Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal information ERD Designer collects, why, who it is shared with, and the choices you have. ERD Designer is operated by ERD Designer, LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company ("ERD Designer", "we", "us"). Contact: support@erddesigner.com.
The short version: we collect what we need to run your account and save your diagrams. We do not sell your personal information, we do not use advertising or analytics trackers, and your database credentials never leave your computer.
1. What we collect
- Account information. Your email address and name, and the identifier our sign-in provider assigns you. Every account has a verified email address. If you sign in with Apple, Facebook, Google or Microsoft, we receive your name and email address from that account — with Apple's Hide My Email, a private relay address Apple forwards to you. If you sign up or sign in with a phone number, our sign-in provider keeps that number and texts you verification codes; we do not store it ourselves.
- Your diagrams. The diagrams you create, their names and settings, and the conversation history of AI Assist sessions saved with a diagram.
- Requests for student codes. If you are an instructor and ask us for student codes on our For Educators page, we receive your name, your email address, your telephone number, your school and course, the address of your school's web page that lists you, your class dates and anything you write to us — and the email addresses of the students you list. We receive those addresses from you, not from the students.
- DDL you paste on our website. If you paste a schema into the box on our website and choose to open it, we hold that text for at most 15 minutes so it can be opened after you sign in, and delete it the moment it is opened.
- Plan and purchase records. Which plan you hold and when it renews or ends, your AI assist balance and usage, free access codes you redeem, and a record of each payment attempt — amount, result, and the card brand and last four digits. We never receive or store full card numbers.
- A device identifier. A random identifier created by the application and kept in your browser (in local storage, a cookie named
erd_device, and IndexedDB). It is used only to keep a paid plan to one browser at a time. It contains nothing about you or your device. - Connections to Claude or ChatGPT. If you connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI service to ERD Designer, we create a one-time pairing code for you to give it, and a connection that links that service to the diagram open in your browser. Both are kept only in our server's memory, never in our database (see section 6).
- Technical information. Your IP address is used briefly to limit repeated requests (for example, to stop someone guessing access codes), and our servers keep routine logs of requests and errors.
2. How we use it
- To provide the Service: sign you in, save and open your diagrams, lay them out, generate DDL, run AI Assist, and let an AI service you connect read and change the diagram you have open.
- To manage your plan: apply purchases, renewals, student terms and free access codes, and enforce plan and device limits.
- To check that a student code is being redeemed by a student, using the email address on your account.
- To answer an instructor's request for student codes: to confirm the request with the instructor by email, to review it, and to make one code for each student listed — usable only by an account holding that student's address — which we send to the instructor, not to the students.
- To keep the Service secure and working, and to answer you when you contact us.
- To send you service messages, such as a welcome when you join, a reminder before a student term or free access ends, or a link to a diagram an AI service proposed once it is saved in your account.
We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.
3. Who we share it with
We share information only with the service providers that run parts of ERD Designer, and only what each needs:
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Clerk | Sign-in and account management | Your email address, name, phone number if you use one to sign in, and sign-in details |
| Stripe / Link | Payments; Link is the merchant of record and handles sales tax, receipts and billing support | Your payment details, billing address and email — collected by Stripe directly, under its own privacy policy |
| Anthropic | The AI model behind AI Assist | The messages you send AI Assist and the diagram it is working on |
| An AI service you connect (for example Claude or ChatGPT) | Reads and changes the diagram you have open, when you connect it | The open diagram's name and structure (tables or entities, their columns, keys and relationships), the results of the requests it makes, and any DDL it asks for — under that service's own privacy policy |
| Neon | Our database | Your account, diagrams and plan records |
| Namecheap | Sends our email, from support@erddesigner.com | Your email address, and what the message says — for example a diagram's name and a link to it |
| Our hosting providers | Run the website, application and servers | Requests to the Service, including IP addresses |
| Cloudflare | Checks that a person, not an automated program, is using the website's forms (the pasted-DDL form and the For Educators request) | Your IP address and information about your browser and device, when a page loads one of those forms — under Cloudflare's own privacy policy |
| Google Fonts | Fonts on our website | Your IP address when the website loads its fonts |
Connecting Claude, ChatGPT or another AI service. This happens only when you choose it: you press Connect Claude or ChatGPT in ERD Designer and give the code it shows to the AI service. That authorizes the service, until the connection ends, to read the diagram open in that browser tab and to change it; changes appear on your canvas and are not saved until you save the diagram yourself. The exception is a design the service proposes with a link: when you open the link, the design is saved in your account, kept saved while that service stays connected to it, and we email you a link to it. The connection reaches only the diagram you have open — not your other diagrams, your account details or your email address. The service is not one of our providers: you use it under your own account with it, and what it does with the information it receives — whether it keeps your conversation, or uses it to improve its models — is governed by its privacy policy and your settings there, not by this policy. We do not keep a record of the requests the service makes or of our answers to them.
