What happens to your copies and your data

You sign in with your Google account (or Apple, in the app). From it we get your name, your email address and your profile photo, and an ID for your account. We keep those, with how you signed in and the day you joined, and use them only to run your account: to sign you in, to show your name, to email you about your plan, and to reply when you write to us. We never sell them, and never share them for anyone’s advertising.

We keep a record of your credits: where each came from (your free 30, a plan, a top-up), when they end, the answers each was spent on, and any that came back.

If you buy a plan or a top-up, we keep a record of it: which plan, when each paid stretch starts and ends, whether it renews or was cancelled, and how many reminders you asked for. For each payment we keep the plan, the amount and any GST in it, how you paid (UPI, a card or netbanking, never the number), Razorpay’s references for it, a link to Razorpay’s invoice, if it failed the reason the bank gave, and if it couldn’t be used, why and its refund. Your card, UPI or bank details go to Razorpay, not to us.

So that an account stays with one person, it can be signed in on two devices at a time. For that we keep the time each device signed in, which Google’s sign-in tells us, and when we last saw it; nothing about the device itself.

If you save questions or your own answers to come back to, we keep what you saved, the collections you put it in, and any changes you make to an improved answer.

When you create your account, we also note how you first found us: the page you first landed on, the campaign tags in its link (such as “utm_source”), and the name of the site that sent you there, never its full address.

For the free check, we keep a scrambled form of the network you uploaded from (a salted hash), never the address itself. It is there only to limit how many free checks one network can use in a day.

When you send a copy, photographed, as a PDF or typed, we keep:

• the photos or PDF you sent, and the file’s name;
• the text we read from them, or that you typed: each question, and your answer to it;
• where each line sits on your page, so the red notes land on your own handwriting;
• your marks, the notes on each part, the improved version of your answer, and which toppers’ answers we compared yours with;
• a numeric fingerprint of each question (an embedding), used to find toppers’ answers to similar questions.

For each Prelims practice set or timed paper you start, we keep which questions it held, what you chose for each, whether you marked it for review, how long you took, and your score.

For each Mains past paper or test you sit on the Desk, we keep its questions, what you type for each (saved as you write, so nothing is lost if the tab closes), and when you started and handed it in. A paper you hand in becomes one of your copies, kept like any other.

Your progress page is worked out from these when you open it; nothing else is stored. It all goes when you delete your account.

Each conversation with the AI Mentor is kept: your messages, its replies, what it looked up on the way (the parts of your copies and the toppers’ answers it read), which model answered, and what the turn cost us. The first thing you ask becomes the conversation’s title, unless you rename it. If you mark a reply helpful or not, we keep that with the reply. An answer you paste into the chat to be marked is kept in that conversation too, not as a copy.

“Remove” hides a conversation from you; it is deleted, with everything else, when you delete your account. To get rid of one sooner, write to us.

When you write to us from the app, with Feedback or Contact us, we keep what you wrote and what it is about, the page you were on (its address without anything after a “?” or “#”), your browser’s description (its name, version and system) and your screen size. If you tell us a mark looks wrong from that answer’s page, we keep which answer it was, so we can check it.

We read these notes only to answer you, fix problems and decide what to build next. Each one is emailed to our support inbox.

We keep a note for 90 days after it reaches our inbox, or until you delete your account, if that comes first. The email in our inbox stays until we delete it; write to us and we’ll delete yours.

When you link ChatGPT, Claude or another app to your account, you sign in on our own page and see what the app is asking to do before you allow it. We keep a record of each link: which app, the permissions you allowed, when you linked it and when it was last used. The passes it uses to reach your account are stored scrambled, so they can’t be read back. The request you made to link it is deleted 30 days later.

A linked app receives whatever its tools fetch, such as your copies, marks and chats, and sends it to its own AI provider, under that app’s terms. We don’t keep the conversation you have inside it.

To remove a link, open the menu under your name and choose Linked apps; it stops at once. Deleting your account ends every link.

