Dave integrates 17 third-party SDKs spanning advertising, analytics, and payments. It collects data linked to your identity including Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, and User Content and 3 more categories. It includes 4 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Dave need?

Dave requests 15 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Location (Always & When In Use), Calendars, Motion & Fitness, Speech Recognition, Face ID, Save to Photo Library, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Peripheral, and Apple Music.

What data does Dave collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Dave collects data linked to your identity including Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Dave have?

Dave integrates 17 third-party SDKs. 4 for advertising, 2 for analytics, 2 for payments, 1 for social integration, 2 for infrastructure, and 6 for other.

Does Dave use Facebook tracking?

Yes. Dave includes 5 Facebook SDKs: Facebook AEM, Facebook SDK, Facebook Gaming Services, Facebook Login, and Facebook Share. These are used for ad measurement, attribution, and integration with Facebook's advertising platform (developers.facebook.com).

Does Dave access your location?

Yes. Dave requests location access. The developer states: "Dave uses your location to find ATMs and protect you from fraud.".

Does Dave access your camera or microphone?

Dave requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Dave uses your camera to cash checks and verify your ID". Microphone access is for "Dave uses your microphone for communication with our support agents". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Dave access your contacts?

Yes. Dave requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "This lets you send invites to your friends and family.".

Does Dave run in the background?

Yes. Dave registers 2 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Dave?

Other finance apps include EarnIn , Albert , Allstate , Amex , Atlas , and Autopilot . Each app takes a different approach to finance and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Finance · Privacy report

Dave: Credit, Cash & Money App

Free · ★4.8 · Dave, Inc

Is Dave safe?

It collects a lot of your data, and shares it with trackers.

Our take. Dave carries 6 third-party trackers and its own label declares it links 7 categories of your data to you. It collects a lot itself, and shares a lot with outside companies.

Privacy footprint · vs 80 financeModerate

Trackers from other companies6 · some

typical finance: 3.5

Data the app links to you7 types · some

typical finance: 6 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Dave links 7 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Dave ties to your identity.

Financial InfoLocationContact InfoUser ContentIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 3 companies.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🇺🇸MetaAdvertising

Facebook advertising SDKs, built to link app activity to Facebook and Instagram ad profiles.

SDKs

🇺🇸AmplitudeAnalytics

Product analytics, built to record detailed behaviour inside the app.

SDK

🏢Other third partiesanalytics

A third-party SDK.

SDK

How it compares

Where it sits among finance.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one finance app. Dave sits to the right, carrying more third-party tracking than most.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 17 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 6 are third-party trackers.

4advertising

2analytics

11standard libraries

6 of the 17 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

MetaAdvertising · USA

Facebook AEM · Facebook SDK · Facebook Gaming Services · Facebook Login

AmplitudeAnalytics · USA

Amplitude

Other third partiesanalytics

FullStory

Standard libraries11 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v3.95.1, 2026-04-04.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 80 finance in our corpus. Trackers: median 3.5. Data linked to you: median 6.