Is Spruce safe to use?

Spruce integrates 41 third-party SDKs spanning infrastructure, payments, and security. It collects data linked to your identity including Contact Info, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics. It includes 1 advertising or attribution SDK. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Spruce need?

Spruce requests 7 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Face ID, and Save to Photo Library.

What data does Spruce collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Spruce collects data linked to your identity including Contact Info, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Spruce have?

Spruce integrates 41 third-party SDKs. 1 for advertising, 1 for crash reporting, 2 for payments, 9 for infrastructure, and 26 for other. None are for analytics.

Does Spruce access your location?

Yes. Spruce requests location access. The developer states: "Allow Spruce to use your location to find healthcare providers who practice in your area.".

Does Spruce access your camera or microphone?

Spruce requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "This is needed for video calls and for sharing pictures via messaging". Microphone access is for "Microphone access is required for softphone calls, video calls, and sharing video or audio in messages". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Spruce access your contacts?

Yes. Spruce requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "This enables you to select from the contact information stored on your phone when starting a new patient conversation or inviting teammates. ".

Does Spruce run in the background?

Yes. Spruce registers 3 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Spruce?

Other medical apps include 1-800 Contacts , DonorHub , Kardia , Ambetter , Ambra , and athenaPatient . Each app takes a different approach to medical and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Medical · Privacy report

Spruce: Medical Communication

Free · ★4.9 · Spruce Health

Is Spruce safe?

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

Our take. Spruce carries 1 third-party trackers and its own label declares it links 4 categories of your data to you. It collects a lot itself, and shares a lot with outside companies.

Privacy footprint · vs 82 medicalModerate

Trackers from other companies1 · some

typical medical: 2

Data the app links to you4 types · some

typical medical: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Spruce links 4 categories of your data to you.

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

Contact InfoIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 1 company.

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.

🏢Other third partiesadvertising

A third-party SDK.

SDK

How it compares

Where it sits among medical.

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 medical app. Spruce sits to the lower left, lighter than most.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 41 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 1 are third-party trackers.

1advertising

1crash reporting

39standard libraries

1 of the 41 is a third-party tracker. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Other third partiesadvertising

Snap Kit

Standard libraries39 · 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 v4.5.3, 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 82 medical in our corpus. Trackers: median 2. Data linked to you: median 5.