Cigar Diary · Android

The cigar journal that never phones home.

Every other cigar app scans your cigars, stores your notes, and syncs your humidor on someone else's servers. Cigar Diary keeps all of it encrypted on your phone. No account, no cloud, no tracking. Here's the honest comparison, in each app's own words.

Coming soon to Google Play One-time purchase. No subscription. No ads.
The Category

The category has one blind spot

The 2024–2026 wave of cigar apps all made the same bet: AI band scanning in the cloud, a mandatory account, cloud sync, and a monthly subscription. It's a tidy business model. It's also a quiet privacy trade: your camera images and your personal smoking log leave your phone and live on a third-party backend tied to your Google or Apple identity.

We think a cigar journal is personal. So we built the opposite.

Don't take our word for it. Take theirs.
Honest Comparison

The comparison, in their own words

Every claim about a competitor below links to that competitor's own privacy policy, store listing, or marketing. We never characterize; we quote and cite.

Cigar Diary Cigarista Cigar AI Cigarbase Boxpressd Cigar Scanner
Works with no account ✓ Yes ✗ Sign-in required ✗ Sign-in required ✗ Account required ✗ Account required ✗ Service-based
Data stays on your device ✓ Always ✗ Cloud sync ✗ Uploaded to Firebase ✗ Cloud backend ✗ Cloud / social ✗ Cloud catalog
AI scan runs off your phone ✓ N/A, nothing leaves ✗ "runs in the cloud" ✗ Gemini + Firebase ✗ Cloud AI — ✗ Server-side
No third-party data sharing ✓ Nothing shared ▲ Cloud providers ✗ Shares with 3rd parties ▲ ▲ Social feed ▲ Retail funnel
No ads / no trackers ✓ Zero SDKs ▲ ✗ PostHog analytics ▲ ▲ Ad network ✓ No ads
One-time purchase ✓ Yes ✗ Subscription ✗ Subscription ✗ Subscription ▲ Paid tiers Hardware / retail
Export your data ✓ JSON + CSV ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲

Comparison based on each app's public listing, privacy policy, and marketing as of July 2026. We link to the originals so you can read them yourself. ▲ = partial / conditional; ✗ = not offered; ✓ = yes.

  • Cigarista: "it does mean it is not a no-account, fully-offline tool," and new AI identifications "need a connection because the model runs in the cloud." Source: Cigarista's own comparison and scanner page.
  • Cigar AI: "AI features are processed through Firebase Cloud Functions and Google Gemini… Requests may include photos, text prompts, cigar details, limited journal context," and data is shared with Firebase, Gemini, and PostHog. Source: Cigar AI Privacy Policy.
  • Cigarbase: collects "Personal info, Photos and videos and 3 others"; auto-renewing subscription. Source: Cigarbase on Google Play.
  • Boxpressd: built as "the social network for cigar enthusiasts," account-based. Source: Boxpressd.
  • Cigar Scanner: cloud cigar database and IoT humidor gateway; monetized through hardware and a retail funnel. Source: Google Play listing, review.
The Promise

What "no cloud" actually means here

Your notes never leave your phone.

Flavor tags, ratings, prices, the GPS pin of where you smoked, the band photo. All stored in an encrypted database on your device. Not uploaded. Not backed up to us. Not analyzed. Cigar AI's own policy admits it sends "photos, text prompts, cigar details, limited journal context" to Google's servers (their words). Cigar Diary sends nothing.

No account means no identity attached to your habit.

There's no email field, no Google sign-in, no age-gate account. Open the app, log a cigar. Cigarista is candid that it "leans on an account and cloud sync" (their words). A fair design choice, just not ours.

You own your archive, and you can leave anytime.

Export everything to open JSON and CSV plus a photo bundle. Move to a new phone with zero loss. No subscription lapse can strand years of your notes.

Sync, if you want it, answers to you.

Back up to a folder you choose, including your own cloud, or an optional self-hosted endpoint you configure. Never a Styzza server. Built for people who already run their own stack.

Who It's For

Built for the enthusiast who keeps notes

Cigar Diary is for the enthusiast who keeps meticulous notes and would rather those notes live on their own device than on a vendor's backend. If you've ever hesitated before handing a tobacco-habit log to an app tied to your real identity, this was built for you.

Even our cloud-based competitors acknowledge people like you exist. Cigarista puts it plainly: "Some people prefer offline-first apps that ask for nothing, and that is a fair preference" (their words).

We're the app for that preference.
FAQ

Questions, answered plainly

Does Cigar Diary work offline?
Entirely. There is no online mode. Every feature works in airplane mode because nothing is ever sent anywhere.
Do I need an account?
No. There's no sign-up, no login, no email required. Ever.
Where is my data stored?
In an encrypted database on your phone (SQLCipher). You can lock the app with a fingerprint or PIN.
Can I move my data to a new phone?
Yes. Export to JSON/CSV plus a photo ZIP, then import on the new device. Nothing is lost, and nothing routes through us.
How do you make money if there are no ads or subscription?
A single one-time purchase. That's the whole model. No ads, no trackers, no data resale, no upsell.
Do you scan cigar bands?
Cigar Diary is built for fast structured logging, not cloud uploads. You identify by choosing from fields, and nothing leaves your phone.
Is this affiliated with a cigar retailer?
No. We don't sell tobacco and we don't run a store funnel. Cigar Diary is a journal, full stop.
When does it launch?
Cigar Diary is in development for Android now. When it's live on Google Play, the button on this page becomes the install link.
Cigar Diary

Your palate. Your phone. Your data.

Log every smoke. Share none of it.

Coming soon to Google Play One-time purchase. No subscription. No ads.

For adults of legal smoking age only. Cigar Diary does not sell tobacco products.