Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-07-19

SmartTuition.ai is designed to be useful without identifying you. We don't require an account, we don't ask for your name or contact info to generate a plan, and we don't sell, rent, or share data with anyone. We ask for an email address in only two places, both optional and both described below. This page describes exactly what we do and don't do with the information you provide.

What we collect by default (no identifying information)

To generate your plan, we collect and store:

• Information you enter in the intake form: student's enrollment year, school, family income, savings, 529 balance, preferences. None of these fields is your name, email, phone, or any other personal identifier.
• The plan we generate, stored under a randomly-generated anonymous plan ID (e.g. STA-AB12-CD34) — your plan's URL is the only way to retrieve it.
• Standard server logs (IP address, user agent) for security and abuse prevention. These are retained for 30 days and not joined to plan data.

We do not infer your identity from this data. Your IP address isn't linked to your plan ID in our database.

What we collect optionally (only if you choose)

An email address is the only personally identifying information we ever collect, and it's always opt-in. There are two separate places we offer to take one, for two different purposes. We keep them in separate stores and never combine them.

1. Quality-control email (offered on your plan page)

What we use it for

• One-time correction notice if our QA review finds a material error in your plan. The notice will include a link to the corrected plan and a brief description of what changed.
• That's the entire scope. Nothing else.

How long we keep it

We delete it automatically 12 months after you submit it, regardless of whether we ever used it. A daily cleanup process enforces this. You can also delete it any time before that using the link from the confirmation page (or the “Manage / delete” link shown on your plan page after submission).

2. Award-letter reminder (offered in the intake form)

When you tell the intake form you haven't received your financial aid award letter yet, we warn you that a plan built without it is only a worst-case estimate — and we offer to email you once, the following spring, when award letters have gone out. This is entirely optional; you can continue without it.

What we store if you ask for a reminder

Your email address and the date to send it. That is the whole record. We deliberately do not attach your school, your income, your savings, or anything else from the form — the reminder doesn't mention them, so it doesn't need them. It isn't linked to a plan, and it isn't combined with the quality-control email above.

What we send

• One email, in the spring of the year you told us the student would start college, saying award letters should have arrived and you can now build a plan with your real numbers.
• That is the only message this address ever receives from us. No confirmation email, no follow-up sequence, no marketing.
• Every message includes a one-click unsubscribe. Before then, you can ask us to remove your address at any time and we'll delete it — see Contact below.

How long we keep it

We delete the record about a month after the reminder is sent — we keep it that long only so the unsubscribe link in the email keeps working. If the reminder is never sent, it's deleted about a month after the date it was scheduled for. We only offer a reminder when it falls within roughly the next twelve months, so we're never sitting on an address for years.

What we won't use either address for

• Marketing — we don't send promotional email.
• Newsletters — we don't have one.
• Sale, rental, or sharing with anyone — never. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to colleges, not to financial-aid services, not to anyone.
• Cross-product profiling — we don't maintain user profiles.
• Unrequested re-engagement — we won't email you to come back unless you specifically asked us to. The award-letter reminder above is the only message of that kind we ever send, and only if you asked for it.
• Combining the two. An address you give us in one place is never used for the other.

Plan data retention

Your plan markdown and inputs are stored indefinitely under your anonymous plan ID, so the URL you saved continues to work. If you want your plan permanently deleted, contact us using the email on this page — since we don't have your contact info linked to the plan, we'll need you to provide the plan ID for verification.

Third parties

We use the following third-party services to operate the site:

• Anthropic — for plan generation. Plan inputs are sent to Anthropic's Claude API at generation time. Anthropic's data-handling policies apply to that processing.
• Turso (LibSQL) — database hosting.
• Vercel — application hosting.
• Resend — transactional email delivery (used only for the optional QA-error outreach and, if you leave an email, your plan-ready notification).
• Stripe — payment processing for the $99 paid plan. Your card details go directly to Stripe; we do not receive or store them.
• Vercel Web Analytics — anonymous, cookieless page-view counts. It does not use cookies or track you across sites, and is not joined to your plan data.
• College Scorecard (US Department of Education) — public school cost data. We send school names, not your personal info.

We've picked these vendors because they meet baseline privacy standards, but inclusion isn't an endorsement of their full policies. You can review each one's privacy policy on their respective sites.

Cookies

We use only essential cookies needed for the site to function (e.g., session state during plan generation). We don't use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, or third-party tracking by default.

Your rights

• Unsubscribe from an award-letter reminder — use the link in the email once it arrives, or ask us any time before then and we'll delete your address.
• Delete your contact email at any time — use the link from your confirmation page or the manage link on your plan.
• Delete your plan — contact us with your plan ID and we'll remove it from our records within 30 days.
• Get a copy of your data — your plan's URL already provides this. If you also have a contact email on file, email us and we'll confirm what's stored.

Children's privacy

The site is intended for use by parents and adult students. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe we have, contact us and we'll delete it.

Changes

When we update this policy, we'll change the “Last updated” date at the top. Material changes will be reflected with a banner on the plan page for 30 days following the change.

Contact

For privacy questions or data-deletion requests, email us at privacy@smarttuition.ai (set up before launch).

SmartTuition.ai provides educational financial planning tools, not professional financial advice.