Solvy
Solvy is an iPhone homework-help app that answers photographed or typed questions with step-by-step reasoning rather than a bare solution, aimed at high school and college students. A permanent free tier sits alongside paid Apple subscriptions.
What is Solvy?
Solvy is an iPhone homework-help application published by SereneSpectrum Inc., a US company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The home page positions it as Math GPT & School Help: the learner asks a question and the app returns AI reasoning broken down step by step rather than a single final answer. The stated principle is that the student should understand the method instead of copying the result.
Three things are pushed on the home page. The first is that step-by-step reasoning. The second is photo input: point the camera at a worksheet or a textbook exercise and get guided help in seconds, with no retyping. The third is a permanent free tier, presented as a free tutor in your pocket covering everyday homework and exam preparation.
The real scope is wider than the maths-first branding suggests. The publisher's App Store listing adds explanations of general topics, summaries of texts, books, links and YouTube videos, drafting of essays, messages and articles, text improvement (shortening, grammar correction, style refinement, simplification), code analysis, checking and optimization, translation, brainstorming, action plans and research.
The app sits in the App Store Education category, is rated 13+, weighs 37.5 MB and ships with 13 interface languages. It requires iOS 17.0 or later; Apple also lists it as runnable on Apple Silicon Macs (macOS 14+) and on Apple Vision through the iPhone app port, though the publisher marks macOS as not verified. There is no Android app, no web version, no browser extension and no API.
The reasoning itself comes from third-party AI providers named in the privacy notice: OpenAI and Anthropic. The business model is a permanent free tier plus auto-renewing subscriptions bought through Apple in-app purchase, opened by a three-day free trial.
The About page describes a 2024 launch aimed at high school and college students, with the goal of bringing tutoring-style support to learners who cannot afford a private tutor; the founder is named as Eli Chaus, previously in edtech. The public site is limited to four pages, home, About, Privacy and Terms, with no pricing page, no demo and no documentation. The home page claims a 4.5 rating and 1,000+ students a month, while the App Store shows 4.6 from 47 ratings.
What it does
- Solve a photographed exercise and break the solution down step by step
- Explain a maths concept or a general topic
- Summarize a text, a book, a link or a YouTube video
- Draft an essay, a message or an article
- Improve an existing text: shorten it, fix the grammar, refine the style, simplify it
- Review, check and optimize code
- Translate a text into another language
When to use Solvy / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Solvy is the right fit.
When to use Solvy
- High school students, the audience the Terms open the service to from age 13 and that the App Store 13+ rating matches
- College and university students, named alongside high schoolers as the target audience on the About page
- Learners stuck on a maths problem who want to see the method worked through, not just the final answer
- Students revising for exams, a use case the permanent free tier is said to cover
- Learners with no access to a private tutor, the accessibility argument the About page builds the product around
When not to use Solvy
- Children under 13, excluded by the Terms; the privacy notice goes further and says it does not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18
- Android and desktop users: there is no Android app, no web version and no browser extension, only an iPhone app
- Professional or commercial users: the Terms grant a personal, non-commercial license only and forbid any revenue-generating endeavor
- Schools, teaching teams and institutions: no multi-seat plan, no teacher workspace and no admin console are offered anywhere on the site
- Developers and integrators: no API, no SDK and no technical documentation exist, and regulated workloads are explicitly out of scope (the Terms name HIPAA, FISMA and GLBA)
How to use Solvy
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Download the app from the App Store, through the badge or the download link on the home page; an iPhone running iOS 17.0 or later is required
- Create an account if prompted: section 4 of the Terms allows registration and makes you responsible for keeping your password confidential
- Ask your question by typing it, or photograph it with the camera, pointing at a worksheet or a textbook page
- Read the answer as step-by-step reasoning rather than a bare result, and follow the method through
- Use the other advertised functions as needed: summarizing, drafting, text improvement, code, translation, action plans and research
- Stay on the free tier for everyday homework and exam preparation, which the publisher says it covers
- Subscribe through an Apple in-app purchase for the paid features; new subscribers get a three-day free trial
