# Privacy-first portfolio management

> Most portfolio trackers ask you to upload your accounts and addresses to their servers. That is convenient, but it means your complete financial history lives in someone else's cloud. rotki is built the other way around: it is a privacy-first desktop application that keeps your data on your own machine.

Most portfolio trackers ask you to upload your accounts and addresses to their servers. That is convenient, but it means your complete financial history lives in someone else's cloud. rotki is built the other way around: it is a privacy-first desktop application that keeps your data on your own machine.

## Where your data lives

rotki stores everything in a local database encrypted with SQLCipher using 256-bit AES, with the encryption key derived from your account password. Your balances, transactions and notes are on your device, not in a vendor account. Because rotki is open source, you can read the code that handles your data and confirm this for yourself.

## How rotki reads your accounts

Exchanges are connected with read-only API keys, so rotki can see your balances and trades but cannot withdraw. On-chain balances are read by querying chain data through an RPC endpoint or data provider that you choose, so you decide who sees those requests: a provider you trust, or your own node.

## The trade-off

A local-first tracker asks a bit more of you: you run a desktop app and you keep your own backups. In return you get ownership and privacy, plus an optional zero-knowledge sync if you want multi-device backups without giving up that control. If you would rather not hand your full portfolio to a cloud service, that is a trade worth making.