Judge a wellbeing app on four checkable things. Everything else on a privacy page is decoration.
Here is the verdict up front, checked against each app's own published policy in August 2026.
- Wysa is the strongest on anonymity, and the only one with a published independent privacy review.
- ManoYatra names India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 in its own policy and commits in writing that your conversations are never used for model training. Wysa's and Amaha's policies do not name the Act.
- Amaha is the weakest on erasure. Its policy states outright that some answers cannot be deleted once submitted.
- Tele-MANAS, the Government of India helpline, remains the right first stop if you would rather not hand your feelings to an app at all.
None of this is about which app is kindest at 2am. It is about what happens to the sentence you typed at 2am, six months later.
Why privacy is the first question for an Indian user, not the last
Most privacy comparisons you will find were written for an American reader. They test apps against HIPAA and GDPR, neither of which governs your data in India. That mismatch is the whole problem: the framework that actually applies to you is barely mentioned in the category.
India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 is the law that decides what a wellbeing app may do with what you tell it. Its operating rules — the DPDP Rules 2025 — were notified on 14 November 2025, with an eighteen-month phased compliance window and a requirement that a company act on an access, correction or erasure request within a maximum of ninety days [Statute — Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, via PIB]. That window closes in 2027. Right now, in 2026, you are choosing an app in the middle of it, which means some companies have rewritten their policies for Indian law and some have not.
Three words carry the entire consumer half of that law:
- Data fiduciary — the term the Act uses for whoever decides why and how your data gets processed. In this case, the app company.
- Erasure — your right to have that data deleted on request.
- Consent — which has to be specific, informed, and as easy to withdraw as it was to give.
An app that never mentions them in its own policy has not written that policy for you.
What independent reviewers found when they actually read the policies
The most thorough public audit of this category remains Mozilla Foundation's *Privacy Not Included review.
Of the 27 apps assessed, 23 earned the *Privacy Not Included warning label for failing to respect and protect user privacy.
In the follow-up review, only two apps earned a “Best Of” designation: Wysa and PTSD Coach.
That finding is inconvenient for a company writing a privacy comparison, and it belongs at the top rather than buried. Wysa, the app most Indian users are pointed towards, has genuinely been examined by an outside party and came out well. Most of the category has not been examined at all.
The comparison, on criteria you can verify yourself
Every claim below traces to the app's own published policy or a named public source, all read on 9 August 2026. Each row is phrased so that Yes always means the protection exists.
| The four checks | ManoYatra | Wysa | Amaha | Tele-MANAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start without an email or a name | Not stated no position either way | Yes a nickname is enough | Not stated no position either way | Yes no account at all |
| Delete everything from inside the app | Yes account deletion triggers an automated hard-delete | Yes “Reset my Data” clears chats, answers, reminders and settings | Partial some answers “cannot be updated or deleted once submitted” | Not applicable a phone call leaves nothing to delete |
| A no-training promise, in writing | Yes inputs “strictly forbidden” from model training, no carve-out | Partial messages are not training data, but anonymous chats may improve models | Not stated not addressed | Not applicable not an app |
| Names India's DPDP Act 2023 | Yes named in the policy itself | No not named | No not named | Not applicable a government service under the same law |
Four more things are worth checking before you trust any of the above.
| Also worth checking | ManoYatra | Wysa | Amaha | Tele-MANAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the data sits | India where possible | AWS, with LLM processing in the provider's Europe region | Operated from India, transfers to other countries | Government infrastructure |
| Individual entries kept from employers | Yes “never shared with employers or organizational administrators” | Not applicable consumer app | Not applicable consumer app | Not applicable not an app |
| An independent privacy review exists | No none yet | Yes Mozilla's “Best Of” designation | No none | Not applicable not an app |
| Policy last updated | Not stated no date on the published page | 5 June 2026 | 25 July 2025 | Not applicable not an app |
Two things stand out there, and neither favours a single winner.
The first is that anonymity and legal alignment currently live in different apps. Wysa lets you in without an identity; ManoYatra writes its policy against the law that governs you. Nobody in this set does both loudly.
