Privacy
The short version
Road.me works out what a drive in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland costs, both on road.me and in the app. It needs no account, shows no advertising and never streams your position as you drive. What it is told, it uses to answer the question. Answers stay on our server for at most seven days, with nothing that identifies you, and are then deleted.
One thing is kept on purpose, as long as “Save my drives” is on: a log of the drives you make with our own navigator, so the app can tell you what a month of driving cost. It is written on your phone, and we keep no copy, signed in or not. When a drive ends, its route and tolls go to our server once to work out the toll cost, and none of it is stored. It is on from the start, and you can switch it off at any time.
Our own navigator, and nothing else. A route you hand to Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps is driven outside this app and is not recorded at all — not the drive, not the distance, not the cost. Nothing about it reaches your log or our server.
So that we can see what breaks and what gets used, the app keeps usage statistics. They carry a random number made for this phone — never your position, your places or your name. They are on unless you switch them off in Settings, and what is sent is deleted after ninety days.
What leaves your phone
The places you enter and a description of your vehicle go to our server, because that is where the route is worked out and priced. What you type into a search box we look up in the place registers of Kartverket, Entur and OpenStreetMap (Photon, Nominatim). They see only our server, not you.
A registration number, if you enter one, goes to our server and on to Statens vegvesen to read the technical data for that vehicle. It is never written to a log, a file or a database, is held in memory for at most thirty minutes so that asking twice costs one lookup, and the app clears the field as soon as the answer arrives.
While you follow a route, your position goes to our server in two cases only: when the route has to be worked out again (you left the route, cancelled a stop or chose a charger or fuel stop), and when you look for places near you or ahead, such as fuel or chargers. It is never a continuous stream, and our server does not keep your position with anything that identifies you.
Your drive log stays on your phone. When a drive ends and “Save my drives” is on (it is, unless you switch it off), the route’s start, stops and destination, and the toll points you passed with the time of each, go to our server to work out what the tolls cost. The server sends back the answer and keeps none of it. It used to be copied to our server for anybody signed in, and it no longer is: the two ends of a drive are street addresses, and a list of those is a record of where somebody has been rather than of what their driving cost. Somewhere of your own to keep a backup is something we may offer you later; it would be your choice and your cloud, not ours.
To check for updates, the app talks to Expo (EAS Update, in the USA). Expo sees your phone’s IP address, a random number it makes for this install and the app’s version numbers. If the app crashed while starting, Expo also gets the error message.
The navigator’s voice is made by ElevenLabs. The words it says, including names of roads and places on your route, go to ElevenLabs from our server, so ElevenLabs never sees your phone.
In the dark map theme, your phone loads terrain tiles straight from Amazon Web Services, which sees your IP address and which tiles you load.
When you look for hotels in the app, the exact spot you search around, your dates and the number of guests go through our server to Stay22, who supply the prices. In the app this spot is exact; only the website rounds it to about a kilometre. Hotel photos and supplier logos load straight from the suppliers’ servers, so they see your IP address.
Usage statistics
The app counts how it is used, so that we can see what breaks and what is worth improving. Each count is sent with a random number the app makes the first time it opens on this phone. On iPhone it is kept in the keychain, so it usually stays the same if you reinstall the app; on Android it is deleted with the app. That number says nothing about who you are: it lets us see that one phone opened the app on three different days, not whose phone it is.
What is counted: the app opening and going to the background; which screens are shown, and for how long; that a route was worked out, with its length and the number of stops; that a drive with our navigator started and ended, with the distance driven, how long it took and how far from the destination it ended; what kind of place you looked for or picked — fuel, charging, parking, an address — but never which one; and errors and crashes, with the error message, its technical trace and the screen it happened on. Each count also includes the app version, whether it is an iPhone or Android, and the country, which Cloudflare reads from your IP address — the address itself is not kept with the statistics.
What is never counted: your position, the places you enter or search for, the route itself, your registration number, your name or your email.
If you send us feedback from the app, its text comes with the same install number, the app version, the phone type and your country (worked out from your IP address), so we can read it alongside what went wrong. We keep it on our server for ninety days and then delete it. Our team gets only a short notice by e-mail, to our mailbox office@road.me, through Postmark, an e-mail service in the USA. The notice does not contain your text.
The statistics are kept for ninety days and then deleted automatically. We read them to fix road.me and make it better. They are not sold, shared or used for advertising.
The “Share usage statistics” switch in Settings turns them off. From that moment the app sends no statistics and no crash reports from this phone (the update check with Expo still runs); what was sent before is deleted with the rest after ninety days. If you switch it back on, counting starts again with the same install number.
What we keep, and for how long
A calculated route stays in the server’s memory for up to seven days, so the same request is answered instantly. It is stored under a one-way code made from the request, with nothing that identifies you, and then deleted.
The answer to a place search stays in memory for up to an hour. It is stored under a one-way code, and the words you typed are not kept.
To count the free daily allowance we keep a salted, one-way hash of the caller for one day. It cannot be turned back into an address or a person.
Our server also counts how many routes are calculated, and from which country, as plain totals that are not attached to anyone. The app’s own usage statistics are described above.
Of the drive log, nothing. What goes out when a drive ends is used to work out the toll cost and is not stored. Copies made by earlier versions of the app are kept for two years and then delete themselves, are filed under a salted, one-way hash of your sign-in rather than under your Apple or Google account, your name or your email, none of which we hold, and deleting your profile removes every one of them at once.
What stays on your phone
The drive log itself, always — whether or not you ever sign in. Switching “Save my drives” off stops the recording and erases what is already there; it does not hide it.
