Most AI assistants start by asking who you are. NOLO starts with the cursor blinking in the box: no sign-up, so no account with your email on it, and no history of yours sitting on our servers.
Photograph the letter. Upload the report. Ask the thing you would otherwise type into a private window and then delete.
It opens into the chat box. Nothing to confirm, nothing to verify, nothing emailed to you. On Android it is the same app with the same identifier and the same on-device history.
01 — The difference
This is the whole argument, so here it is side by side rather than as an adjective. Left is what a mainstream AI account holds about you by design. Right is everything NOLO's servers hold, in full.
nolo_a7b3_x9k2. It is not derived from anything about you.Counts and retention windows verified against the running code on 4 September 2026. The action-by-action breakdown of what leaves your device lives on the transparency page, and it is the version to trust if this page ever falls behind.
02 — In practice
Not a feature list. These are the ordinary, awkward, slightly urgent things adults deal with, and the part of NOLO that does the work. Every one of them is a real reason not to want a permanent record.
I got a letter from the tax office and I genuinely don't understand what they want from me.
My blood test came back and the appointment isn't for two weeks. What do these words mean?
I want to draft a resignation letter, and I'm doing it on the work laptop.
Here's the rental contract. Is there anything in here I should be worried about?
Something about my body that I'd type into a private window and then close.
My payslip doesn't add up and I don't want to ask a colleague.
What's in this jar? The label is in Greek.
Did the rules on this actually change this year, or am I reading something old?
03 — The mechanism
Privacy claims are cheap, so here is the plumbing instead. Four things happen when you type into NOLO, and each one is written next to what it does and does not cover.
The first time the page loads, the browser generates a random identifier such as nolo_a7b3_x9k2. That string is the whole account. It is not derived from your device, your email or your IP, and nothing is sent to you to confirm.
Trade-off, stated up front: no email means no recovery. Lose the identifier and the chats on that device are the only copy.
Conversations are written to the browser's local storage on your own device. There is no NOLO database holding them, so there is nothing of yours to hand over, leak or subpoena on our side.
Honest limit: that copy is not encrypted at rest. Anyone with your unlocked device can read it, and clearing the browser deletes it for good.
Your text has to reach a model. Fast and Plus run at Groq with zero data retention enabled on NOLO's account. Pro and the image reader go through OpenRouter with zdr and data_collection: deny in the request, so the platform refuses to route to any provider that would keep it.
Measured 26 Aug 2026 on the Pro model: of 18 candidate endpoints, 7 failed that filter and were never used.
One tap before you type. The conversation is not saved on our side and is not written to your browser either. Close the tab and there is nothing left on the device to find.
Also switches off the edge buffer that lets long answers finish while you are away, because that buffer would hold the text briefly.
04 — The honest part
Anyone can write a page about privacy that only lists wins. If you are choosing a tool for something that actually matters, the limits are the part you need, so they get their own section instead of a footnote.
05 — Compared
Several assistants ask nothing of you, and some of them are very good. This table is about the specific job on this page: a personal question that arrives with a photo, a document or a language you do not read. Cells marked not verified are ones we could not confirm from public documentation, and we would rather leave a gap than guess. Checked 4 September 2026.
| NOLO | Duck.ai | Brave Leo | Venice | Proton Lumo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usable with no account at all | YesA random ID is the login | Yes | YesInside the Brave browser | YesFree tier, no email | NoNeeds a Proton account |
| Reads a photo of a letter or a report | YesOn the free plan | YesOn the models that support it | NoFile uploads not supported | Yes | Yes |
| Reads a long PDF without paying | YesAround 300 pages on the free plan | Short onesLonger documents need a subscription | No | Not verified | With an account |
| Reads a spreadsheet (XLSX, CSV) | Yes | NoSpreadsheets not supported | No | Not verified | Not verified |
| Chat history kept on your device | YesBrowser storage, unencrypted at rest | Yes | Yes | Yes | ServerZero-access encrypted, but theirs |
| A mode that saves nothing, even locally | YesOne tap, per conversation | PartlyClear on exit | Partly | Partly | Ghost mode |
| Standalone Android app | YesOn Google Play | In the DuckDuckGo app | In the Brave browser | Yes | Yes |
| Interface fully translated | 30 languages | Follows the browser | Follows the browser | English | Several |
| Uses a frontier-class model | NoOpen-weights models, published by name | YesIncluding smaller frontier models | Mixed | No | No |
Read the last row before the first one. DuckDuckGo's Duck.ai is the closest thing to NOLO here and it fronts stronger models, so if what you want is the smartest possible answer with no account, that is the honest recommendation and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What is left for NOLO after saying that is narrower and real: a long document or a spreadsheet read without paying, an app of its own rather than a feature inside a browser, and an interface that is actually in your language. There is a longer comparison, including Mistral's Le Chat, on the main NOLO site.
