Cookies and browser storage
Strictly necessary cookies only (one on the site and a separate one in our Telegram mini-app), set only when you use a feature that needs them. No advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and no cookies from other companies apart from any strictly necessary Cloudflare challenge cookie on the Pick Bench page.
Last updated: October 19, 2026
The strictly necessary cookies
- Name
__Host-pickbench_client, __Host-pickbench_tg- Lifetime
- 30 days
- Type
- Strictly necessary, set by this site (the mini-app uses __Host-pickbench_tg)
- What it holds
- An id and its signature: random on the site (__Host-pickbench_client), and in our mini-app a separate cookie (__Host-pickbench_tg) derived from your Telegram account
It lets our server count fair-use quotas and, for votes, keep one ballot per visitor and battle edition, and in Pick Bench keep one counted ballot per visitor, question and pair of models and apply its hourly and daily limits, without knowing your name.
We treat both cookies as strictly necessary for the features you ask for: without them we could not give each visitor a fair quota or, when votes are enabled, keep one ballot per visitor and battle edition, or, when Pick Bench is enabled, keep one counted ballot per visitor, question and pair of models and apply its hourly and daily limits. Each is set only when you use such a feature, and we use them for nothing else: not for analytics, advertising or tracking you across sites.
Our edge sets them only when a feature calls our API: quick battles, the quick battle result page and the Telegram mini-app, and votes, Pick Bench and the demo request form when they are enabled. Reading the other pages never sets them.
In our Telegram mini-app, our edge sets a separate cookie, __Host-pickbench_tg, with the same lifetime and flags, so it never overwrites the site cookie. Its id is derived from your Telegram account id with a secret key, and our routes accept it only on requests from the mini-app. Because the id comes from your account, it is the same on every visit: the cookie expires, but the id does not, and deleting the cookie does not unlink it from you.
Your browser sends it only to pickbench.ai, never to another site. It is marked Secure, so it travels only over HTTPS; HttpOnly, so page scripts cannot read it; and SameSite=None, so the browser also sends it when our pages run inside another site, such as Telegram Web. Its __Host- prefix stops any subdomain from setting or reading it.
It is a partitioned cookie: inside Telegram Web, where our mini-app runs within Telegram's page, the browser keeps a separate copy for that context only.
Our server keeps only a keyed hash of the id; the privacy page explains how.
What we don't use
No advertising, analytics, social media or tracking cookies, no cookies from other companies apart from any strictly necessary Cloudflare challenge cookie on the Pick Bench page, and we do no fingerprinting ourselves. On the Pick Bench page, Cloudflare Turnstile checks browser signals to tell people from bots (see the privacy page): the Turnstile widget we use is created without Cloudflare's pre-clearance option, so it issues only a one-time token and should set no clearance cookie; any Cloudflare challenge cookie it may set is strictly necessary to tell people from bots. We assessed each item below by its purpose, not just by the absence of tracking: the cookie and the quick battle item serve features you ask for, and the other items keep, on your device only, choices you made or what you did in a feature. That is why the site shows no cookie banner.
Browser storage
Some features remember things in your browser's storage. These items stay on your device and are never sent to us. They are kept only to run the feature you used, and only that feature's page reads them.
| Item | What it holds | Kept in |
|---|---|---|
pickbench: | Your picks in the battle feed (up to 600) and the days you picked in the last 400 days, for your streak and today's count | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | Your votes on battle pages | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | Your last quiz result, shown back on the home page | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | The brands you follow on the AI Brand Chart | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | The categories you follow in Pick Bench | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | Your Pick Bench round count, day streak and how often you picked the card whose lead brand more AI models named, on this device | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | Your Motion key setting | Local storage, until you clear it |
pickbench: | A finished quick battle result, so its page can show it without asking our server again | Session storage, until you close the tab |
Your choices
You can delete or block cookies and clear site storage in your browser settings. "Forget this device", at the bottom of every page, clears everything this site keeps in your browser's storage; it cannot delete the cookies, because page scripts cannot read them, so delete those in your browser settings. If you block the cookies, the features that need them may not work as intended.
Changes
When this page changes, we post the new version here with its date, and the list below says what changed.
- October 17, 2026: final text published, describing how the site works today. It replaces earlier versions.
- October 19, 2026: added Pick Bench: the client cookie on Pick Bench, Cloudflare Turnstile on the Pick Bench page, and Pick Bench items kept in your browser.
Contact
This site is operated by Pickbench (the operator; its legal entity details will be published on this page).
Postal address: will be published on this page when available.
Legal requests, corrections and questions about these pages: legal@pickbench.ai
Privacy requests: privacy@pickbench.ai
To request access, correction or deletion (including Pick Bench records), email privacy@pickbench.ai and include the client id shown at /en/legal/privacy/my-id/.
Operator legal details will be added here when available.