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Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 13, 2026

1. What Data We Collect

When you use ElectricityFinder, we may collect the following information:

  • Google account profile information (name, email, profile picture) when you sign in via Google OAuth
  • Electricity usage data you enter manually or upload via CSV
  • Smart Meter Texas (SMT) interval usage data if you connect your meter
  • ZIP code and TDU (Transmission and Distribution Utility) selection
  • The service (street) address you enter to look up your ESIID, when you use the address-lookup feature to find your meter. We match this address against our own copy of public ERCOT meter-location data; it is not sent to any third party and we do not store it (see Section 3).
  • Plan preferences, shortlists, and comparison history
  • Current electricity plan details you provide
  • Stripe customer ID and subscription status if you subscribe to the paid tier
  • A diagnostic recording of your visit, used only for problem reports. While you use the site, your browser keeps a rolling recording of roughly the last two minutes in that tab — what was on the screen and how the page changed, plus browser console messages and network request details (which requests the page made, and their status and timing). What you type into forms is masked out before anything leaves your browser. The recording stays in your browser and is sent to us in only two cases: when you submit a problem report, or automatically when the app hits an error, so we can see what went wrong. We delete it after 30 days (see Section 5).

  • A screen recording of your visit — only if you turn on the optional Session Recording setting. Tapping “OK” on the cookie bar accepts sign-in (essential) cookies only and leaves Session Recording off. If you switch on “Session Recording” under “Options” on the cookie bar or under “Privacy choices,” we record your visit continuously for as long as you are on the site: what is on the screen, how the page changes, where you click and scroll, and which requests the page makes (their status and timing, not their contents). It is sent to a recording server we run ourselves, not to a third-party analytics company. This is a different recording from the diagnostic one above — it does not stay in your browser, it is not limited to two minutes, and we do not need an error or a problem report to receive it.

    This recording shows the page as you saw it. Three kinds of thing are taken out before it leaves your browser: everything you type — every form field is blanked, whatever it holds, including your meter number and anything you write in a problem report; anything email-shaped or ESIID-length, wherever it appears on the page; and specific items we have marked as personal — your ZIP code, your service address, your meter nickname, your Smart Meter Texas agreement number, and the name of any file you upload. Web addresses are trimmed rather than removed: everything after the “?” is dropped, and any part of the address that is an identifier is replaced with the word REDACTED, so a recording shows which page you were on but not which meter or address. Browser console messages are not captured at all. Payment card fields are inside Stripe's own window, which this recorder cannot see into.

    Everything else on the page is recorded as it appeared — our own wording, plan names, company names, rate types, contract terms and prices, and your usage figures and estimated costs. We keep these recordings for 90 days (see Section 5). If you do not turn on Session Recording — including if you tap “OK” on the cookie bar, or your browser sends a “Do Not Track” signal — no such recording is made or sent.

  • When you use ElectricityFinder from an AI assistant (such as ChatGPT or Claude): we never receive your conversation. We receive only what the assistant sends our tool — your ZIP code, your monthly kWh (or one typical month), and the contract length to compare — and we use it to run the same free comparison this site runs and send back the answer. We do not store it. The answer includes a link that reopens your comparison here; the link itself contains your ZIP code and monthly kWh, so anyone you share it with can see them. Each link also carries a random code that is not connected to your usage or to you: when the link is opened, we count that day's visit under that code and the assistant that made it, so we can tell whether people come back. We also count how many comparisons each assistant runs per day. If you ask your assistant to send us feedback, we keep the words it sends, any ZIP code or plan it names, and which assistant sent it, and a person reads it. Your assistant's provider handles your conversation under its own privacy policy.
  • A daily visitor count. To count how many different devices visit each day, rather than how many pages load, we compute a one-way code from your network (IP) address and your browser's user-agent string (the description of your browser and device that it sends with every request), combined with a random value we create each day. For this count we store only that code and the date. We don't store your IP address, your browser details, the time of your visit or the pages you viewed, and the code is not connected to your account. We delete each day's codes and its random value the next day (UTC), by 8:00 a.m. UTC at the latest. Until then, a code can be matched to a device only by someone who has both that day's random value and the device's exact IP address and browser string. Once the random value is deleted, the code can't be matched to you or to your visits on other days (see Section 5 on recovery copies). Only the total number of visitors per day is kept. This count uses no cookies and stores nothing on your device.

