Real answers, short and straight — and a human at the end if you need one.
Children never make an account and are never asked for anything directly — no name, no age, no email. A grown-up may optionally add a child's first name as an artist tag (stored with the drawings, and removable any time) — that's the one bit of a name that can ever be here, and only if a parent adds it. There are no ads, no chat, no strangers, no tracking, and NO AI-GENERATED ART REPLACING THEIR DRAWINGS. The only account in the whole product is a parent's email, used for sign-in and a few account emails.
Where families connect — visiting a world, or sending a drawing to one — we keep records of that traffic and reserve the right to review it for anything that looks like an adult reaching toward children, and drawings sent to another family can be reviewed too. We can suspend or deactivate an account that breaks the safety rules — for that kind of violation, immediately and without warning. Details in the terms & privacy.
The first time Paper Worlds opens on a device it invents a 4-letter code. That code is the world: it's how the phone knows where to send a drawing, and how the world comes back after a reload. One device, one code, one world — so if each kid has their own iPad, each kid has their own world, automatically.
You can leave it that way or combine them. Visiting is a trip: type another code, look around, and the 🏠 button brings the kid straight home, taking anything they dragged over back with them. Moving in is a move: every drawing on that device transfers to the other code, and from then on both screens show the same world. It asks twice before doing it. Either way your account sits above all of it — one email, one shared pack of creations, however many codes are underneath. There's a diagram of all three setups on the parents page.
Changed your mind after combining? You can separate them again. In the grown-ups menu, search for code and open this device's world code → separate. Every drawing walks back to the device that brought it over, and whatever the kids made together after the move stays in the shared world. There's also a "brand-new empty world" option if you just want a device to start fresh without touching anyone's drawings.
Tap the small for grown-ups pill in the app, answer the quick maths question, and everything is behind one search box — type what you're after rather than hunting through menus. packs, refund, camera, unsubscribe, cap, book, code, download and cancel all land on the right place. Press Enter to jump straight to the first result.
Either — it's your choice, and you never need two. The device running Paper Worlds has its own camera: tap 📷 and photograph the page right there. That's the simplest way on an iPad or a laptop.
The second way exists for the big screen. If the world is up on a TV, nobody wants to carry the TV to the kitchen table — so any phone can scan the 4-letter code on screen and become the camera instead. Nothing installs on that phone and it needs no account. Several kids can each use their own phone into one shared screen.
No cookies at all, and no tracking. We count page views — a tally of how many times a page was opened — and nothing else. Not who, not where from, not what you did next. There's no cookie, no fingerprint, no profile, and no advertising network involved, so we couldn't identify a visitor even if we wanted to.
The drawings your family photographs, the names given to them, any first-name artist tags a grown-up chooses to add, and a parent email if you create the family account. The drawings live in cloud storage, so a world opens the same on every device on your family code; only a few small settings (like which code this device belongs to) sit on the device itself. We never sell your data. We do share what's needed with the services that run Paper Worlds — Anthropic (the AI vision step that finds the drawing), Supabase (storage and database), Stripe (payments, plus a book's shipping address), and Resend (our emails) — and nothing beyond that.
About the camera photo specifically, because it's the fair question: the picture of the page is sent once, encrypted, to the AI vision service that finds the drawings on it, and is never stored anywhere — only the cut-out drawing is saved. The camera's metadata (location, device, timestamp) is stripped on the phone before it leaves. And if a person appears anywhere in the shot — whether you used the in-app camera or scanned with a phone — we stop and keep nothing, and ask for a photo of just the paper. (It's an automated best-effort check, not a guarantee.) The terms & privacy spells all of this out.
The drawings stay until you delete them — no expiry, no quiet clear-out. The camera photo of the page is never stored. A parent email is kept while the account is open. If a world goes quiet for a long time and we have your email, we reserve the right to clean it up — but we'll write to you first.
To delete everything: in the app tap for grown-ups, search delete, and choose delete this world and everything in it. We email you a link, and the link is what deletes — nothing goes until you press it, so a guessed code can't wipe your world and neither can a child. Then the pictures come off our servers for good; backups clear within thirty days. When you delete your last world — or close your account — your saved email and card go too: the parent email, the saved payment token, and your money ledger all come out of our database. (If your family still has other worlds, the account stays.) Stripe keeps its own transaction records as the law requires. Download the drawings first from the book page, it's free. Or email support@paperworlds.app from the email address on the account and it's done by hand within seven days.
Playing is free. Keeping every creation forever is free. Visiting family worlds is free. Every family pays once, at sign-up. You're buying creations, not time: $4.99 for 30 — enough to fill their first book · $9.99 for 100 — the big pack. The average kid makes about 30 creations a year; two kids makes the big pack the obvious one (two starters is $9.98 for 60 — the big pack is the same money for 100). Most families won't touch 100 in a year. And honestly: we don't make money on creations — we make it on the printed books. The packs keep the lights on. Nothing recurring, nothing to cancel, creations never expire. No subscription, ever.
Downloading your kids' drawings is always free — full size, all of them, any time, and the keepsake book is always free to read on screen. The only paid part of the book is paper: a print-ready file you can take to any print shop ($12), a spiral-bound copy printed and shipped ($29), or the hardcover ($89). One-time, never a subscription.
No. It's off by default. One thing to know plainly: buying a pack saves your card by default so auto-refill can work if you ever switch it on — you can remove the saved card any time in the grown-ups menu. If you do turn auto-refill on, you also pick a monthly limit — $5, $10, or $20 a month, maximum. At the limit, creating pauses until you decide. There is no way to spend more in a month than the ceiling you chose.
Your browser needs permission to use the camera. If it was denied: on an iPad web-app, open Settings → Paper Worlds → Camera; in Safari, tap the aA button → Website Settings → Camera → Allow; in Chrome, click the lock icon by the address → Site settings → Camera. Or skip it entirely — scan the code on screen and use any phone as the camera.
Your world lives under its 4-letter code — it's never lost. On the new device, tap the code at the top, type your old code, and choose move in. If a parent has signed in, the family account reconnects everything too. Coming from our old web address? Just open it once and you'll be walked over automatically.
If a purchase went wrong — double charge, kid-bought-by-accident, anything — email us and we'll make it right. A creation pack is refundable within 30 days if it's entirely unused; digital things (creations, the PDF) are non-refundable once used; a printed book is made to order, so cancel for a full refund before printing starts, and a damaged or misprinted one gets reprinted free within 14 days. The full policy is in the terms & privacy — but honestly, we'd rather sort it in one email than have you hesitate to trust us.
Every email is read by the dad who built this.
✉️ support@paperworlds.app