You. No other aspirant using UPSC Grade can open your copies. They are read and marked by an AI model, not by a person; nobody at UPSC Grade marks copies by hand. Your AI Mentor and your Progress page read only your own copies and practice, to show you where you stand and what to work on. We don’t train any AI model on your copies.

Us, in aggregate. To check that our marking is fair, we run the marked answers through our own scoring again, as numbers, without reading them one by one. The app has a switch to let your copies help check our marks; until it is wired to this check, treat the check as applying to every marked answer.

Us, as counts. Each week we look at how much each account with a plan used: its copies, answers and pages, what marking them cost us, its AI Mentor messages and the days it was active. It is how we keep plans fair and notice an account shared by many people. It shows counts, never your answers.

Your copies are stored apart from the toppers’ copies on this site and are never added to them.

A few providers help us run UPSC Grade, each for one job, and each sees only what that job needs:

• Hosting our servers and our database, where your account, copies and marks are kept.
• Carrying and protecting every visit to the site: each page and request passes through this provider on its way to us.
• Storage for the photos of your pages, the nightly copy of them, and our backups.
• AI models that read your handwriting, mark each answer, write the improved version, find toppers’ answers to similar questions, and write the AI Mentor’s replies. The images of your pages, the text of your answers and your chat messages are sent to them for this.
• Error reports. When something breaks on our server, an error-monitoring service gets a report: what failed, where in our code, and the page address without its search words. Names, emails, sign-in details and the text of your answers are removed before it is sent.
• Checking that the site is up, from outside. This sees no one’s data.
• Google signs you in, with your Google account, or your Apple one in the app.
• Email. Notes you send us from the app reach our inbox through it, and our emails to you go out through it.
• Razorpay takes payments for plans and top-ups, and runs a plan’s autopay. It receives your account ID and what you’re buying with each payment, and your email and name to pre-fill its form. What you enter in its checkout, such as your card, UPI or bank details, goes to Razorpay, not to us.
• Google Analytics counts visits. It sees the pages you open, your browser and kind of device, roughly where you are (a city or country, which Google works out from your network address and does not keep), and the steps you take on the way to a marked answer: that you pressed a sign-up button, started an upload, saw the check page, confirmed it or saw the result, met the day’s limit, added a question paper, asked for your pages to be read again, opened an answer before the others were marked, started practice, a test or a Prelims paper, or opened the prices; and the words you search the question banks for. When you pay, it learns that you opened the checkout and that what you bought came on: which plan or top-up, its price and, for the payment, Razorpay’s reference. It never receives your answers, your marks, your name or your email, and its advertising features are off. How Google uses what it collects is on its own page, how Google uses information from sites that use its services. You can turn it off for your browser below.
• PostHog counts the same visits and steps, and can play a visit back: which pages were opened, how far each was scrolled, which links and buttons were pressed. In the app, in a check and on the screen that links another app, every word on the page, every picture of your pages and anything you type is blanked before it leaves your browser, so a replay there shows the shape of the page and where it was pressed, nothing you wrote. Once you are signed in it knows you by your account ID only, never your name or email, so we can see where one person’s visit stopped. It also gets a report when a page breaks in your browser: the error and the page address. It keeps what it collects in the United States. You can turn it off for your browser below.

Some of these providers process data outside India. There is no advertising on the site. To know who the providers are today, write to us.

The emails we send you come from support@upscgrade.com, and are about your plan: when it starts (with Razorpay’s invoice), when it renews, before each renewal, if a renewal doesn’t go through, when it is cancelled and when it ends. Otherwise we email you only to reply when you write to us. We never send marketing email.