1.5 Why we offer free comparisons

ElectricityFinder is free to use for comparing plans. No electricity provider pays us for the plan you choose — we make $0 on which plan you pick. We don't sell your data. We use it to compute your comparisons and rankings of electricity plans, ranked by your projected cost, and to run, fix and measure the site as described in Section 1. We disclose our broker registration (PUCT BR260062). Our paid features ($29/yr) are our only source of revenue and fund ongoing market monitoring.

2. How We Use Your Data

  • Compare electricity plans based on your actual usage patterns
  • Surface usage trends and peak-hour analysis to help you choose the right plan type
  • Store your usage data so you can return and view updated plan comparisons
  • Send plan renewal and switching alerts you have configured
  • Detect bill-spike anomalies and notify you when your monthly cost is on track to be unusually high
  • Improve the accuracy of cost estimates and plan recommendations
  • Manage your subscription, including renewal, cancellation, and access to paid-tier features
  • Count daily visitors and page loads in aggregate, to see how many people the site reaches

3. Third-Party Services

We integrate with the following third-party services:

  • Google OAuth: for authentication. Google receives your sign-in request; we receive your public profile.
  • Smart Meter Texas: when you connect your meter, we use our broker credentials (Odigital LLC, PUCT BR260062) to authenticate with SMT on your behalf. You don't have an SMT account; instead, SMT emails you a one-time authorization link; clicking it grants us permission to pull your interval data for the agreement period you select. We never see, transmit, or store any SMT credentials of yours.
  • Resend: for sending magic-link verification emails and renewal/switching alerts. Resend receives your email address only.
  • Cloudflare: for hosting (Workers + D1). Your data is stored in Cloudflare's D1 database under a region-restricted account.
  • Cloudflare Web Analytics: cookieless, privacy-first aggregate traffic and performance metrics (page views, Core Web Vitals). No cookies are set, no cross-site tracking, and no personal data is collected.
  • National Weather Service (NWS): for weather-based usage estimation. No personal data is sent to NWS.
  • ESIID address lookup (first-party, no third party): when you use the “Find your ESIID by address” feature, we match the service address and ZIP you enter against our own copy of the public ERCOT meter-location data (the ERCOT TDSP ESI ID Extract) to resolve your address to your meter's ESIID and utility. The address you type is not sent to any third party — it is matched on our own servers, used only to fill in your ESIID at the moment you ask, and is not stored or logged with your account.
  • Google Gemini (AI usage insights): when we generate plain-language insights about your usage, we send a derived summary of your usage pattern to Google's Gemini API — things like your overnight baseline, how much your use rises with heat, and whether we detected gaps that look like time away.We do not send your name, email, address, ESIID, account number, or your raw meter readings. The summary is used to produce your insights, and because our API project is on Google's paid tier, Google does not use these prompts or responses to improve its products. Google's handling of data sent to its API is governed by Google's Gemini API terms.
  • Stripe: processes payments for our $29/yr subscription. Cardholder data is handled directly by Stripe under PCI-DSS compliance; we do not see, store, or retain card numbers, CVV codes, or expiration dates. We retain only the Stripe customer ID (linked to your account email) and your subscription status (active / past_due / canceled) so we can manage your subscription and apply paid-tier features.

We do not sell your personal data to any third party.

4. Your Rights

  • Access: You can view all data we store about you directly in the app (My Usage, My Plan).
  • Delete: You can delete your account at any time from the app settings. This removes your profile, saved usage, plan preferences, alerts, meter connections and cached Smart Meter Texas interval readings within 30 days. Billing records and the consent audit log are retained (see Section 5 and Section 8). Interval data from a one-time meter pull is purged 7 days after the pull on its own retention schedule; only the pull record (email, ESIID, pull date) remains (see Section 5 for category-by-category detail).
  • Portability: You can download a complete copy of all your personal data in JSON format from Settings → Your data. The export is generated on demand and includes your profile, usage data, plan history, alerts, Smart Meter Texas agreements, trial metadata, email-verification timestamps, and notification preferences. Smart Meter Texas interval readings (15-minute usage data) are excluded from the JSON for size, but available on email request to support@electricityfinder.online per the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act §541.057 14-day extension provision.

