Your data is stored in a database running in a data centre somewhere, not on your own computer. If you built with an AI tool, it likely set up that database for you, often on Supabase. The question that matters is whose account owns it, because that decides who really controls, and can lose, your data.
Information current as at 5 July 2026
It is surprisingly common to build an app, watch it fill up with real users and real information, and have no clear idea where any of that information physically lives. The data is the part you can least afford to lose, so this is worth pinning down. The answer is rarely where people assume.
The first thing to unlearn is the idea that your app's data is on your laptop or inside the builder window. When you use the app and see users and orders, you are looking at information being fetched from a database running elsewhere, on an always-on computer in a data centre, and displayed to you. Your computer is just the screen. This is why the data survives when you close the builder, and why other people using the app see the same information you do: everyone is reading from the same central store. That store has a real, physical location, in some data centre in some country, even though you never see it. The reason this matters is that if the account holding it were closed or lost, the data would go with it, no matter what is on your own machine.
You can usually trace this yourself. Open your builder and look for anything labelled data, database, storage or a connected integration. Many AI builders set up a Supabase project for the app's data, so look for a Supabase link or project name. Follow it and you will find the actual database: the tables, the rows, the settings. While you are there, note two things. First, the region or location, which tells you what country your data sits in, and that can matter for privacy obligations if you have Australian customers. Second, and more important, whose account this project belongs to. If it is an account you can log into and control, good. If it is buried inside the builder's own account, your data is effectively being held on your behalf by the platform, which is a weaker position than it feels.
If you have made something and it needs to become real, send it over. We will tell you honestly what it needs to be live, safe and yours, whether that is a quick fix you can do or a proper build. No obligation.
Ownership of data is more important than ownership of code, because code can be rebuilt and data usually cannot. If a database sits in an account only the builder controls, you depend on that platform continuing to exist, continuing to give you access, and not making a mistake that loses it. That is a lot of trust to place in something you did not consciously choose. The stronger position is to have the database in an account registered in your own name, with your own login, so that whatever happens to the builder, the data remains yours to export, move or protect. If you discover your data lives somewhere you do not control, that is not a crisis, but it is a thing worth resolving deliberately rather than leaving to chance.
Knowing where your data lives leads straight to a second question people rarely ask until it is too late: is there a backup. A backup is a separate saved copy you can restore from if the live data is deleted, corrupted, or lost when an account closes. Many hosted databases keep some backups automatically, but the amount and how far back varies, and you should never assume without checking. The practical move is to find out whether your database is being backed up, how often, and whether you could actually restore it if you had to. Better still, take your own export of the important data occasionally and keep it somewhere safe. Data you cannot rebuild deserves a copy you control, and setting that up costs little compared with the day you wish you had.
If you have made something and it needs to become real, send it over. We will tell you honestly what it needs to be live, safe and yours, whether that is a quick fix you can do or a proper build. No obligation.
Whether you can name exactly what you want built, or you just know something is leaking, the next step is the same conversation.