What happens when it gets one wrong?
It will be, sometimes. Internal bruising and mealy flesh are invisible from outside, and no camera changes that. So RIPE ranks the bin instead of certifying one piece, gives ranges instead of exact days, and ends every verdict by handing the last check to your hands.
Does it work in a real store?
On what a camera can see: color, speckling, netting, sunken patches, and the field spot once you turn the melon over. Produce lighting is tuned to flatter whatever is under it, so RIPE leans on contrast cues rather than absolute color, and it knows that shine on apples, peppers and citrus is usually wax rather than freshness. In the app, a photo too blurry, dark or glary to read gets refused rather than guessed at. Scanning needs a connection, so a true dead-zone aisle will not work; My Kitchen and your alerts keep working offline.
Which fruits and vegetables does it know?
It identifies most common produce and judges it on visible cues. Six are covered in real depth, with hands-on coaching written against a produce manager's cues: bananas, watermelon, cantaloupe, avocado, mango and peaches. Everything else gets a general read and a general hands-on check. More depth gets added as we go.
Do I have to make an account?
Not for the checker on this page, and not for the app either. Scanning, My Kitchen and your first alert all work with no signup. An account is only needed to share a kitchen with the people you live with, because your household has to be able to find you.
Is there a free trial?
No, and that is deliberate. Google Play requires a payment method on your account before any trial can start, so every free trial in the store is a card you handed over and a date you have to remember. We would rather not build the thing people forget about and then get charged for. Scanning, My Kitchen and your first ripeness alert are free with no card and no signup, so you can find out whether this is useful before you pay anything. If you do subscribe it is one price, cancel whenever you like.
What happens to my photos?
Reading a scan needs a connection: the photo goes to our AI provider, OpenRouter, which routes it to a vision model from OpenAI or Google, and comes back as a verdict. We do not store it. In the app, your scan photos stay on your device. The full detail is in our privacy policy.
I'm on an iPhone.
Android first, iOS after. The checker on this page works on any phone right now, so bookmark it and use it in the aisle. Leave your email below and you will hear when iOS is real, not before.
