Press kit · data checked 2026-11-01 · next refresh 2027-Q1

Photo-upload audit: everything you need to cite it

We are PowerSoftware, an independent software team. We ship desktop utilities from this domain, including a local-first AI image editor whose photos never leave the machine.

That is the only reason we ran this audit, and it is stated up front on the data page: we have a commercial interest in upload-required tools looking worse. Our counterweight is that every number here is the vendor's own published sentence, with its URL and check date, so you can verify ours and change it if we are wrong.

Nothing on this page is behind a form, a login or a paywall. Reuse the figures, the chart and the CSV freely under CC BY 4.0 — attribution is appreciated, permission is not required, and you do not need to ask first.

7 quotable figures

Ratios are over the 10 operators whose own pages a human read line by line and could reach (11 of 19 reviewed so far; 11 of 20 brands signed off). Each line deep-links to the vendor's own wording on the data page.

1 hour – 7 days Only 5 of the 10 audited operators publish a concrete auto-deletion window for the photo you upload — and they differ by a factor of 168: from one hour (PicWish) to seven days (DeWatermark). Vendor quote, source page and check date →
0 of 10 None of the 10 audited operators states how long a *failed* or *abandoned* upload is kept, and 2 of them publish no deletion window at all on the pages we read, line by line. Vendor quote, source page and check date →
1 of 10 Exactly one operator in the sample says outright that it does not keep your file on its servers at all (Watermarkly). Nobody else in the category makes that claim in their own words. Vendor quote, source page and check date →
720 – 1,600 px 2 of 10 operators publish a free-tier export resolution cap in their own words: 720 px (cleanup.pictures) to 1,600 px (SnapEdit) — while a third's free plan caps the *download* at 720 px. Vendor quote, source page and check date →
1 of 10 1 of 10 operators offers to use the image you just uploaded to improve its models — as an explicit opt-in with a refusal path (remove.bg). Marketing copy about “models trained on millions of images” is not counted: it says nothing about your file. Vendor quote, source page and check date →
0 of 10 0 of 10 disclose which host actually receives your file. Nothing in their static pages reveals it — which is why we report this as unknown rather than as “stays on their own server”. Vendor quote, source page and check date →
20 brands / 19 operators Two of the 20 storefronts in this sample run on one shared backend (PixelBin serves both WatermarkRemover.io and Upscale.media, with near-identical policy text). Counting brands would quote the same policy twice in every ratio above. Vendor quote, source page and check date →

The chart, ready to embed

Bar chart of published auto-deletion windows, from 1 hour (PicWish) to 7 days (DeWatermark), logarithmic scale.

The attribution line and the source URL are drawn inside the file, so the chart still carries them after it leaves this page. Bars are the vendors' own published figures; the widest value of a stated range is used. The scale is logarithmic because the spread is 168× — that is the finding, and a linear axis would hide the shortest bar.

Download the SVG · or embed it directly (this host serves /datasets/* with Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy: cross-origin, so an external <img> loads):

<img src="https://www.powersoftware.app/datasets/photo-privacy-stats-deletion-window-2026-11.svg"
  alt="Published auto-deletion windows for uploaded photos, 1 hour to 7 days across 5 of 10 audited operators" />

The raw data

photo-privacy-stats-2026-11.csv — 20 rows, one per brand; the same columns as the table on the data page, generated from the same human-signed source.
Methodology, exclusions and the numbers we rejected — including the two vendors whose silence is a confirmed absence, and the five figures we threw out because the duration belonged to a subscription plan, a data-request deadline or a server log.

Logos and imagery

Product screenshots live in our back office rather than at a stable public URL — write to us and we will send current ones, at whatever width your layout needs, the same day.

If you need a number we don't have yet

Ask. These are the measurements our method already supports, usually within a week, and they come out under the same rules — vendor's own words, per-item source, nothing published that a human hasn't read:

the same audit applied to another category of upload-required web tools (AI headshot generators, background removers, document parsers, photo restorers) — 7 public pages per vendor, every figure signed off by a human before it is published
whether a vendor’s homepage marketing band and its own privacy policy state the same deletion window — one vendor’s "within 2 hours" appears in both places, and a contradiction between them would itself be the finding
how a vendor’s published window changes between quarters, with the date of each change kept
free-tier export limits stated in words versus limits that only exist inside the app UI — the second kind we report as "not published", never as "no limit"

Contact

[email protected] — press questions, corrections and data requests. A person reads this mailbox; you should hear back within two business days. If you find a figure wrong, say so and we will re-check the vendor's page, correct it, and keep a note of the change date rather than editing history quietly.

We re-run the audit in 2027-Q1 and will send the delta to anyone who has used a figure here, without being asked.

Data page: https://www.powersoftware.app/en-US/photo-privacy-stats