The second is the age of the documents. A policy last revised in July 2025 predates the DPDP Rules entirely. That is not an accusation of bad faith. It is a date, and dates are checkable.
Where each one genuinely wins
Wysa wins on anonymity and on scrutiny. You can use it without handing over an identity, its data reset is unambiguous, and it is one of only two apps in a 27-app audit to earn Mozilla's approval. If your single biggest fear is that a name gets attached to a bad week, this is the strongest published position in the category.
Amaha wins on being unambiguously Indian in operation. The platform is controlled and operated from India, and it is transparent about a limitation most companies would quietly omit, stating plainly that assessment answers cannot be deleted once submitted. Knowing that in advance is worth more than a vaguer promise.
Tele-MANAS wins on cost and reach. It is free, run by the Government of India, available in 20 languages, and reachable on 14416 without downloading anything [PIB, 6 February 2026]. Any honest comparison in this category has to say so. If you want to talk to a person tonight and own nothing afterwards, this is the answer, and no app should pretend otherwise.
ManoYatra's position is narrower and worth stating precisely. Its policy names the DPDP Act, commits without carve-outs that your inputs are never used for model training, states that individual entries are never shared with an employer or organisational administrator, and describes an automated hard-delete on account deletion. What it does not yet have is an independent privacy review, and its published policy does not currently document Incognito, which the app ships. Both are gaps we would rather name than let you discover.
How to check any wellbeing app yourself in ten minutes
You do not need a comparison table. You need ten minutes and a search box. Open the app's privacy policy on the web rather than in the app, then search the page.
Four searches tell you whether the policy was written for you at all:
- “DPDP” or “Digital Personal Data Protection” — if it is absent, the policy was not written for Indian law.
- The last-updated date — anything before November 2025 predates the DPDP Rules.
- “employer” or “organization” — essential if your company gave you the app.
- “sell” — the sentence you want is unqualified.
Four more tell you what actually happens to what you type:
- “delete” or “erasure” — look for a deletion you can trigger yourself, a stated timeline, and whether anything is exempted from it.
- “train” or “training” — a promise with the word “anonymous” or “aggregated” nearby is a narrower promise than it first reads.
- “retention” — you are looking for a number of months, not a mood.
- “encrypt” — check whether it covers data at rest, data in transit, or only one of the two.
Who should choose what
- If you want to be unidentifiable above all else — Wysa, on its published anonymity position.
- If you want your data governed by Indian law and never used to train a model — ManoYatra, on the two commitments its policy makes in writing.
- If you want to speak to a person tonight, at no cost, in your own language — Tele-MANAS, on 14416.
- If you want a platform run from India and can accept that assessment answers stay once submitted — Amaha, which says so itself.
And if you are evaluating this for a workforce rather than for yourself, the questions change entirely. The honest starting points are our writing on POSH Act compliance and director liability and the ESG S-Score in corporate tenders.
There is no configuration in which the right answer is “the one with the nicest onboarding”.
What would change our minds
If Wysa's policy is updated to name the DPDP Act and drop the training carve-out, its position becomes strictly stronger than ours on every criterion above. If an independent reviewer audits ManoYatra and finds a gap, this page gets corrected rather than quietly deleted. Both would be improvements to the category, and the second is the reason the gaps above are written down at all.
If you want to see what ManoYatra actually does with what you tell it, the privacy policy is the document to read, and the guided tools show what the app is for. ManoYatra, an India-native AI wellbeing companion by Sochware, is on the App Store and Google Play.
Sources
Every source below was read on 9 August 2026.
- ManoYatra Privacy Policy
- Wysa Global Privacy Policy, last updated 5 June 2026
- Amaha Privacy Policy, last updated 25 July 2025
- Mozilla Foundation, “Are mental health apps better or worse for privacy in 2023?”
- Mozilla Foundation, Wysa privacy review
- Press Information Bureau, DPDP Rules, 2025 Notified (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, 14 November 2025)