• Your copies: until you delete them. The pictures of your pages, the text we read, your marks and the notes all stay, so you can come back to a marked copy whenever you like. Delete a copy, or your account, and all of it goes from our server and from our storage provider’s copy at the same time.
• The nightly safety copy of your pictures: as long as the copy. Each night new photos are copied to our storage provider, so a fault on our server can’t lose them.
• Your chats, your practice, what you saved, the notes you sent us, your linked apps, your sign-in times and your account: until you delete the account.
• Your plan and payment records: kept after you delete the account, for our tax records, but without your name or email. The emails we sent you about your plan stay in our sent mail; write to us and we’ll delete yours.
• Our server’s notes: a year. Our server notes each request it answers: the time, the page or address asked for (search words included), and whether it worked. It doesn’t note your network address, only a scrambled form of it when it has to slow down a burst of requests. We use them only to find faults, and to hand them over if the law requires it; after a year they are deleted.

We also back up our database, so a fault can’t lose anyone’s work: a backup each day, kept for 90 days, and one each month, kept for a year. Our database provider also keeps its own for 7 days. Something you delete can stay in a backup until that backup expires, a year at most. We use backups only to restore the service.

• See what we hold about you: write to us and we’ll send it within 30 days.
• Correct your name in the app; anything else, write to us.
• Delete a copy, a conversation, or your whole account: the account from the menu under your name, the rest by writing to us.
• Withdraw your agreement to what this page describes, as easily as you gave it: delete your account from the menu, turn analytics off below, or remove a linked app in Linked apps. Each takes a moment.
• Complain to us at support@upscgrade.com; we answer within 30 days. Once the Data Protection Board of India takes complaints under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, you can also take one there.

Want this page in Hindi or another Indian language? Write to us and we’ll send it to you.

You can delete your account yourself: in the app, open the menu under your name and choose Delete my account. To delete just one copy or one conversation, write to support@upscgrade.com from the email you sign in with.

If your plan renews by itself, deleting your account cancels its autopay first, so you are never charged again. The time and credits left on your plan go with the account and aren’t refunded.

Deleting your account deletes every copy you sent for yourself: the pictures, the text we read, your marks, the notes and the improved answers. Everything you saved, your practice, your chats with the AI Mentor, your sign-in times and the notes you sent us go with it, and every linked app loses its access.

We keep one bare record that the account existed: its sign-in IDs, with your name, email and photo wiped, the record of its credits, and the record of your plan and of each payment, for our tax records. That stops the same sign-in collecting the free credits twice, and it means that sign-in can’t be used for UPSC Grade again, from the website or from a linked app.

We set two cookies of our own. One says only that you are signed in, so the site can take you straight to your copies; it doesn’t hold your sign-in. The other, set only before you have an account, notes the page you first landed on and the link that brought you, for up to 90 days; it is deleted once your account exists.

Your browser’s own storage on your device keeps your sign-in, a link to your last free check, and, while you sit a timed Prelims paper, your answers so far, so a closed tab loses nothing, and whether you turned analytics off. Signing out removes your sign-in from it. If a tab is signed out because you signed in on another device, it keeps a note saying so, until the sign-in screen has shown it.

Razorpay’s checkout loads only when you choose to pay. It works under Razorpay’s own privacy policy, and anything it keeps in your browser is Razorpay’s.

Google Analytics sets its own cookies (named “_ga”), which tell one visit from the next for up to two years. To stop it, turn it off here; the choice is kept in this browser. Google’s opt-out add-on and most content blockers stop it too.

PostHog sets a cookie and uses your browser’s storage (both named “ph_”), which tell one visit from the next for up to a year. The same switch stops it.

UPSC Grade is for people 18 and older. We don’t knowingly keep anything about anyone younger; if you think we do, write to us and we’ll delete it.

If your data is ever exposed or lost through a fault of ours, we’ll tell you what happened, what it means for you and what we have done, and we’ll report it to the Data Protection Board and to CERT-In, India’s cyber-security agency, as the rules require.

If this page changes in a way that means we keep more, or share it with someone new, we’ll tell you in the app before it applies.

Questions about your data, or a request to see, correct or delete it: support@upscgrade.com. Who we are, and where, is on our Contact page; the rules for using the site are on our Terms page.