Baby admin, in plain English
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Read the field notes — three short ones
You live here. You work here. And then a baby turns out to mean paperwork in a system you did not grow up with, in a language that is not the one you think in, with deadlines nobody mentions until you have missed one — and a budget in a currency you still convert in your head. Paperbump turns all of it into one list, dated from your due date: the paperwork, the money and what to buy.
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Every official step for the country you live in, from registering the pregnancy to claiming what you are owed, in the order it happens. Each one checked against that country’s own official source, with the date it was checked.
See the steps for your countryNot one frightening lump sum. A cash-flow line in your own currency that shows the quiet weeks and the week most of the money actually goes — and what the country you are in already covers.
See the figures for your countryCot, car seat, breast pump, high chair, baby monitor — each priced new and second-hand where you live, with the ones that are fine used marked, and a short list of what to check before you hand over money.
See what it costs where you areThe hard part is already done. What is left is paperwork — on a deadline, in a system you are still working out, often in a language you are still learning, with your own family a flight away.
Built by Liz, a finance girl who had her own pregnancy far from home and wanted one clear plan: what to do, when, and what it will really cost.
Free, with no account and no sign-up. Nothing you enter is sent to us — what Paperbump collects.
Paperbump covers one country properly before adding the next.
Everything is dated from this. You can change it later.
A rough number is fine. Skip it if you would rather not think about money yet.
Paperbump spreads this across the weeks instead of showing one lump sum.
Tell Paperbump the day and everything after the birth re-dates itself. Registering the birth is three working days from the actual day, not from the estimate.
General information, not advice. Every step links to the official source and the date we last checked it. Rules change — check the source before you act on it. Dates are worked out from your due date, so anything around the birth shifts with the day the baby actually arrives. What Paperbump collects.
Every step also has a plain page you can send to someone: every admin step.
Kept apart on purpose. What you buy once and what comes back every month are different kinds of money, and a single number adding them would be true of no month and no year.
General information, not financial advice; prices are estimates.
The chart starts from Paperbump's own estimate of what each thing costs here. Type over any of them — what you find in a shop beats any estimate, and your figure is the one that counts from then on.
The number internationals ask about most, and the one nursery price lists do not answer. Put in what a place actually charges and Paperbump works out what you pay after the subsidy.
What to buy, roughly when, and where second-hand is the better call. This list is deliberately short: most of what gets bought before a birth turns out not to be needed, and you can buy anything missing in a week once you know what this particular baby is like.
Paperbump is free and always will be. There are no ads, no subscription, and nothing about you is ever sold or shared.
Keep the key with your backup. There is no account, so if you lose it there is nobody to ask — the backup export carries it for exactly that reason.
A line a week, next to the week it belongs to. Missing one costs you nothing, nobody reads this but you, and Paperbump keeps no streaks.
This writing lives in this browser only. Phones clear storage for sites you have not opened in a while, so if it matters to you, save a backup file now and then.
Three short reads on what Paperbump does. A minute each.
Field notes / 01
Everything else is worked out from it — every deadline, every appointment, every cost, placed on the week it actually falls in.
Field notes / 01
Field notes / 01
What is done stops asking. What is late says so once, quietly, and then leaves you alone.
Field notes / 02
A baby is two people's admin. Say who is doing what, and the list stops being one person's job to remember.
Field notes / 02
Field notes / 02
As a message you can read and change first, or as a link that opens the plan in their own Paperbump. The link carries the plan inside it, so it goes to them and nobody else.
Field notes / 03
What you buy once, and what comes back every month. Paperbump keeps them apart, because one number adding them is true of no month and no year.
Field notes / 03
A car seat and a cot mattress are new in all three.
Field notes / 03
What you find in a shop beats any estimate. Your figure is the one that counts from then on.
Nothing you type.
There are no accounts, no tracking cookies, and no server to send anything to. Your due date, your budget, your answers, the steps you tick off and whatever you write in the journal are stored in this browser, on this device, and stay there.
Our host counts page views from its server logs, with no cookie of its own. It cannot see what you type, and neither can we.
Paperbump makes one third-party request: a cookieless counting script from PostHog. It records that a page was opened and which part of the app was used — never anything you typed. The typefaces are still served from Paperbump itself, so no third party sees that you opened the app. It works the same with no connection.
Because none of it reaches us, there is nothing to delete on our side, and nothing anyone could ask us to hand over — not an advertiser, not an insurer, not a court. It also means that if you clear your browser data or lose the phone, it is gone, which is why there is a backup file you can save and restore yourself.
There is no cookie banner because there are no cookies to ask you about.
