The short version: PlanesDB sets no cookies, uses no analytics service, has no accounts and no advertising, and there is nothing here that follows you from site to site. The little that is stored is described in full below, and I have tried to write it so you can actually check it rather than take my word for it.
PlanesDB is a personal project run from the United Kingdom. If you have any question about anything on this page, or you would like something removed, please email hello@planesdb.com and I will come back to you.
There are none. PlanesDB does not set a single cookie, which is why you have not been asked to agree to any.
The site remembers a few things you have chosen, using your browser's local storage. All of it stays on your own device - it is never sent to me or to anybody else, and I have no way of reading it. Clearing your browser's site data for planesdb.com removes the lot.
planesdb:theme - whether you picked light or darkplanesdb:textScale - your text sizeplanesdb:pagesize - how many results you like per pageplanesdb:compare - the aircraft currently in your comparison trayplanesdb:cardStats - which statistics you have chosen to show on comparison cardsplanesdb:compareImgStats - the same, for a comparison card you download as an imageplanesdb:exportLayout - your preferred layout for downloadable cardsplanesdb:exportTheme - your preferred colours for those cardsEvery one of those exists so the site behaves the way you left it. None of them identifies you, and none of them is used to work out anything about you.
When you open an aircraft's page, the site sends that aircraft's name back so I can see which types people are reading - that is what the "Most Popular" sort is built on. It sends the aircraft's name and nothing else. There is no identifier of any kind attached, nothing is stored on your device to recognise you again, and the result is a count per aircraft rather than anything about the person reading it.
The site is hosted by Netlify, and like any web host their servers keep short-lived logs of requests, which include your IP address, the time, the page you asked for and which browser you used. That happens for every website you visit and is used for keeping the service running and secure. I do not build anything on top of those logs, and I do not combine them with anything else.
Aircraft photographs are served from Cloudflare's storage rather than from this site directly, so loading a page with photographs on it means your browser also connects to Cloudflare. They act as a delivery service for the images and nothing more.
The News page shows headlines from aviation publications, and the thumbnail images are loaded from those publishers' own servers rather than copied onto mine. That does mean your browser connects to them and they can see your IP address in the same way they would if you visited their site. If you would rather that did not happen, most browsers and content blockers can stop third-party images loading.
Corrections and new entries are submitted through GitHub, so anything you do there is covered by GitHub's own privacy statement rather than this page. Your GitHub username is shown against your contribution in the entry's changelog, which is how credit works and is the whole point - but do bear in mind that it is public.
If you email me, I keep the email so I can reply to you and so I have a record of a correction if it is ever queried. Nothing else is done with it.
Under UK data protection law you can ask what personal data is held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to it being used. Given there are no accounts and nothing is tracked, in practice there is usually very little to hand over - but please do ask if you want to be sure, and email hello@planesdb.com.
If you are unhappy with how I have handled something you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though I would much rather you told me first so I have a chance to put it right.
If the site starts doing something that affects any of the above, this page gets updated to match before the change goes live, and the date below changes with it.
Last updated 18 September 2026.