06 — Cost
Nothing on this page is behind a plan. No account, on-device history, anonymous mode, photo reading, documents and voice are all on the free tier. What money buys is capacity and the heavier tools. Prices include VAT, and you can stop paying without writing to anyone.
Enough for the letter, the report and the contract.
When you start using it most days.
For long documents and long days.
Full plan detail, the daily allowance and the one-off day reset are on the main pricing page. Payments on the web are processed by Stripe; subscriptions bought inside the Android app are billed and cancelled through Google Play.
07 — Questions
Yes. NOLO opens straight into the chat box. On the first visit it generates a random identifier such as nolo_a7b3_x9k2 and that identifier is the account. There is no email field, no phone number and no ID check, on the web app or on the Android app.
The trade-off is worth knowing before you start: if you lose that identifier there is no email to recover it with, so the chats on that device are the only copy.
If you use a workplace ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini account, an administrator can generally see or export conversations, because the workspace owner controls the account. With NOLO there is no account for a workspace to own and nothing appears in a company admin console.
What NOLO cannot hide is the network. Whoever runs the connection still sees that you visited the site, the same as any website, and a managed device can carry monitoring software that reads what you type regardless of where you type it. The full version of this answer goes through what each layer can and cannot see.
In your browser's local storage, on your own device. There is no NOLO database holding your chats, so there is nothing of yours on our side to leak or hand over.
The honest limit: that local copy is not encrypted at rest, so anyone with access to your unlocked device can read it, and clearing the browser deletes it permanently. Anonymous mode skips the local copy too.
Two things, both counters rather than content. A pseudonymous daily usage count tied to the random identifier, kept for 30 days so the daily allowance can be enforced. And rate-limit buckets keyed to a hashed IP address, kept for 7 days, so one machine cannot flood the service.
No chat content and no readable IP address. The action-by-action breakdown is on the transparency page.
No. Fast and Plus run at Groq, which has zero data retention enabled on NOLO's account. Pro and the image-reading model are routed through OpenRouter with data_collection: deny and zero data retention required in the request itself, which means the platform refuses to route to a provider that would store or train on it.
That last part is the bit worth checking, because it is enforced by the platform rather than by our word. Measured on 26 August 2026 for the Pro model: of 18 candidate endpoints, 7 failed that filter and were never used.
Yes, on the free plan. Take a picture of the letter, the label, the form or the test result and ask what it says and what you have to do about it.
It reads text out of photos in languages you do not speak, which is the point when the letter is from a tax office, a landlord or a hospital in a country you have recently moved to.
Safe in the sense that NOLO has no account to attach the question to and the providers do not retain it. Not safe in the sense of being a diagnosis.
NOLO is not a doctor, it does not use a frontier model, and it can be confidently wrong. It is good for understanding a word on a report, working out what to ask at an appointment, or rehearsing a question you find embarrassing to say out loud. Take anything that matters to a clinician.
Yes. Paid plans are bought against the same random identifier, with no email address or profile created on NOLO's side, and you can cancel from inside the app.
What that does not cover: on the web, Stripe processes the payment and sees your card details under its own policy, and inside the Android app Google Play does the same. NOLO stores no card data, but paying involves a payment company that does.
Not yet, and it would be easy to imply otherwise on a page like this. What you can check today without taking anyone's word for it: open the browser's network panel and watch which hosts a message goes to, and open the storage panel and see the conversation sitting in local storage rather than being uploaded.
The rest, meaning retention terms and what the providers do after they answer, is documented rather than demonstrable, which is why the provider list carries dates.
One person, with no investors and no growth targets. That is worth weighing in both directions: it is why there is no business model that needs your data, and it is also why there is no company behind it, no external audit and no support desk. There is more on the about page.
No form, no confirmation email, no verification code. If it turns out not to be for you, there is no account left behind to delete.