Your vehicle setup, your recent routes and, if you sign in, the sign-in token are stored in the phone’s secure storage — the keychain on iPhone, the Keystore on Android. They are not copied to us. Deleting the app deletes them, except the random install number on iPhone, which stays in the keychain until you reset the phone.
The random install number used for the usage statistics is kept there too. It is also sent with route requests, so that the per-minute limits can tell one phone from another.
On road.me
The calculator on the site works like the app: the places you enter and your vehicle go to our server to be priced, and a calculated route is kept the same way, for up to seven days. The site has no account and sets no cookies.
Your browser keeps a few things for the site in its own storage: your vehicle and charging settings, currency, theme and the tiles you used last, and a random number that lets our server tell one browser from another, so the free allowance and the per-minute limits work. That number is made up in your browser and says nothing about who you are. If you said no to sharing your location, your browser also notes the date, so the page does not ask again for a week. Clearing the site’s data in your browser removes all of it.
Pages with the «Near me» block ask your browser for your location as they open; other pages with a map ask only when you press «Use my location». If you allow it, your position is used on the page to put the map where you are. To find places around you, the page sends our server the part of the map on your screen — a box with you somewhere in it, not a pin on you. For hotels it sends the centre of the map, rounded to about a kilometre, with your dates and the number of guests, and our server passes that on to Stay22, who supply the prices; your IP address and anything that could identify you stay with us. Hotel photos and supplier logos load straight from the suppliers’ servers, so they see your IP address. “Book” takes you to their site.
If you say no, or have not answered yet, the map opens on the country or town the page is about, or on the country your connection comes from: Cloudflare, which carries our traffic, reads the country from your IP address and passes it to us with the request. We use it to place the map and keep nothing. For road.me, you can change your answer at any time in your browser’s settings.
«Use my location» as the start of a drive sends your exact position to our server, like any place you type, and we look up the nearest address in Kartverket’s register to give it a name. From there it is priced and held like any other route.
Our web server, which serves both the site and the app, keeps a log of requests for fourteen days, to find faults. It records which page or service was asked for, when, the type of browser and your IP address with its last part removed — not where you are, the places on your route, which part of the map you were looking at or what you searched for. A separate log of requests that were refused or failed keeps the full address for fourteen days, to spot and stop attacks. To stop any one address from flooding the service, a one-way hash of it is held for as long as the limit lasts — at most a day.
We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, a small script that each page loads from Cloudflare. It sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser and does not recognise you by your IP address or your browser. We see only totals — pages, the sites visitors came from, countries, devices, load times — never a person.
Signing in
Signing in is optional and only raises the daily allowance. It uses Sign in with Apple on iPhone and Sign in with Google on Android. We keep only the account identifier Apple or Google issues — not your name and not your email, even when the sign-in carries one. There is no password and no other sign-in method.
Where the numbers come from
Norway — ferry fares: Statens vegvesen / AutoPASS for ferje. Tolls, rest areas, roadworks and closures: Statens vegvesen (NVDB, DATEX II). Sailing times and operator notices: Entur. Fuel prices: Statistisk sentralbyrå, table 09654. Vehicle data: Statens vegvesen. Place names: Kartverket.
Sweden — congestion tax and infrastructure charges: Transportstyrelsen. Road ferries: Trafikverket Färjerederiet. Denmark — the Storebælt and Øresund tariffs: Sund & Bælt and Øresundsbro Konsortiet. Finland — road and traffic data: Fintraffic / Digitraffic and Väylävirasto.
Fuel prices outside Norway: the European Commission’s Weekly Oil Bulletin. Charging stations: NOBIL. Maps, quays and toll points: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Each is used under its own licence — NLOD, CC BY 4.0 or ODbL — and credited in the app and on road.me beside the prices it produces.
Children
Road.me is not directed at children and asks for nothing that would identify one.
Your rights and how to reach us
We hold no account and no profile that knows who you are. The usage statistics carry only the install’s random number, which we cannot connect to you, so we cannot look them up by your name or email. They are deleted automatically after ninety days, and the switch in Settings stops them at once.
If you have signed in, “Delete profile” at the foot of the app removes it: the daily counter goes at once instead of expiring on its own, we ask Apple — or, on Android, Google — to revoke the sign-in so road.me leaves your account, and your saved car and saved routes are wiped from the phone. Nothing has to be asked for and nothing is kept back.
To ask anything about any of this, write to hi@road.me and we will answer.
Data controller: GOWME AS, Org. nr. 836 994 922, Norway. The lawful basis for the drive log is our legitimate interest in showing you what your driving costs (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). It is on from the start; switching “Save my drives” off is your objection, and it takes effect at once.
The lawful basis for the usage statistics is our legitimate interest in keeping the app working and knowing what to improve (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object at any time by switching it off in Settings, and this takes effect at once.
The lawful basis for your location on road.me is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), given and withdrawn in your browser. The rest of what the site does — working out the route you asked for, the limits, the log and the counts — is what it takes to answer you and to keep the service running for everyone (Article 6(1)(b) and (f)).
Google, Cloudflare, Expo, Postmark (part of ActiveCampaign) and ElevenLabs are based in the United States and certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, so what reaches them is covered by the European Commission’s adequacy decision. Apple is also in the United States; transfers to Apple rely on the Commission’s standard contractual clauses. Stay22 is in Canada, where the Commission’s adequacy decision for Canada applies. The dark-theme map tiles your phone fetches itself from Amazon Web Services; we pass nothing to Amazon.
If you think we have got any of this wrong, you can complain to Datatilsynet, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, or to the authority where you live.