Judge a wellbeing app on four checkable things: anonymous use, a real delete button, a written no-training promise, and named DPDP alignment. 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. And 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.

**Data fiduciary** is the term the Act uses for whoever decides why and how your data gets processed — in this case, the app company. **Erasure** is your right to have that data deleted on request. **Consent** under the Act has to be specific, informed, and as easy to withdraw as it was to give. Those three words are the entire consumer half of the law, and 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 it assessed, 23 earned its *Privacy Not Included warning label for failing to respect and protect user privacy [Measured — Mozilla Foundation, May 2023]. 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 — including ManoYatra, which no independent reviewer has yet assessed.

Treat "no third-party review" as a gap in the evidence, not as a clean bill of health. That applies to us as much as to anyone else.

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. On starting without an email or name: Wysa says yes explicitly — "you do not need to register to use the app, just give us a nickname" — and Tele-MANAS needs no account at all; ManoYatra and Amaha don't state a position either way. On deleting everything from inside the app: ManoYatra's account deletion triggers an automated hard-delete sequence, and Wysa's "Reset my Data" clears chats, assessment answers, reminders and settings; Amaha is only partial, since some assessment answers "cannot be updated or deleted once submitted." On a written commitment on model training: ManoYatra is unqualified — inputs are "strictly forbidden from being used for public model optimization, model training, or commercial marketing indexes" — while Wysa's promise carries a carve-out: conversation messages aren't used as training data, but anonymous chats may be used to improve models; Amaha doesn't address it. On naming India's DPDP Act 2023 in the policy itself: only ManoYatra does. On where the data sits: ManoYatra says it prioritizes processing and storing data within India where possible; Wysa uses AWS cloud with LLM processing in the provider's Europe data region; Amaha is operated from India but transfers data to other countries; Tele-MANAS runs on government infrastructure. On whether an employer can see individual entries: ManoYatra says no — entries are "never shared with employers or organizational administrators" — a question that doesn't apply to the consumer apps. On an independent privacy review: only Wysa has one, Mozilla's "Best Of" designation; none of the others have been assessed. And on when the policy was last updated: Wysa's is dated 5 June 2026, Amaha's 25 July 2025, and ManoYatra's published page states no date at all.

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, not in the app, and search the page for eight things. Search for "DPDP" or "Digital Personal Data Protection" — if it is absent, the policy was not written for Indian law. Search for "delete" or "erasure" and look for a deletion you can trigger yourself, a stated timeline, and whether anything is exempted from it. Search for "train" or "training" — a promise with the word "anonymous" or "aggregated" nearby is a narrower promise than it first reads. Search for "employer" or "organization", essential if your company gave you the app. Search for "sell" — the sentence you want is unqualified. Search for "retention" — you are looking for a number of months, not a mood. Check the last-updated date — anything before November 2025 predates the DPDP Rules. And search for "encrypt" to check whether it covers data at rest, data in transit, or only one of the two.

Then do one more thing that takes thirty seconds: open the app's Data safety section on Google Play and see whether it matches the policy. Where the two disagree, believe neither and move on.

Who should choose what

So who should choose what? If you want to be unidentifiable above all else, that's Wysa, on its published anonymity position. If you want your data governed by Indian law and never used to train a model, that's 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, that's Tele-MANAS, on 14416. If you want a platform run from India and can accept that assessment answers stay once submitted, that's 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](https://www.manoyatra.com/blog/posh-act-compliance-director-liability) and [the ESG S-Score in corporate tenders](https://www.manoyatra.com/blog/esg-s-score-corporate-tenders-2026).

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](https://www.manoyatra.com/privacy) is the document to read, and [the guided tools](https://www.manoyatra.com/tools) show what the app is for. ManoYatra, an India-native AI wellbeing companion by Sochware, is on the [App Store](https://apps.apple.com/in/app/manoyatra-ai-mind-companion/id6764052674) and [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manoyatra.app).

**ManoYatra is a general wellness product. It is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition. It is not a substitute for professional care.**

**If you're in crisis, please reach out to iCall at +91 91529 87821, Tele-MANAS at 14416, or KIRAN at 1800-599-0019. In an emergency, call 112.**

Sources

Sources: the [ManoYatra Privacy Policy](https://www.manoyatra.com/privacy), read 9 August 2026; the [Wysa Global Privacy Policy](https://legal.wysa.io/privacy-policy), last updated 5 June 2026 and read 9 August 2026; the [Amaha Privacy Policy](https://www.amahahealth.com/privacy-policy), last updated 25 July 2025 and read 9 August 2026; Mozilla Foundation, ["Are mental health apps better or worse for privacy in 2023?"](https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/are-mental-health-apps-better-or-worse-at-privacy-in-2023/); Mozilla Foundation's [Wysa privacy review](https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/wysa/); and the Press Information Bureau's [DPDP Rules, 2025 Notified](https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2025/nov/doc20251117695301.pdf) (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, 14 November 2025).