FROM SIGNAL
TO STORY.

Good, and getting better all the time. The real trick is that Hoard works with you rather than guessing from one photo. Get the find home, clean it up and photograph the front and back, then add the things you can measure yourself: the size, the weight, and any letters or legend you can make out. Those few details narrow a find down enormously and give Hoard the best possible chance of nailing it. To help you capture them, Hoard even points you to a few cheap bits on Amazon that make it easier, like a small set of calipers, a jeweller's loupe and a pocket scale. Every result comes with a confidence rating and the similar finds recorded on the PAS database, so you always see the reasoning, not just an answer.

No, and that's the whole point of how it's built. Your findspots are encrypted on your device with a key only you hold, so the location data never sits readable on our servers. We don't share it, and we never sell it. When you sign up you get a one-off recovery code (something like HRD-4K7Q-9F2M-XT31); keep it safe, because it's what brings your private data back if you lose your phone. If you ever get completely locked out, we can help you recover access in extreme circumstances, but even then the findspot data itself stays sealed. We can never actually read where you've been digging.

They're two separate things that happen to share one login. Hoard is your personal detecting app for researching fields, identifying finds and logging your digs. Hoard Club is a completely separate product for running a club: organising dig days, taking payments, managing members and keeping the paperwork straight. It isn't part of a normal Hoard plan, and you don't need it as an individual detectorist. If your club does run Hoard Club, a free Hoard account is all you need to join in and use the club features, because the club pays for it, not you.

Yes, and you don't need to be an official, registered club to do it. Anyone can start their own club in Hoard for free and use the free club tools to gather a few mates, post a dig and share finds together. When you want the full kit, taking card and cash payments, auto-renewing subs, the member and landowner admin and a verified club badge, you upgrade that club to Club Pro. Whether you're starting a Sunday kickabout group or running a 200-member society, you begin exactly the same way.

The trial is a Pro promotion, so every new account gets Pro features to play with for two weeks, no card required. You get up to 10 identifications across the trial to see what the full thing can do; on full Pro that becomes up to 75 every month. If you're already sold you can upgrade whenever you like, even on day one, and carry straight on with no interruption. If you don't upgrade, nothing is charged; you simply settle onto the Free plan with 3 identifications a month.

No. Hoard runs fully in your browser, so you can create an account and identify your first find today, on your phone or a computer. Dedicated App Store and Google Play apps are on the way and will work exactly the same as the web app, with the same account and the same finds, plus the field extras like camera capture, GPS pinning and offline maps.

Yes, and it keeps things simple rather than preachy. If something you've found could count as treasure, Hoard gives you a friendly heads-up in plain English and the steps you can take, so you're never caught out. Recording finds with the PAS is a lovely way to add to the shared history of the hobby, and Hoard makes it easy to do straight from a find if you'd like to. Scheduled monuments are marked on the map too, so it's obvious where's off-limits. It's there to help you enjoy the hobby, not to look over your shoulder.

Yes. On a paid plan you can cancel in a click from Settings, handled by Stripe. Your plan simply runs to the end of the period you've already paid for and then stops, and everything you've logged stays yours on the Free plan. On the 14-day Pro trial there's nothing to cancel at all, because there's no card and no automatic charge.