Privacy Policy
Overview
Compare Cloud Costs (comparecloudcosts.com) is a service provided by Cosell Plus LLC, the owner and operator of this website ("we," "us," "our," or "Company"). We are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and otherwise handle your information when you use our website and services.
We are an independent service, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any cloud provider covered on this site. See our Terms of Use for the full statement.
Data Retention & Ephemeral Processing Policy
comparecloudcosts.com is strictly engineered around the Data Minimization Principle. Our systems are built to process and retain only the absolute minimum amount of information required to perform your requested comparative actions.
For features involving document parsing, estimate analysis, or bill analysis (such as the Bring Your Estimate, Bring Your Bill, and Bring Your Architecture tools), we don't keep any information provided. Uploaded files are processed instantly and never stored.
Uploaded estimate and invoice files are held in server memory only for the duration of the request that processes them. They are never written to disk, never committed to a database, and are discarded when the response is returned. The comparison results you see are generated in that same request; we do not store the results either. Closing or refreshing the page discards them.
Uploaded Documents & Catalog Coverage Improvement: Uploaded estimate, architecture, and invoice files remain strictly ephemeral and are discarded immediately after response generation. When our matching algorithms identify a cloud SKU or instance specification that is not yet indexed in our pricing catalog, our system records an anonymized catalog gap signal (such as the provider name, product category, instance type, detected specs, and region). This signal contains zero personal, company, account, credential, or financial dollar amount data, and is used exclusively to expand our catalog coverage.
AI Chat & Conversational Architect Data: Consistent with our strict data minimization policies, we do not record, store, or track any chat histories or conversational logs. All interactions with the AI Architect or the helper chat widget are processed live, held temporarily in memory, and immediately discarded once the session is closed or refreshed. Your conversations are completely ephemeral and intended for one-time-only exploration. Because we do not keep track of or save these chats, users are encouraged to download or export any generated cost sheets, comparisons, or code snippets during the session, as they cannot be recovered afterwards.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server & API Key Data Policy: When you generate an API Key or connect an external AI client (such as Claude Desktop, Cursor IDE, VS Code, Google Gemini / Antigravity, or OpenAI Assistants) to our MCP server, we uphold strict zero-payload data retention:
- Zero Content & Prompt Retention: We do not inspect, log, store, or train on client prompts, user questions, source code, or conversational context sent through MCP tool invocations. Tool executions are processed purely in-memory and statelessly.
- Cryptographic Hash Storage: For security and privacy, your plaintext API key is shown to you only once upon creation. We store only a one-way cryptographic SHA-256 hash in our database to authenticate incoming requests.
- Usage & Quota Tracking: We retain only minimal operational metadata associated with the key: the key prefix, creation timestamp, timestamp of last usage, and a request counter (
request_count) to enforce the preview quota (up to 10 pricing evaluations). No personal query details or payload data are linked to this counter.
Information We Collect
Usage Data
When you use comparecloudcosts.com, we automatically collect certain information about your interactions:
- Pages visited and time spent on each page
- Filters and search parameters you use when comparing cloud pricing
- Device information (browser type, operating system)
- IP address (anonymized for analytics purposes)
- Referral source
Information You Provide
Basic browsing of our public pricing tables does not require creating an account or submitting personal information. Any information you voluntarily provide (such as through contact forms, feedback emails, or document uploads) is handled according to our strict data minimization standards.
Anonymized Catalog Gap & Unmatched SKU Telemetry
When you search for cloud services or cross-reference estimates, bills, and architecture blueprints through our platform, our matching algorithms evaluate each component against our pricing database. If an item or instance specification cannot be matched because it is not yet indexed in our catalog, we may collect non-identifiable technical attributes of the missing item:
- Cloud provider name and service category (e.g., virtual machines, databases, object storage)
- Instance family, model, or SKU identifier (e.g., newly launched provider instance types)
- Detected technical specifications (vCPU count, memory, storage tier, operating system, and region)
- Match failure categorization (e.g., whether the provider lacks the category entirely or our ingestion pipeline is missing that specific SKU)
This telemetry is strictly technical and anonymous. It does not include any personal details, organizational identity, billing volumes, monetary amounts, or uploaded source documents.
Marketing & Communications Opt-in
When creating an account or logging in, you may be presented with an option to opt-in to receive communications from us. If you choose to opt in, we collect your name and email address. We use this information exclusively to inform you about major platform updates, new features, or important cloud pricing shifts.
You have the right to unsubscribe from these communications at any moment by clicking the "unsubscribe" link provided in our emails or by contacting us directly.
Authentication & User Account Security
To enhance information security, protect user data privacy, and maintain operational integrity across advanced tools (such as bill analysis exports or multi-user workspace features), we may require users to authenticate or log in.
Requiring user authentication serves specifically to safeguard your information against unauthorized access, protect uploaded session data, isolate report outputs to authorized account holders, prevent automated platform abuse, and ensure strict end-to-end security control over your environment.
How We Use Your Information
We use collected information to:
- Improve and optimize our pricing data, ingestion pipelines, and user experience
- Understand how users interact with our platform and navigate cloud categories
- Identify and prioritize missing SKUs to add to our catalog roadmap
- Debug and troubleshoot technical issues
- Generate aggregated analytics and industry benchmarks (never identifying individuals)
- Send major platform updates (only if explicitly opted-in)
Aggregated Cloud Trends & Benchmarking Features: Compare Cloud Costs may use anonymized and aggregated SKU demand and catalog gap data in public, non-identifiable statistics, research, and cloud cost benchmarks. Your search and matching inputs are combined with those of others to reveal broader industry patterns—such as the most frequently requested uncatalogued cloud services, regional price variances, and multi-cloud architectural adoption patterns.
Enabling this continuous feedback loop directly steers our data ingestion roadmap, ensuring our automated pipelines prioritize adding the specific missing SKUs our community needs most. In addition, this aggregated signal powers current and future features that allow you to compare your workload configurations, evaluate alternative architecture options, and benchmark cloud cost efficiency against industry norms in a safe, privacy-protected format.
Data Sharing and Disclosure
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. This explicitly means we do not provide your email, name, or contact information to any partners or advertising agencies under any circumstances.
We may share aggregated, anonymized usage data with partners to improve our services, but this data cannot identify you personally. We may also disclose information when required by law, regulation, or legitimate legal process.
Data Security
We enforce strict technical and organizational safeguards to protect information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. All temporary files are automatically destroyed within 4 hours, and all transmitted data is encrypted using standard TLS protocols.
Our website, databases, and application services are hosted on secure infrastructure provided by DigitalOcean. While we implement strict application-level security, access controls, and encryption, we rely on DigitalOcean's physical security, network firewalls, and server-level protection. You can review their security policies and compliance benchmarks in the DigitalOcean Trust Center.
Third-Party Services
Our platform uses the following services:
- Hosting & Infrastructure: DigitalOcean App Platform and Managed Databases (used to host the application, run servers, and store system database records under industry-standard compliance and data security policies)
- Cloud Providers: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud APIs (for pricing data only)
- Payment Processing: We use third-party payment processors (e.g., Intuit) for voluntary donations. We do not store or process your credit card information directly.
- Product Analytics & Feature Tracking: We use PostHog to collect anonymized usage metrics, feature interactions (such as filter selections, export actions, and CTA clicks), and performance telemetry to improve user experience. PostHog operates under strict data protection policies and anonymizes IP addresses. We do not use Microsoft Clarity or any session-recording / heatmap tools.
These services have their own privacy policies, and we encourage you to review them.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by updating the "Last updated" date above.
Contact Us
For questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please email us at [email protected].
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