Privacy Policy

KotobaPro is operated by Soutien aux Études KotobaPro, based in Quebec, Canada. The person responsible for protecting your personal information can be reached at hello@kotobapro.com.

Business details required for purchases from Japan are on the Specified Commercial Transactions Act notice.

Only what running the site requires:

• Your email address, so you can sign in, and your name if you give one.
• Your practice record — which exercises you attempted, when, and how you scored.
• Your pronunciation scores — numbers only. Not a recording, and not a transcript. See “Your voice” below, which is the part most worth reading.
• Subscription status — your plan, whether it is active, and the payment identifiers Stripe gives us. We never see or store your card number.
• Usage counts, so AI feedback allowances can be metered.

Speaking exercises record you. That recording is sent to OpenAI, which converts it to text. We do not keep the audio. It is not saved to our database or to any file storage — it is transcribed and gone.

We do not keep the transcript either. Your words are used to produce the feedback and are then gone. What we keep is the score — a number for pronunciation, the same kind of record we keep for every other exercise.

Because nothing is kept, the results screen is your only chance to save them. There is a Copy and a Download button there, and we would encourage you to use one.

Written work is treated differently, and more privately. When you submit a Write an Email or Academic Discussion response, it is sent for evaluation and the feedback is returned to you — but the text itself is never stored on our servers. We keep the score, not the writing. If you want to keep a copy, the Save button on those exercises downloads one to your own device.

Feedback is generated by two providers, and your work is sent to them to produce it:

• Anthropic — evaluates written responses and analyses speaking transcripts.
• OpenAI — converts your speech recordings to text, and powers two of the speaking drills.

Both are American companies and process this material in the United States. Your name and email are not sent with it — they receive the work, not your identity.

• Accounts and practice records — Supabase, in the United States (Northern Virginia).
• The website itself — Netlify, an American company.
• Payments — Stripe. Card details go to Stripe directly and never reach us.
• Email we send you — Resend.
• Visit statistics — Umami. It uses no cookies and cannot follow you between sites. It records the page, the country, and the kind of browser, and is not linked to your account.

We are telling you this because information held in another country falls under that country's laws.

• Your account and practice record — to provide the service you signed up for.
• Payment records — to complete your purchase and meet tax and accounting obligations.
• Visit statistics — our legitimate interest in knowing whether the site is useful. No cookies, no profile, no tracking between sites.

• Your account and practice record — until you ask us to delete it, after which it is removed within 30 days.
• Recordings and transcripts of your speech — not kept at all.
• Payment records — kept as long as tax and accounting rules require, which is longer than the account itself.
• Visit statistics — aggregate only, and never tied to you.

Wherever you live, you may ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you
• correct anything wrong
• delete it
• send it to you in a portable form
• stop using it, where we rely on your consent

Email hello@kotobapro.com. There is no charge and you do not need to give a reason.

KotobaPro is intended for people preparing for the TOEFL test, and for the teachers helping them. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, email hello@kotobapro.com and we will remove it.

If we change this policy we will update the date above. If a change affects what actually happens to your information — rather than just tidying the wording — we will say so on the site before it takes effect.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled something, you can complain to a regulator: in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec; in Japan, the Personal Information Protection Commission; in Europe or the UK, the data protection authority where you live.