- Manage or turn off auto-renewal from your Apple account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for
- Avoid uploading personal, financial, health or confidential information, which section 14 of the privacy notice advises against
- Write to eli@solvyy.app for any support, privacy or data deletion request; it is the only contact address published
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A permanent free tier, claimed on both the home page and the About page, covering everyday homework and exam preparation
- Photo input saves real time on a handwritten or printed exercise, since the problem never has to be retyped
- An explicit teaching angle: the method rather than the answer is the argument the home page and the About page are built on
- Broad scope for a single subscription: maths, writing, summarizing, translation and code in one app
- 13 interface languages, unusual for an app of this size
- A three-day free trial before any charge, with payment and billing handled entirely by Apple, so no card data sits with the publisher
- Complete and dated legal documents (privacy notice 7 June 2024, Terms 9 June 2024), and AI providers named outright as OpenAI and Anthropic, which many small publishers leave unsaid
Cons
- iOS only: no Android app, no web version and no browser extension
- No pricing is published on getsolvy.app; the amounts appear only in the in-app purchase block of the publisher's App Store listing
- No refunds: section 8 of the Terms states that all sales are final, and section 29 confirms this for periods in progress and for renewals
- The cheapest paid entry point is weekly (USD 6.99), which annualizes far above the USD 49.99 yearly plan
- The minimum age is contradictory between the two legal documents: 13 in the Terms, under-18 in the privacy notice, and the site does not resolve the discrepancy
- The CCPA table in the privacy notice answers NO for all 12 data categories, while the Apple privacy label for the same app declares location and identifiers linked to identity and used for cross-app advertising tracking; the two statements cannot both be right
- No DPA, no Article 27 representative, no formal subprocessor list and no documented way to opt out of model training; support runs through a single personal email address on a domain other than the site's, and the public site is down to four pages with no demo, FAQ, pricing page or documentation
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available, described on the home page as covering everyday homework and exam preparation, and the App Store lists the app as free with in-app purchases. No price is published on getsolvy.app: every amount below comes from the publisher's App Store listing. The lowest paid entry point is USD 6.99 per week, charged after a three-day free trial, with a discounted weekly variant listed at USD 5.99. Annual access is USD 49.99 per year, with a discounted variant at USD 39.99. All payments are taken exclusively through Apple.
- free and permanent
- covering everyday homework and exam preparation
- USD 6.99 per week once the three-day trial ends
- USD 5.99 per week
- USD 49.99 per year
- USD 39.99 per year
- All paid tiers are auto-renewing Apple in-app purchases
- and no team
- school or enterprise plan exists
- Prices are published in the in-app purchase block of the App Store listing
- not on getsolvy.app
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Solvy handles your data.
GDPR overview
The site never claims GDPR compliance anywhere, yet the privacy notice does apply its vocabulary. Section 3 sets out the legal bases relied on for the EEA and the UK: consent, legal obligations and vital interests. Neither legitimate interests nor performance of a contract appears in that list. Section 6 states that servers are located in the United States and that the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses are used for transfers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. Section 10 lists rights of access, copy, rectification, erasure, restriction and portability, the right not to be subject to automated decision-making, the right to withdraw consent and the right to complain to a supervisory authority. What is missing: no Article 27 representative, no data protection officer, no DPA published or offered, and no EU establishment. The notice is dated 7 June 2024, with a single email contact point.
Who owns the data?
Under section 12 of the Terms, SereneSpectrum Inc. asserts no ownership over user Contributions: you retain full ownership and the intellectual property rights attached to them. Submissions are handled differently: any question, comment, suggestion, idea or feedback sent directly to the publisher has its intellectual property rights assigned to the publisher, which may then use and share it for any purpose without compensation. The publisher owns or licenses all service content and marks. Inputs, outputs and personal information are shared with and processed by third-party AI providers (OpenAI and Anthropic), and may be transferred in a merger, asset sale, financing or acquisition.
