Terms of Service — Kettle
Last updated: 5 August 2026
These terms are a binding agreement between you and Kettle. By creating an account or using Kettle, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not create an account.
1. Who we are
Kettle is a web application at kettlerecipes.com, built and operated by Saahil Padwal, Koki Yang, Alyssa Ho and Eleanor Yue. Contact: kettl3recipes@gmail.com.
Kettle is a website you use in a browser. There is no Kettle mobile app. If we release one, we will update these terms before it launches.
2. What Kettle does
You tell Kettle what ingredients you have — by typing them into your pantry, or by taking a photo of your fridge, pantry or spice cabinet and letting Kettle identify them. Kettle then shows you recipes, removes recipes that conflict with the allergies and diets you have set, ranks what remains by how much of each recipe you already have, and can build a grocery list of what you are missing.
Where Kettle can determine enough of a recipe’s ingredient masses from public USDA data, it shows an estimated per-serving nutrition panel. Where it cannot, it says “Nutrition unavailable” rather than showing a number it cannot stand behind. Kettle does not currently log what you eat and keeps no nutrient-intake history.
Recipe text comes from TheMealDB and is used under their terms. Photographs come from Pexels and are used under the Pexels licence. Nutrition figures are derived from the USDA FoodData Central database.
3. Who can use Kettle
You must be at least 13 years old to create a Kettle account. If you are under 18, you may use Kettle only with the involvement of a parent or guardian. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13; if we learn that we have, we delete it.
4. Your account
You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your password to yourself. Tell us at kettl3recipes@gmail.com if you think someone else has access to it. One account per person. Do not share credentials.
5. Allergies, diets and nutrition — read this section
This is the most important section in these terms.
Kettle filters recipes against the allergens and diets you set. That filtering runs on ingredient text and ingredient tags, and it is automated. It can be wrong in both directions: it can miss an allergen that is present, and it can remove a recipe that would have been fine for you.
Specifically, and without limiting the above:
- Recipe ingredient lists come from a third-party database. If that database omits an ingredient, Kettle cannot detect it.
- Ingredient identification from a photo is done by an automated image model. It misreads things.
- “May contain” and cross-contamination risks, shared equipment, and processing aids are not represented in our data at all and Kettle cannot warn you about them.
- A brand’s actual product can differ from the generic ingredient we matched.
- Nutrition figures are estimates derived from generic USDA entries and are always labelled “(est.)”. They are not measured values for the food you actually cook, and they are frequently unavailable.
Always read the ingredients on the actual food you are about to eat. Kettle is a discovery and planning tool. It is not a medical device, not a nutrition or dietary advice service, and not a substitute for a doctor, an allergist or a registered dietitian. Do not use Kettle as the only check before eating something if you have a food allergy or a medical condition affected by diet.
6. Photo scanning
If you use the photo feature, the image you take is sent to a third-party AI provider (Anthropic) which identifies visible food items and returns a list. See our Privacy Policy for what happens to that image. Do not photograph anything you do not want processed this way — people, documents, screens, or anything else that is not food.
Photo scanning is limited to a set number of scans depending on your plan. We may change those limits.
7. Subscriptions, billing and cancellation
Kettle has a free plan and paid plans. Paid plans are recurring subscriptions: unless you cancel, they renew automatically each month and your payment method is charged again at the then-current price.
- The price, the billing period and the renewal terms are shown on the subscription page before you pay.
- Payments are processed by Stripe. Kettle never receives or stores your card number.
- You may cancel at any time. Cancel in the app from the Subscription page, or email kettl3recipes@gmail.com from the address on your account. Cancellation stops future charges. It takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for.
- We do not give refunds for the current period except where the law requires it, or where we have obviously charged you in error — in which case, tell us and we will fix it.
- If we change the price of a plan you are on, we will tell you by email before the change takes effect, and you may cancel before it does.
- We may change what is included in each plan. We will not put allergen filtering or diet filtering behind a paid plan. Those stay available on the free plan.
8. What you may not do
Do not use Kettle to break the law. Do not try to get at other users’ data. Do not scrape, bulk-download or resell Kettle’s content. Do not attack, overload or probe our systems. Do not upload images you have no right to upload. Do not misrepresent an allergen tag in a way intended to cause someone harm.
We may suspend or close an account that does any of these.
9. Content
Recipes shown in Kettle are not ours — they come from TheMealDB and remain subject to that source’s terms. Photographs are licensed from Pexels. Nutrition data comes from USDA FoodData Central, a public-domain US government dataset. The Kettle name, interface and code are ours.
Anything you put into Kettle — your pantry, your grocery lists, your saved recipes, your photos — stays yours. You give us permission to store and process it only so that we can operate the service for you. We do not sell it and we do not use your photos to train any model.
10. Availability
Kettle is provided as it is. We may change it, take features away, or shut it down. We will give notice by email before shutting it down entirely if we can. There is no guarantee that Kettle will be available, correct, or free of bugs.
11. Ending your account
You may delete your account at any time by emailing kettl3recipes@gmail.com. We may suspend or terminate your account if you break these terms. If we terminate your account without cause while you have paid time remaining, we will refund the unused portion.
12. Disclaimer
To the fullest extent the law allows, Kettle is provided “as is” and “as available”, with no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that allergen filtering, diet filtering, ingredient identification or nutrition estimates are accurate or complete.
13. Limit on what you can recover from us
Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to Kettle is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) twenty US dollars (US$20.00).
We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or the cost of substitute services, even if we were told such damages were possible.
Some places do not allow these exclusions or limits — in particular for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for liability that cannot be limited by law. Where that applies to you, these limits apply only as far as the law permits, and nothing in these terms takes away a right you have that cannot be given up.
14. You cover us for your misuse
If someone brings a claim against us because of how you used Kettle, or because of something you uploaded, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with it.
15. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, and you and we each consent to that. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not remove any protection your local law gives you.
Before filing anything, email kettl3recipes@gmail.com and give us thirty days to sort it out. Most things get fixed that way.
16. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. If a change is material, we will email the address on your account at least fourteen days before it takes effect, and update the date at the top. Continuing to use Kettle after that means you accept the new terms.
17. The rest
If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. Our not enforcing something once does not mean we have given it up. These terms, plus the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about Kettle.
18. Contact
kettl3recipes@gmail.com