Frequently asked

Honest answer: developers cost a lot, and Crumble is a one-person project right now. The web app is intentionally built to feel native — install it as a PWA from your phone's browser and you get a home-screen icon, splash screen, full-screen, the lot. Real native apps (App Store + Play Store) are on the roadmap, but realistically out of scope until Crumble grows past hobby scale. The PWA covers ~95% of what a native build would deliver, minus a few iOS niceties (background notifications, share-sheet integration). Those will come.

Crumble starts with no spots — every pin is a place a real person reviewed. If a restaurant isn't on your map, it just means nobody you've added has reviewed it yet. Adding it yourself is the whole point: open the app, tap the yellow + button, search for the place by name, and write your first review. Two minutes. Friends in your network will see it the next time they open the map.

This is deliberate. If you've already reviewed a place by name, your friend's pin for the same place is hidden so the map doesn't double up. Open the spot from your own pin and you'll see your friend's review listed alongside yours. The merge is case-insensitive on the place name.

Three separate signals so you know whose opinion you're reading: Friends = the average of you + people you follow. The most relevant number for most decisions. Crumble = the platform-wide average across every Crumble user who's reviewed this place. Useful when your friends haven't been there yet. Public = the rating from external data (Foursquare). Always there for context, never the headline.

Two ways. (1) Type the place name in the search box — Crumble checks our database, then TomTom, OpenStreetMap, and Foursquare in order. If none of them know the place, the search will be empty. (2) Long-press the map at the spot's location to drop a pin manually. Either way you end up on the new-review screen with the location pre-filled.

Crumble only shows reviewed places + active sponsors. No POI overlay in production (it's a paid Foursquare API and we'd burn through the free tier in a week). On the testing environment we do show a discoverable POI layer at zoom 15+ as a preview. Either way the map fills up as you and your friends review more places.

Every review earns 25 XP, capped at 2 per day so you can't farm it by spamming. Weekly food-category challenges add +75 XP. Unlocking a new country (reviewing your first spot in that country) adds +50 XP. There are 30 levels with emoji badges. Plus subscribers get a +10 XP daily login bonus, once per UTC day.

Email business@crumble.me from a domain that matches the venue (or a clearly affiliated address). We onboard businesses by hand — no signup form, no payment up front. Once you're verified you can edit your map pin's emoji, add a short pitch, and upload up to two preview photos. Sponsored placement is optional and a separate conversation.

Rate limits are how we keep external API costs (Foursquare, TomTom) bounded. Most of the time you'll never hit one. If you do, it almost always clears within 30 seconds — wait, retry. If you hit one repeatedly, that's a bug; tell us at support@crumble.me.

Reviews, friends data, and photos all live on a single Linux server we operate in the EU — Postgres for the database, local disk for photos. We strip EXIF GPS from every photo before storage. Email addresses come from Google OAuth and aren't shared. The full breakdown lives at /privacy.

Yes to both. Email privacy@crumble.me from the address tied to your account. Deletion happens within 30 days (GDPR Article 17). Export is currently manual; we're working on a self-serve dump.

Building the payment path properly takes time and ID/KvK paperwork we'd rather not rush. Plus is on the way but you can use Crumble for free in the meantime. The waitlist on the Plus paywall keeps you posted.

Same address as everything else: support@crumble.me. A real person reads it. Screenshots help.