Reuse rights
Users keep their own Contributions and may reuse them freely: nothing in the Terms or the privacy notice stops a student from using the explanations they obtain in their own schoolwork. The publisher's own material is a different matter. Content, text, code, design and marks are provided as is under a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license limited to personal, non-commercial use only. Reproducing, republishing, aggregating, translating, distributing or selling that material requires prior written permission, and systematically extracting it to build a database, compilation or directory is expressly forbidden, as is using the service for any revenue-generating endeavor or to build a competing product. Section 28 leaves the user solely responsible for any decision taken on the basis of AI outputs.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy notice states that the publisher's servers are located in the United States, and section 15 of the Terms adds that the services are hosted in the United States: accessing them from another region means consenting to the transfer and processing of your data there. The jurisdiction is therefore American. For users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, the notice says the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses are used as the transfer mechanism. Content is in practice processed by third-party AI providers, OpenAI and Anthropic, whose own locations are not specified. Payment data is handled and stored by Apple and never by the publisher. What is not documented: no data center, hosting provider or region is named, no certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is claimed, and no formal subprocessor list exists. Security measures are described only as appropriate and reasonable, with the usual warning that no transmission is 100% secure. The marketing site itself is served behind Cloudflare, which says nothing about where application data lives.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Solvy.
- Dependence: an app that answers a problem from a photograph can quietly replace the effort of solving it. The publisher argues the opposite, but nothing in the product enforces it.
- Skill erosion: seeing a solution laid out step by step is no guarantee that the student reworks the reasoning themselves, and the habit can hollow out the underlying ability.
- Academic integrity: essay drafting and code assistance may breach school or university rules, a subject the site never addresses.
- Accuracy: section 28 of the Terms guarantees nothing, stating that the publisher makes no guarantee the AI will solve any particular problem or provide a reliable or correct solution. An error that goes unnoticed turns into a bad grade.
- Uploaded content: the privacy notice warns that the app is not intended for sharing personal, sensitive or identifying information, yet the ordinary use is to photograph a sheet of paper that often carries a student's name, and inputs and outputs are passed to OpenAI and Anthropic.
- Transparency gap: the CCPA table declares no category of data collected, while the Apple privacy label for the same app declares location and identifiers linked to identity and used for cross-app advertising tracking.
- Money and recourse: subscriptions auto-renew, no refund is issued, the weekly entry point costs far more over a year than the annual plan, disputes go to individual arbitration in Delaware with a class action waiver, and section 24 of the Terms leaves the publisher free of liability if user data is lost or corrupted.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Setup is as simple as it gets: there is nothing technical to install. The user downloads a 37.5 MB app from the App Store onto an iPhone running iOS 17.0 or later, and may be asked to register an account. No configuration, no API key and no settings to work through. Subscriptions are taken out and managed directly in the Apple account. The only real barrier is hardware rather than technical skill: without a reasonably recent iPhone, the tool is simply out of reach, since no Android or web version exists.
Deployment
Apps stores
Supported languages
Behind Solvy
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Which devices does Solvy run on?
Is there a free version?
How much does a subscription cost?
Can I get a refund?
What is the minimum age?
Which AI models does Solvy use?
Where is the data hosted?
Is my data used to train the models?
How reliable are the answers?
How do I cancel the subscription?
Should you pick Solvy?
Solvy is a narrowly scoped product: an iPhone homework-help app sitting on third-party models, not a platform. Its strongest points are the teaching angle it claims, method rather than answer, the photo input that removes retyping, and a permanent free tier said to cover everyday homework and exam preparation. Its real coverage is broader than the Math GPT branding suggests, taking in writing, summarizing, translation and code.
The publisher is very small: one address in Cambridge, one named founder, one contact email, a four-page site and no documented fundraising. That is not a fault in itself, but it does set expectations about support and longevity.
Several points deserve checking before subscribing. Sales are final and no refund is issued, including for renewals. The weekly entry point annualizes well above the yearly plan. The minimum age is stated as 13 in the Terms and as 18 in the privacy notice, an unresolved contradiction. The CCPA table in the privacy notice declares no data collected across all twelve categories, while the Apple privacy label for the same app declares location and identifiers linked to identity and used for cross-app tracking; both statements come from the same publisher and cannot both hold. There is no documented opt-out from model training, no DPA and no Article 27 representative. Disputes fall under Delaware law, individual arbitration and a class action waiver.
Nothing on the site allows the pedagogical quality of the explanations to be judged, since no worked example is shown anywhere, and section 28 of the Terms disclaims any guarantee of correctness. Taken together, Solvy reads as a reasonable individual study aid for an iPhone-equipped student who checks the output, and not as something to deploy across a school.
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