How Franz Cloud AI handles your data

Franz Cloud AI is the managed cloud option for the AI features that benefit from server-side compute, such as the writing assistant and the assistant's search across your mail. It's part of Franz Max, it's included in the 14-day trial, and Lifetime owners can add it with the Cloud AI add-on. It used to be sold as Pro Cloud; that plan is now Max, and the data handling described here hasn't changed. The Privacy Statement is the binding document for data handling.

What stays local on every plan

Most of Franz runs on your computer, no matter which plan you're on. Service caches, workspace layout, notification settings, and the small on-device classifier that tells newsletters apart from personal email all stay on your device.

Sender Intelligence is a Max feature, and it's available during the trial too. When it's active, it reads from a per-domain database stored on your device. That covers sender activity patterns, response ratios, dormant threads, and sender details from publicly available signals. It doesn't call a Franz server and doesn't send the sender's address to a third-party enrichment vendor, no matter if you use your own provider key or Franz Cloud AI.

What Franz Cloud AI is used for

Franz Cloud AI routes the heavier AI features through Franz-managed infrastructure in the EU when you invoke them. That applies to the writing assistant when you ask it to draft or refine a reply, to the assistant when you ask it about years of mail, and to similar features that need a larger model than the local one. Each call sends only the content needed for the request: the prompt, the documents you select, and the metadata required to return a result.

If you'd rather not use cloud AI at all, you don't have to. On Starter, the free plan, a local model runs these features on your computer, as far as your hardware allows. On Pro, you can point Franz at your own provider account; the request then leaves your device for the provider you configured, not for Franz.

What Franz doesn't do

Franz doesn't use your inbox content to train models. Franz Cloud AI runs with zero retention: Franz doesn't keep the bodies of messages or attachments after a request completes, beyond what's required to run the request and short-lived caches that protect the service from abuse. Franz doesn't sell your contact data and doesn't share your message content with advertising networks. The Privacy Statement describes the categories of data Franz processes, retention windows, and the legal basis for each processing purpose.

Choosing a plan

The Pro vs Max article explains the practical differences between the two paid plans. If your concern is specifically cloud usage, both Pro (with your own provider key) and Starter let you keep AI work on-device or on an account you control. Max trades that for the convenience of managed AI in the EU, with the assurances described above and in the Privacy Statement.

You can review and change your plan from your profile billing page.