Five of the well-known period apps have a woman among their founders. They’re Clue, Natural Cycles, Stardust, drip. and Bellabeat. Flo was founded by two brothers, and Glow names no woman among its founders. Euki and Spot On come from nonprofits, and Apple’s Cycle Tracking comes from Apple. Every claim here was checked against the company’s own page or a news report on October 12, 2026. We only call someone a woman where a source does.
Who founded each period tracker app?
| App | Who built it | A woman among the founders? |
|---|---|---|
| Clue | Ida Tin, Hans Raffauf, Moritz von Buttlar and Mike LaVigne, in Berlin in 2012 | Yes, co-founded by Ida Tin |
| Natural Cycles | Elina Berglund Scherwitzl and her husband Raoul Scherwitzl, in 2013 | Yes, co-founded by Elina Berglund Scherwitzl |
| Stardust | Rachel Moranis and Molly Young, in 2020 | Yes, both founders |
| drip. | The Bloody Health collective in Berlin, founded by Marie Kochsiek | Yes, founded by Marie Kochsiek |
| Bellabeat | Urška Sršen and Sandro Mur, in 2014 | Yes, co-founded by Urška Sršen |
| Flo | Dmitry Gurski and his twin brother Yuri, in Minsk in 2015 | No |
| Glow (Eve) | Max Levchin and Michael Huang, launched in 2013 | No woman named among the founders |
| Ovia | Paris Wallace and others, in Boston. Owned by Labcorp since 2021 | Sources disagree |
| Euki | Researchers at Ibis Reproductive Health. Now its own nonprofit | A nonprofit, not a founder story |
| Spot On | Planned Parenthood | A nonprofit, not a founder story |
| Apple Cycle Tracking | Apple, added to the Health app in 2019 | A big company, not a founder story |
“Founded by” and “run by” aren’t the same thing. Founders step back and companies get sold. The sections below say who runs each one now where we could check it.
Which period trackers were founded by women?
Clue is the oldest of them. It was started in Berlin in 2012 by four people, and Ida Tin is the name most people know. Clue’s own history page lists her as co-founder and chairwoman and credits her with coining the word “femtech” in 2016. She was CEO until 2021, according to Wikipedia. Since 2024 the CEO has been Rhiannon White.
Natural Cycles was co-founded in 2013 by Elina Berglund Scherwitzl, a particle physicist who worked on the Higgs boson discovery at CERN, and her husband Raoul. The company’s About page names her as CEO today. It’s also the only app on this list cleared by the FDA as birth control, which happened in 2018.
Stardust was launched in 2020 by Rachel Moranis and co-founder Molly Young. A 2024 Elle feature says Moranis was put off by a market of trackers that were too pink and designed by men, and it describes her team as all women. It’s the app with the moon and astrology angle.
drip. is made by the Bloody Health collective in Berlin, which Marie Kochsiek founded out of her master’s research. It’s free and open source, and it was paid for with grants from the German government and Mozilla.
Bellabeat was co-founded in 2014 by Urška Sršen, a sculptor and designer, and Sandro Mur. Y Combinator’s page notes she was named best female entrepreneur in Croatia in 2016. Bellabeat is mainly a wellness wearable company. Its app tracks periods, and it released a separate Period Diary app in 2018.
Is Flo made by a man?
Yes. Flo was founded in Minsk, Belarus, in 2015 by brothers Dmitry and Yuri Gurski. TechCrunch describes them as twins and names Dmitry as CEO. The company has since moved its headquarters to London. It’s also the biggest, with about 70 million monthly users of the free app by TechCrunch’s 2024 count. That’s why this question gets asked about Flo more than any other.
Glow, which makes the Eve period tracker, is the other big one with no woman named among its founders. TechCrunch’s 2013 launch story credits Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, and Michael Huang, who ran it as CEO.
Ovia is the murky one. Labcorp, which bought it in 2021, calls Paris Wallace its CEO and co-founder. The Boston Globe named Gina Nebesar as a co-founder in 2016, while Boston Magazine says she joined early to lead product. Either way, a lab testing company owns it now.
Which period apps come from nonprofits?
Euki grew out of 2017 research by Ibis Reproductive Health into what people wanted from a sexual and reproductive health app. It came out in 2018 and became its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit in June 2024. There’s no founder to point to, but there are no investors either.
Spot On is Planned Parenthood’s period and birth control tracker, and it’s still on the App Store. Planned Parenthood says your data is saved on your device and your own cloud backup, not on its servers.
Apple’s Cycle Tracking has the least flattering history. When the Health app launched in 2014 it tracked a long list of things but not periods, and plenty of people noticed. Apple added Cycle Tracking in 2019. Our Apple Health cycle tracking guide covers what it does today.
Why do people want a period app made by women?
Mostly trust. Period data is about as personal as data gets, and a lot of people would rather hand it to someone who has had a period. Some of it is design. Stardust was started because its founder found the existing apps too pink and designed by men. And some of it is history. Apple’s missing tracker in 2014 is the story people point to when they say men build health tech for men.
Those are fair reasons. The founder can shape what an app treats as normal, what it assumes you want and how it talks to you. If those things matter to you, the list above is a real starting point.
Does a woman founder mean your data is safer?
No, and this is the part that matters most. Founder gender tells you nothing about what an app does with your data. The FTC settled with Flo in 2021 over claims it passed health details to marketing and analytics companies. But TechCrunch found in 2022 that Stardust, founded by women, was sending users’ phone numbers to an analytics company too. Ownership also changes. Ovia now belongs to a lab testing company, and Clue is run by a CEO who wasn’t one of its founders.
Check these three things before you trust any period app with your cycle.
- Read the Data Used to Track You section of its App Store privacy label. An empty section means it doesn’t follow you to other companies’ apps.
- Find out where your history lives. On your phone only, or on the company’s servers under an account.
- See who owns the company today, not who started it.
Our guides to private period trackers, whether period apps are safe and whether Flo sells your data go further on each.
Which one should I pick?
If you want a woman-founded app with the most depth, pick Clue. It runs on iPhone and Android, its tracking is thorough, and its founder is still on the board. If you also want nothing on a server, pick drip. instead. It’s free, open source and keeps everything on your phone. Use Natural Cycles only if you want an app cleared as birth control, because that’s what it’s built for. If privacy matters more to you than who founded it, Euki is the strongest pick of all, and it costs nothing.
Trying to decide between the two biggest? Read Flo vs Clue. For a pick by need rather than by founder, see the best period tracker apps.
Where Plum fits
Plum, a period tracker app for iPhone, is made by Sticky Rice Labs. It shows no ads, and the Data Used to Track You section of its App Store label is empty. You sign in with Apple or Google, so your history is saved to an account and comes with you to a new phone. That also means it isn’t an on-device-only app. Tracking, predictions and the fertile window are free. What sets it apart is groups, where friends you invite can see each other’s period days. Plum Premium adds insights and daily tips. Plum’s privacy label, line by line shows exactly what it stores.
