chat with a document, listen with text-to-speech, or save a podcast, the text or audio involved is sent to our AI and speech providers, as described in the AI Policy. |
| Who can see it |
Your library is private by default. Other people can see it in these cases:
|
| Your controls | Export your library at any time from your Reader profile, disable any public link, or disconnect X or Send to Kindle in your account settings. |
Readwise Books
| What we collect |
Your reading and social activity, including:
|
| Third-Party Services |
When you import from Goodreads, we use your Goodreads session to copy your shelves, ratings, reviews, and friends list, including your friends’ names, photos, and profile links, so you can find them on Readwise Books. We delete the session when the import finishes. Imported shelves, ratings, and reviews follow your account privacy setting, so on a public account everyone can see them. When you import from Kindle, the app reads your library through Amazon’s website. If you turn on Kindle sync, it also checks your reading progress in the background to log your reading sessions. If you read a Kindle book inside the app through Kindle Cloud Reader, the app logs that reading session too. |
| How we use it |
We notify you about activity relevant to you, such as reading session recaps, engagement from other readers, or leaderboard updates. When you use Ghostreader, listen with Assistive Reader, turn a photo of a book page into highlights, or log a reading session with a photo, we use AI to read the text involved. When Session Recaps are on, we also use AI to summarize your reading sessions. We may use the titles and authors on your shelves and your reading activity to recommend books or suggest other readers with similar taste to follow, as described in the AI Policy. |
| Who can see it |
Other readers can see some of your Readwise Books activity:
|
| Your controls | Make your account or individual books private, or turn off syncing with Third-Party Services, such as Kindle. To get a copy of your Readwise Books data, such as your shelves, ratings, reviews, and reading sessions, contact us as described in Your rights. Depending on your plan, you can also get your reading sessions through the Readwise Books API or MCP server. |
Readwise Bookshop
7. Data security
We use technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information, including:
- encryption of data in transit and at rest;
- secure authentication and session management;
- access to personal information limited to people who need it;
- secure cloud infrastructure and regularly updated software; and
- internal procedures for handling data breaches.
No system is completely secure, and data sent over the internet cannot be guaranteed safe. We work hard to protect your information, but we cannot promise absolute security.
If a data breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
8. Data retention
We keep personal information for as long as we need it to provide the Service, for the purposes in this Privacy Policy, and to meet legal, tax, and regulatory obligations. To set retention periods, we consider the type and sensitivity of the information, the risk of harm from unauthorized use, why we process it, whether we can achieve that another way, and legal requirements.
In general:
- your account information is kept until you delete your account;
- your content, such as highlights, documents, reading activity, and AI chats, is kept until you delete it or your account, even if your plan ends. The only exceptions are inactive uploaded files, which we may remove, content that breaks the Terms of Service or the law, and accounts we close, including inactive ones, under Suspension and termination in the Terms of Service; and
- purchase and transaction records, and digital-rights license records without your name, may be kept after your account is deleted or closed, for audit, tax, legal, or publisher reporting reasons.
If you ask us to delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable time, unless the law requires us to keep it. Backup copies may remain for a limited time.
Questions about how long we keep a specific kind of information can go to hello@readwise.io.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, data protection laws may give you rights over your personal information. To use them, contact us as described in Contact information. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.
If you live in California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, or another U.S. state with a comprehensive consumer privacy law, you have the rights in this section. Residents of California and some other states can appoint an “authorized agent” to make requests for them, if the agent confirms their identity and authority as the law requires. You will not be discriminated against for using these rights.
Information requests
You can ask us for:
- information about how we collect and use your personal information. This Privacy Policy provides it, so you do not need to ask;
- access to a copy of your personal information, in a portable, machine-readable format where applicable;
- correction of information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date;
- deletion of information we no longer need to provide the Service or for other lawful purposes; and
- other rights, such as objecting to or restricting how we use your information, and withdrawing your consent where applicable.
Complaints
Depending on where you are, you may complain to a data protection authority, for example in the country where you live or work, or where you think a problem occurred.
Limits on your choices
Sometimes we cannot fully meet a request, for example where it would affect the rights of others, stop us from providing a service you asked for, or prevent us from meeting legal obligations or enforcing our rights. If you are not satisfied with our response, contact us as described in Contact information.
10. Children’s privacy
The Service is not intended for children below the minimum age in Eligibility in the Terms of Service, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If we learn that we collected personal information from a child without the parental consent the law requires, we will delete it as quickly as possible.
If you believe a child has given us personal information, or you are a parent or guardian who wants to review or delete a child’s information, contact us at hello@readwise.io.
11. International data transfers
Readwise is based in the United States. We may store and process your personal information in the United States and other countries, which may not offer the same protection as your home country. When we transfer personal information across borders, we use the safeguards the law requires. For people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we rely on one or more of:
- adequacy decisions by the European Commission or the UK government;
- Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission;
- the UK International Data Transfer Addendum;
- your explicit consent; or
- other valid legal bases under data protection law.
We use contractual and other safeguards designed to require service providers to protect personal information and process it only for authorized purposes. For questions about international transfers, or for a copy of the safeguards we use, contact hello@readwise.io.
EEA and UK representative contact information
For users in the EEA, we have appointed VeraSafe Ireland Ltd., Unit 3D North Point House, North Point Business Park, New Mallow Road, Cork T23AT2P, Ireland, as our EU data representative. For users in the UK, we have appointed VeraSafe United Kingdom Ltd., 37 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TL, United Kingdom, as our UK data representative.
You can contact our EU representative at the address above, through VeraSafe’s contact form, or by phone at +420 228 881 031.
You can contact our UK representative at the address above, through VeraSafe’s contact form, or by phone at +44 (20) 4532 2003.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy as our practices, technology, or legal requirements change. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top. If the changes are material, we will also give you notice before they take effect, for example in the app, on our website, or by email.
13. Contact information
Readwise, Inc. is the company responsible for your personal information (the “data controller”). For questions, concerns, or requests about this Privacy Policy or your personal information, contact us:
- Email: hello@readwise.io
- Mail: Readwise, Inc., 5540 Centerview Drive, Suite 204, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA
We treat privacy and data protection notices sent to that email address as official communications.
Government and law enforcement agencies can send legal requests to legal@readwise.io.