Everything you might wonder about Safra, gathered in one place. If you don't find your answer here, email hi@thesafra.com.
No. Safra has no accounts. You open the app and start a trip. Nothing to sign up for, no email address, no password.
This is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. There is no Safra server that could be breached, no marketing email you never asked for, and no data for anyone to sell.
There is no catch. No "Pro" tier, no subscription, no features locked behind a paywall. Splitting, documents, Wrapped, the widget, PDF and CSV export, nine languages, cloud backup. All free.
There is no "In-App Purchases" tag on the App Store listing because there are none. The app generates no revenue and is not designed to. It was built to use, not to monetise.
Tap the + button on the home screen. Give your trip a name, pick the destination country, set your home currency, add dates if you like, and optionally set a budget. That's it.
You can also choose a cover photo from the built-in gallery, or use one of your own photos. Everything can be changed after the trip is created.
Nine languages, each written by hand rather than machine-translated:
Safra follows your device language automatically. You can also change it in Settings → Language without changing your device language.
Yes. Safra is available on both iOS (iPhone and iPad, iOS 17+) and Android. The Android version has full feature parity with iOS, including cloud backup via Google Drive, the home screen widget, and all nine languages.
A few features are iOS-specific because they rely on Apple platform technologies: Live Activity, Dynamic Island, and Siri / App Intents. Everything else works identically on both platforms.
Safra supports 170+ currencies. When you log an expense in a foreign currency, say ¥4,800 for ramen in Tokyo, Safra records the exchange rate at that exact moment and converts it to your home currency for the budget and totals.
The rate locks when you save. If the yen strengthens next week, your recorded totals don't change. Your history stays accurate.
Exchange rates are refreshed every 6 hours when you're online, and the last cached rates are used when you're offline. Safra works fully without internet.
Yes. Tap the camera icon in the Quick Add or expense screen. Safra reads the amount, date, and merchant from the photo using Apple's Vision framework on iOS and ML Kit on Android.
If OCR is uncertain, a review sheet lets you confirm or correct before saving. The photo is always attached to the expense regardless of whether OCR succeeded.
Yes. In the Budget tab of any trip, you can set a total budget, a daily budget, and allocations per category: Accommodation, Food, Transport, Activities, and any custom categories you create. Safra shows planned vs actual as the trip unfolds.
Budget alerts are local notifications. They fire when you're approaching or over a limit, without any server involved.
Yes, two ways:
Both options are in the Add Expense screen.
Tap the search icon in the expense list. You can filter by keyword, category, payment method, amount range, and date range, all at once. Results update as you type.
Tags also help with finding things. Add any tag to an expense (for example "business" or "shared") and filter by it later.
Yes. Go to Settings → Import. Safra can auto-detect CSV files from:
The file is parsed entirely on your device. It is never uploaded.
Open a trip → tap the share icon → choose CSV or PDF. Both are free, always. The CSV includes all columns including currency, rate, payer, payment method, and tags. The PDF is a branded trip summary formatted for sharing or filing.
You can also export all trips at once from Settings → Export all data.
No. You add your companions by name inside the trip. No accounts, no invitations, no email addresses. You log expenses on their behalf, and Safra calculates who owes whom at the end.
If your companions also have Safra, you can share the trip with them via Nearby Share (Bluetooth + Wi-Fi, no internet required). They then have their own copy and can add expenses too.
Four modes on every expense:
You can set a default split for each trip so you don't have to configure it on every expense.
Safra totals every person's share across all expenses and then uses a minimum-transfer algorithm to collapse the debts. If five people had twelve expenses, Safra works out the fewest bank transfers needed to make everyone whole, then writes the message you can send.
The settlement screen shows each transfer with a QR code or payment link, depending on what payment details that person has set up.
Scan the receipt. Safra reads the line items from the bill. You can then assign each item to a person: who ordered the ramen, who gets the gyoza. Safra calculates each person's sub-total automatically.
This works on-device using OCR. The receipt is never uploaded.
Safra generates a payment card with your details. You can set up any of these in your profile:
Nothing goes through Safra's servers. The QR is generated on your device.
Go to Settings → Backup & Sync. On iOS, Safra backs up to your personal iCloud account. On Android, it backs up to your personal Google Drive AppData folder. Both are opt-in and off by default.
To restore on a new device, install Safra, go to Settings → Backup & Sync, and restore from your backup.
Yes. Enable Sync in Settings → Backup & Sync on all your devices. Changes sync in real-time via CloudKit (iOS) or Google Drive AppData (Android). Expenses, receipts, documents, comments, and checklist items all sync automatically.
If you have a mix of iOS and Android devices, cross-platform sync is not automatic. Use Nearby Share to transfer specific trips between platforms when needed.
Nearby Share transfers a full trip (expenses, documents, receipts, persons, and comments) directly to another device over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. No internet connection needed.
In a trip, tap the share icon → Nearby Share. The receiving device gets a complete copy of the trip. Both can then add expenses and sync updates with each other.
If you had iCloud (iOS) or Google Drive (Android) backup enabled, your data restores automatically when you install Safra on the new device and sign into the same cloud account.
If you did not have backup enabled: use Nearby Share to transfer your trips from the old device to the new one while both are near each other.
If you no longer have the old device: unfortunately there is no recovery path without a backup. Safra stores everything locally by design, so there is no Safra server holding a copy.
Settings → scroll to the bottom → Delete all data. This permanently removes every trip, expense, document, and receipt from your device. It cannot be undone.
