About Criaza

What It Is

Criaza is a recipe app built for households. Save recipes from anywhere, plan meals together, track what's in your pantry, and actually cook—without ads, tracking, or clutter.

Why We Built This

My wife and I cook almost every night. Over the years we've accumulated recipes from everywhere—websites, family, experiments—and kept running into the same problems.

Tracking what we actually tried

We'd tweak a recipe, it would turn out great, and then forget which version that was. More garlic? Less salt? Recipe apps let you save things, but not evolve them.

Finding recipes that fit how we eat

We lean veggie-forward—not vegetarian, just vegetables first. But most recipe discovery is dominated by pasta, cream, cheese. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not what we're usually looking for. We wanted something that learned what we actually cook.

Actually using recipes online

At some point, cooking from a recipe website became an obstacle course. Scroll past the life story. Dismiss the newsletter popup. Close the video. Find the recipe buried in ads. Try to read it on your phone while the page jumps around loading more ads. It shouldn't be this hard.

And beyond the ads: it feels like every app and website is trying to collect and sell whatever data they can. Your location, your habits, your grocery list—all packaged up for advertisers.

After 15+ years as a software engineer, I finally built something for us. What started as a tool for our household turned into something we wanted to share.

What We Promise

We don't sell your data. Ever.

This isn't a marketing line—it's the point. We're not funded by advertisers. We don't need to monetize your attention or your information.

Here's what we actually do:

• Your recipes, notes, and cooking history — Yours. We store it to make the app work. That's it.
• Anonymous usage data — We collect aggregated, anonymous data to understand how people use the app (which features get used, where people get stuck). This helps us improve Criaza. It's not tied to you personally.
• Feedback you send us — We read it. We use it to make things better. We don't share it.

If you delete your account, your data goes with it.

What Makes Criaza Different

• Recipe forking — Adapt recipes, keep attribution
• Cooking tracking — What you actually made, not just saved
• Recommendations — Learn your preferences over time
• Household collaboration — Real permissions, shared lists
• No ads, no tracking, no data selling

What We're Trying to Do

We'd love to make Criaza our full-time focus. That means there will be paid features—to cover costs and make this sustainable. But we also want to start helping others from day one, not wait until we're "successful."

50% of revenue goes to food banks.

The idea came from a podcast my wife introduced me to (Diabolical Lies), and it just felt right. We're building an app about cooking—contributing to people who can't afford to eat seems like the bare minimum.

We'll publish where the money goes once there's money to report.