The plan travels inside the link itself.
Paperbump has no server to put a plan on, so when you share one with your partner, the whole thing — your due date, which steps you have assigned, who is doing them, whatever you wrote as the next action, and any check-in dates — is packed into the web address and nothing else. It is made on your device, by your browser, and it goes nowhere until you send it.
That is the honest trade. It means no account, no upload, and nothing of yours sitting on a computer we control. It also means anyone who has the link can read what is in it — if it is forwarded, pasted into a group chat, or left in a browser history on a shared computer, it still works. So send it to your partner and to nobody else, and if you would rather not put it in a link at all, the same screen gives you the plan as plain text to paste into a message instead.
What the link never carries: your journal, your notes on a step, your budget, or anything you typed anywhere else in the app.
When a link arrives, Paperbump shows you what is in it and changes nothing until you say so. Refusing it leaves your own plan exactly as it was.
Both are worth describing exactly, because “we collect nothing” would not be true if they were left out.
How many people opened a page. Our host counts requests from its own
server logs — no cookie, no script, nothing stored on your device, and nothing that
identifies you. Some of the links Paperbump is shared through land on an address of their
own, like paperbump.com/from/mamas/, which sends you straight on to the page you
wanted. That is how a count of visits can be split by where the link was, without following
anybody: the address is the whole of it. If you arrived that way, the tag is taken out of
your address bar and kept in this browser, so that the question below can offer you a
sensible answer later. It is never sent anywhere.
What you tell us on purpose. After you tick your first step, Paperbump asks once whether it was useful and how you heard about it. Nothing is sent unless you tap Send, and Send opens your own email app with the answers written out, so you can read them, change them, or close the window. Paperbump never sees an answer — what it stores is two dates and, if you arrived on a tagged link, that tag. Not what you chose, and not what you wrote. If you ignore it or tap “No thanks”, it never asks again.
Apps in this corner of the world have promised privacy and not kept it, so here is how to check this one rather than trust it:
Paperbump is a checklist and a calculator, not a midwife, a lawyer or an accountant. Every administrative step here is written from an official source, links to it, and shows the date it was last checked, so you can see for yourself and see when it was last looked at.
Rules change, usually around 1 January. If something here disagrees with an official page, the official page is right. The sources used are:
Paperbump gives no medical advice and makes no predictions about your pregnancy. For anything about your health or your baby's, ask your midwife or doctor.
Paperbump is free and always will be. There are no ads, no subscription, and nothing about you is ever sold or shared.
The plan, stated plainly so you can judge it: where Paperbump links to a shop, it may earn a small commission on what you buy. Those links are marked, and they change nothing about what is recommended — the advice on most of this list is to buy it second-hand, which earns nothing at all. If that ever stops being true, this paragraph is where you will catch us.
Commission is paid by the shop, out of their margin. You pay the same price either way, and the shop is told a sale came from Paperbump — never who you are, because Paperbump does not know.
Built by Liz, a finance girl who had her own pregnancy far from home and wanted one clear plan: what to do, when, and what it will really cost.
Paperbump is new and built by one person. If something here is wrong, missing, or confusing — or if it saved you an afternoon — that is genuinely the most useful thing you can send.
Whatever happened, and however far along you were, Paperbump should stop counting. Here is what it can do.
The weeks, the steps, the dates and the countdown all stop. Your journal stays exactly as it is, and nothing is deleted. You can turn it back on from this page at any time.
If you want the timeline back — now, or for a later pregnancy — it is here.
If you would rather it were simply gone, this removes every trace of Paperbump from this device, the journal included. It cannot be undone.
Go to delete my dataPaperbump is a checklist and has no business offering advice here. These are the people who can.
Leave it empty until the baby arrives. Setting it re-dates everything after the birth.
Paperbump keeps everything in this browser only. If you clear your browser data, or switch phone, it is gone unless you save a backup file.
Nothing you type. No accounts, no cookies. Nothing you enter is sent to us.
Privacy, and what Paperbump isIt opens full screen, works with no signal, and it is the only way back — Paperbump has no account to log in to and will never send you anything.
Tap the share button at the bottom of Safari, then Add to Home Screen.
Open your browser's menu and choose Add to Home screen, or Install.
Most people find Paperbump because someone who was a few weeks ahead of them sent it over. If that is you, this is the whole of our marketing.
One line is useful. It is built by one person and nothing here is measured, so saying so is the only way anyone finds out.
Write to PaperbumpIf your pregnancy has ended, Paperbump can stop counting.
If your pregnancy has endedDeletes everything Paperbump has stored on this device.
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