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of our users or the Service. If ERD Designer is sold or transferred, this information would go with it, still subject to this policy.
4. The ERD Designer Agent
The Agent runs on your own computer. The database connection details and passwords you give it are stored on that computer and are never sent to us. The Agent reads your databases' structure (tables, columns, keys) — not the data in them — and passes it to the application in your browser. It keeps a log of the statements it runs, on your computer, with credentials removed.
5. Cookies and local storage
We use only what the Service needs to work: our sign-in provider's session cookies, and the device identifier described above. We use no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account and diagrams: until you delete the diagrams or your account is closed — except that a move to a lower plan permanently deletes, three days after it takes effect, the diagrams the new plan does not include, with their AI Assist conversations (Terms of Service, section 5). On the free Basic plan, diagrams saved more than 72 hours earlier are kept for 30 days, but not shown until you move to a paid plan. A diagram that has not been saved for 30 days is then permanently deleted.
- Pasted DDL from the website: at most 15 minutes.
- Requests for student codes, and the codes made from them: kept, so that a code can be traced to the class it was made for. We keep all requests even if they are not confirmed.
- Connections to an AI service: a pairing code expires after 10 minutes and works once. A connection ends when you disconnect, when it has not been used for 2 hours, when you connect again from the same tab, when your plan no longer includes connecting, or when you switch between your own account and a workgroup — and every connection ends whenever our server restarts. Codes, connections and the copy of your diagram a connection holds to notice your own changes are kept only in our server's memory and are gone when it ends. Like any other request to the Service, a connection's requests may appear in our hosting provider's routine request logs (the address requested, the time and the result — not the diagram).
- When your account is closed, we delete your diagrams and AI Assist conversations. If you have never paid us, we delete your account and plan records too. If you have paid us through Stripe, we keep your account record, plan history and payment records — nothing else — for as long as financial and tax law and the handling of disputes require, so that every payment stays connected to the account it paid for. Stripe also keeps its own payment records, as the law requires.
7. Your choices and rights
You can see and change your account details and delete your diagrams in the application. You can end a connection to an AI service at any time with Disconnect in ERD Designer's AI panel, and remove ERD Designer from the AI service in that service's own settings. To close your account, email us from the address on the account. You can also ask us for a copy of your personal information, to correct it, or to delete it (subject to the payment records described in section 6), by writing to support@erddesigner.com. Depending on where you live — for example in California or the European Economic Area — you may have further rights, such as to object to or restrict processing; we will honour them as the law requires and will not treat you differently for using them.
8. Where your information is processed
ERD Designer and its providers operate mainly in the United States, so your information is processed there.
9. Security
Connections to the Service are encrypted, access to our systems is restricted, and payment details are handled by Stripe rather than by us. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you of a breach that affects it as the law requires.
10. Children
ERD Designer is not for children. You must be at least 16 to use it, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change, we will tell you in the application or by email before it takes effect.
12. Contact
ERD Designer, LLC. Privacy questions and requests: support@erddesigner.com. See also our Terms of Service.