Better Gmail — Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 1, 2026

Better Gmail is a Chrome extension that adds an AI assistant to Gmail and Google Chat. This page says exactly what it reads, where that goes, and what it never does.

What it reads

When you use Gmail with Better Gmail installed, it reads, inside your own browser:

• The email thread you open — so it can summarize it and help you reply.
• The list of messages in your inbox (sender, subject and the one-line preview Gmail shows) — to sort today's inbox and to colour rows.
• The Google Chat conversation you open (who wrote each message, when, and its text). The first time, it scrolls back through the whole conversation once; after that it reads only messages newer than the last one it saw.
• Your unread Google Chat conversations, when you open the Unread tab — only the messages newer than the last ones it read. It opens them in a background tab and marks them unread again afterwards.
• About a dozen emails from your Sent folder, once, when you first use "My voice", to learn how you write. Only the short description of your style it produces is kept.
• Once an hour, for notifications: which unread emails in your inbox are from your school's domain, your Google Chat mentions, and the new messages in unread chats. Only the chat messages are sent to Anthropic, to ask whether any of them asks you something.
• Your name and address from your Google account button, so replies are signed with your name and your own chat messages are told apart from everyone else's. They go to Anthropic only as part of a request, and your address goes to the relay with each request to check your free month or subscription.
• What you type into Better Gmail, and the text you have written in a Gmail reply box when you press Write it or Fix my writing.

Where it goes

• To Anthropic's Claude, through Better Gmail's relay (better-gmail-api.jomonkey22.workers.dev, run on Cloudflare). The relay adds Better Gmail's own Anthropic key and passes each request straight on; the answer comes straight back. It is sent when a summary or digest is made (automatically, unless you turn that off in Settings) and when you press a button or send a chat message.
• The relay keeps nothing you write or read. It stores only: a count of how many requests each copy of Better Gmail made today, under a random id made when it was installed, so it can keep daily limits (counts from earlier days are deleted); the date that install id and your Google account's email address were first seen, so it knows when your free month ends; and whether that email address has paid.
• Paying. After the free month, Better Gmail costs a monthly subscription, paid through Stripe. Pressing Subscribe shows Stripe's own payment form inside Better Gmail's settings page, with your email address filled in; your card goes straight to Stripe and Better Gmail never sees it. Cancel any time in Settings → Plan: the subscription stops at the end of the month you have paid for, and you are not charged again.
• Monthly use. The relay also keeps, for your email address, how much your AI use has cost this month (worked out from the number of words Claude read and wrote, not from what they said), so it can stop at the monthly allowance. Earlier months are deleted. To check that you have subscribed, the relay asks Stripe whether your email address has an active subscription. Stripe handles payment details under its own privacy policy: https://stripe.com/privacy.
• No analytics, no tracking and no advertising.
• Anthropic handles that data under its own terms and privacy policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy.

What is stored

In your browser's local extension storage only: your settings, the random install id, the most recent summaries and today's digest, for each Google Chat conversation a short summary plus the time of the last message it read, the description of your writing style, and which emails and mentions it has already told you about (so the same email is not summarized twice). Removing the extension deletes all of it.

What it never does

• It never sends or deletes your email, never reports anything as spam, and never changes your Gmail settings. It archives, marks read, stars, labels or unsubscribes only when you press Confirm on a list it showed you, and it does so with Gmail's own buttons.
• It never presses Send, and never sends a Google Chat message. Replies it writes are placed in Gmail's own reply box, and you decide whether to send them.
• It never sells, shares or transfers your data to anyone, and never uses it for anything except the features above.

Permissions

• storage — to keep your key, settings, recent summaries and the chat.
• alarms — to run the hourly check. Turn it off under Settings → Notifications.
• notifications — to show you what the hourly check found.
• scripting — to search your mail and carry out actions you confirmed, in a background Gmail tab.
• https://mail.google.com/* — to show the panel inside Gmail and read the email you open.
• https://chat.google.com/* — to show the panel inside Google Chat and read the conversation you open.
• https://api.anthropic.com/* — to send requests to Claude with your key.

Contact

Questions: email the developer at the address on Better Gmail's Chrome Web Store listing.