If you have iCloud or Google Drive backup enabled, delete the backup separately from your cloud account's storage settings. Safra cannot delete your cloud backup on your behalf.
Deleting the app also removes all local data.
Your data lives in a database on your device. That's it. There is no Safra server. There is no Safra account. We have never seen your expenses, receipts, documents, or travel history, and we have no way to.
The only network calls Safra makes are: exchange rate fetches (no user data), an iTunes version check (no user data), gallery cover downloads when you pick one (one-shot, on your request), wishlist link previews when you paste a URL (on your request), and weather data when you enable that feature (opt-in, approximate coordinates only).
Apple asks every developer to declare what data their app collects. "Data Not Collected" means the answer was genuinely no to every category: no location data, no contact info, no identifiers, no usage data, no diagnostics, nothing.
Safra earned this by not collecting anything, not by a legal workaround. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising SDK, and no session tracker.
No. The AI features (category suggestions, trip recap narrations, and lifetime insight narrations) use Apple's Foundation Models framework, which runs entirely on the Neural Engine of your device (iPhone 15 Pro and later).
No data is sent to Apple or to Safra. No network request is made when you use an AI feature. It is completely offline and private.
No. When you turn the weather feature on for a completed trip, Safra sends only that country and the trip's dates to its own weather service, hosted on Safra's server at thesafra.com. That service is a private copy of the open-source Open-Meteo engine, not a public API, so nothing goes to a third party. The coordinates are a fixed central point for the country, never your GPS location.
Safra works out the insight from the result and does not store it. The feature is off by default.
No. Receipt photos and documents are stored in the database on your device. OCR scanning happens on-device using Apple Vision (iOS) or ML Kit (Android), so the image never leaves your phone. If you enable cloud backup, the files are encrypted and stored in your personal iCloud or Google Drive account, which we cannot access.
Wrapped is an annual travel recap: three shareable cards summarising your year, covering where you went, what you spent, and what kind of traveller you are (your personality archetype based on how you spend).
It generates automatically at the end of each year from your local data. Each card can be shared to Instagram Stories, WhatsApp, or anywhere else. The design uses your trip's cover photos as the background.
There is also a Monthly Recap that generates automatically every month, a single card for each active month of travel.
Spending DNA is a hexagonal radar chart in your Lifetime Insights screen. It shows how you spend across six dimensions, derived from all your trips: Food, Comfort (accommodation), Movement (transport), Experiences (activities), Acquisitions (shopping), and Wellbeing.
It is shareable as a card. It updates after every trip.
The Checklist is a sixth tab on every trip, a pre-departure task list. Safra suggests a starting template for your destination (JR Pass for Japan, IC Card, adapter type, visa check, and so on). You can edit, add, and reorder freely.
Checklist items that involve booking, like a hotel, flights, or travel insurance, can be linked to an expense category. When you mark them done, Safra offers to log the expense immediately with the category pre-selected.
The checklist syncs across devices alongside your expenses.
In Settings → Calendar, you can enable Hijri dates. When enabled, trip dates and expense dates show the Hijri date alongside the Gregorian date, for example 14 Dhul-Hijja 1447 / May 10, 2026.
The calculation uses the Kuwaiti tabular algorithm, accurate to ±1 day of the Umm al-Qura calendar. Arabic month names include shadda diacritics. No network call is needed, since the algorithm runs locally.
Settings → Notifications → Daily recap. Choose a time (default is 9 pm). While a trip is active, Safra sends an evening summary: how much you spent that day, how many expenses, and how much remains in your budget.
The notification is skipped on days when you have not logged anything. It is scheduled locally, with no server involved and no push notification infrastructure. No data leaves your device.
On the anniversary of any past trip expense, exactly one year later, Safra sends a local notification: "One year ago today you were in Kyoto. You spent ¥4,800 on your best meal." Tapping it opens that expense.
It fires only for the most significant expense on that date (highest amount) to avoid spamming. It is enabled by default and can be turned off in Settings → Notifications → Memories.
Safra supports App Intents. You can say to Siri: "Add ¥4,800 for food to my Tokyo trip in Safra." Siri opens the Quick Add sheet with the amount, currency, and category pre-filled.
You can also set up Shortcuts in the Shortcuts app for one-tap expense logging from your home screen or Action Button. Siri and Shortcuts work in all nine languages, Arabic Siri included.
When a trip is active and you enable the Live Activity (Settings → Live Activity), Safra shows your trip's remaining budget and today's spending on the Dynamic Island (iPhone 14 Pro and later) and on the lock screen, without opening the app.
It updates every time you add an expense. Tap it to jump directly into the app.
Long-press your home or lock screen → tap + → search "Safra." Available in three sizes: small (remaining budget), medium (trip name + budget bar + today's spend), and large (full budget breakdown).
The widget automatically shows the active trip. If no trip is active, it shows your most recent trip. The Android widget works the same way via the Glance widget system.
Safra's AI features use Apple's Foundation Models framework, which requires an A17 Pro chip or newer (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models). This is because the AI runs entirely on the device's Neural Processing Unit and does not use a cloud service.
On older iPhones and on Android (where Gemini Nano support is still device-gated), the AI features are not available. Every other Safra feature works on all supported devices.
One person reads and answers every email. Usually within a day. No support ticket, no chatbot, no queue.
hi@thesafra.comMarwan Aljasmi · maker of Safra سفرة