5. Data Retention

We retain different categories of data on different schedules:

  • Active usage data, plan preferences, and alerts: removed within 30 days of account deletion.
  • Smart Meter Texas pull records: a 60-second double-submit debounce applies per (email, ESIID) pair to prevent accidental duplicate pulls. The underlying interval data is purged 7 days after the pull (TDPSA data-minimization). After purge, the pull record (email, ESIID, pull date) is retained; the comparison results page returns a "result archived" notice for purged pulls.
  • Smart Meter Texas interval readings: retained while your account is active and cleared when you delete your account. In addition, a daily automated job hard-deletes interval readings belonging to accounts with no sign-in for 24 months (for accounts that have never signed in, 24 months from account creation).
  • Retained after account deletion: billing records (payment, refund and subscription events, kept for accounting and tax purposes) and the consent audit log described in Section 8, which must outlive the account so we can show what you agreed to and that the deletion was carried out.
  • Email-verification tokens: expire 30 minutes after issue. Consumed records and stale unconsumed records are hard-deleted 7 days after consumption (or 7 days after expiry for never-consumed tokens).
  • Problem-report recordings: deleted 30 days after they are received — both the recording itself and the record that indexes it. A problem-report recording is uploaded only when you submit a problem report, or automatically when the app hits an error (see Section 1); this recording is never uploaded during ordinary browsing. If you turned on Session Recording, a separate recording is uploaded during ordinary browsing — see the next item.
  • Session recordings: deleted 90 days after the visit. These exist only if you turned on Session Recording (see Section 1). They are stored on a server we operate ourselves, are excluded from all of our backups, and are not linked to your account, your name, or your email address — which also means deleting your account does not reach them, because we have no way to tell which recordings were yours. To stop future recording, use “Privacy choices.”
  • AI-assistant comparisons: the ZIP code and kWh an assistant sends are not stored; they are used only while we compute the answer. Visit counts for links handed out by assistants (a random code, the assistant, the day) are deleted after 400 days. Feedback sent by an assistant is deleted 30 days after it is received. Network addresses used to limit request rates are kept for at most one hour.
  • Daily visitor codes: deleted the next day (UTC), by 8:00 a.m. UTC at the latest, together with the random value used to make them (see Section 1). Only the daily visitor total is kept.
  • Recovery copies: our database provider (Cloudflare) keeps an automatic point-in-time recovery history of our database for up to 30 days. Data we delete remains in that history until it ages out, and then it is gone. We use this history only to recover from errors.
  • Anonymous, aggregated usage statistics (such as average usage by ZIP code): may be retained indefinitely for service improvement.

You can request earlier deletion of any data category by contacting support@electricityfinder.online.

6. Cookies & Local Storage

We use an HTTP-only authentication cookie to maintain your login session. We also use browser localStorage to store usage data for anonymous users and your cookie consent preferences. If you turn on Session Recording, the recording tool also stores an identifier in your browser so that a single visit is recorded as one session; that identifier is not linked to your name, email, or account. The daily visitor count (Section 1) uses no cookie or browser storage. You can change these preferences at any time: use the Privacy choices link in the site footer, or, when you are signed in, Settings → Privacy → Privacy choices.

7. Children's Privacy

ElectricityFinder is not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us so we can delete it.

8. California (CCPA), Texas (TDPSA) & GDPR Rights

If you are a Texas resident, California resident, or located in the European Economic Area, you have additional rights:

  • Right to know / access: You can request a summary of what personal data we hold about you. Texas residents covered under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §541.051) can also self-serve this via Settings → Your data → Download my data.
  • Right to portability: Texas residents can download a portable JSON copy of their personal data from Settings → Your data per TDPSA §541.057. Other jurisdictions: contact us and we will provide an export in the same format.
  • Right to delete: You can request deletion of your personal data by deleting your account or contacting us.
  • No sale of data: We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
  • Non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.
  • Audit log: We maintain an internal audit log of consent and preference changes for regulator compliance purposes; this log is not user-visible.

9. Contact

For questions about this privacy policy or to exercise your data rights, contact us at support@electricityfinder.online.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.