Buy'r is a free iOS and Android app that shows you which company actually owns the product in your hand. Scan a barcode and Buy'r traces the brand up to its parent company and ultimate owner, so you can see who profits before you buy.

Yes. Scanning and ownership lookups are free forever, with no trial and no countdown. Premium ($5 a month or $50 a year) adds unlimited pantry and receipt scanning, custom ingredient filters, full ownership hierarchies, recipe matching, and meal planning.

Buy'r is available for iPhone on the App Store and for Android on Google Play.

The brand, the company that owns it, and the ultimate parent at the top of the chain, in plain words. Depending on the product you also see ingredient breakdowns, nutrition information, and a brand spotlight summary where one exists.

Yes. You can search for a brand or product by name inside the app and see the same ownership record you would get from a scan.

Ownership records are built from public corporate filings and companies' own statements, then verified before they are published. As of September 2026, Buy'r has ownership records for 30,332 brands across 16,875 companies, and its barcode database covers 1.5B+ products.

A brand is independently owned when it is controlled by its founders, a family, its employees, or a co-operative. Brands that are privately held by an investment group, or owned by a public conglomerate, are labelled as such rather than as independent. As of September 2026, 13,189 of the 30,332 brands on record are independently owned.

Records are reviewed continuously and updated when a sale, merger, or ownership change is confirmed in filings or company announcements. Counts quoted on this site are stamped with the month they were taken.

Tell us. Every record can be reported from inside the app, or you can write to hello@buyrapp.com with the brand and a source. Buy'r only publishes verified corporate structures, and corrections are made against the records, not against pressure from the company involved.

The barcode database is global, so most products will scan. Ownership records are deepest for brands sold in the United States and are being expanded to other markets.

No. Buy'r shows verified ownership facts and lets you decide. It does not score products as good or bad, does not give health ratings, and does not recommend one brand over another.

Those apps rate ingredients and health. Buy'r answers a different question: who owns this brand and where does the money go. Buy'r shows ingredient and nutrition information for reference, but its purpose is ownership transparency, not a health score.

A brand spotlight is a written investigation into one brand's ownership story, produced with independent journalist Ian Carroll. Spotlights turn a corporate structure into something you can read in the aisle, and the reporting is funded by subscriptions rather than by advertisers.

Buy'r surfaces active recall notices for products you scan or keep in your pantry, based on official recall feeds.

No. Buy'r does not sell user data, does not share your scans or pantry with brands or data brokers, and shows no ads. Subscriptions are the entire business model, which is what makes that promise possible.

Its users. Buy'r takes no venture capital, runs no advertising, and does no brand deals. Premium subscriptions and donations pay for the database and the reporting, so no company Buy'r reports on has a say in what gets published.

Yes. You can delete your account and its data from inside the app, or request deletion at buyrapp.com/delete-data.

Not yet through a public API. Buy'r is exploring a way for other apps and AI assistants to query verified ownership records with sources attached. If you are building something that needs it, write to hello@buyrapp.com.

Donate at buyrapp.com/donation, leave a review on the App Store or Google Play, or share a brand spotlight. Every one of those helps an independent project stay independent.