Meituan (美团)

Is Meituan safe?

Meituan is safe enough for ordering food and booking services in China, but it carries more baggage than most apps in its class. China's market regulator has fined it twice for very large amounts, most recently in April 2026 for letting unlicensed "ghost" food shops trade. The app also collects your installed-app list and Wi-Fi data, and a bug deleted some Android users' photos in March 2026. We score it 43/100, close to DiDi (41), a point above Taobao (42) and well below its own overseas brand Keeta (53).

Meituan (美团) is one app for takeaway, groceries, hotel and travel bookings, ride-hailing, shared bikes and restaurant deals. Jiemian, citing QuestMobile, put its monthly users at 510 million in December 2025. Delivery also has its own app, Meituan Waimai (美团外卖), with about 9.6 million ratings on China's App Store. It belongs to the same company and uses the same account; this page scores the main app, which collects more. The review app Dianping (大众点评) also belongs to Meituan but is a separate app with its own policy, scored on its own page. Outside mainland China, Meituan delivers food as Keeta.

The ghost-kitchen fine

On 17 April 2026 the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) fined seven platforms a combined RMB 3.597 billion over "ghost takeaway" shops. The decision named Beijing Sankuai Technology, Meituan's operating company, alongside Pinduoduo, JD, Taobao, Tmall, Douyin and Ele.me. SAMR found that the platforms had not checked food-business licences properly and had signed deals with order-forwarding platforms while they knew, or should have known, that the forwarding misled consumers. All seven were barred from adding new cake shops for three to nine months, and their legal representatives and food-safety directors were fined personally. Wallstreetcn put Meituan's share at about RMB 746 million.

This is a consumer case: the harm is food from kitchens that no one had licensed. We count it in full.

The earlier case was about restaurants. In October 2021 SAMR fined Meituan RMB 3.442 billion, 3% of its 2020 domestic sales, for using fee differences, delayed listings and deposits to force restaurants into "choose one of two" exclusive deals. It also ordered Meituan to return RMB 1.289 billion in deposits and to file compliance reports for three years. Local regulators kept finding the same conduct afterwards, including a RMB 220,000 fine in Shache county in 2025. Because those cases protect partners rather than diners, they count at half weight. The 2026 food-safety fine alone puts Meituan in our band for large fines, and the restaurant case keeps it at the bottom of that band, at 40.

What Meituan collects

Apple's China label says identifiers and usage data are used to track you. Linked to you are purchases, search history, contact details, user content, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics, used for third-party advertising, Meituan's own marketing, analytics and personalisation. Location is listed as not linked to you.

The basic-function privacy policy, effective 28 October 2026, goes further. For security and fraud checks Meituan collects the list of installed apps or running processes, app usage and crash data, sensor data, and Wi-Fi details including nearby networks, SSID and BSSID. Payments, shared bikes and some anti-fraud checks need your real name and ID number, and sometimes face verification. For recommendations, Meituan combines information from different services, such as your orders, diet preferences, travel plans and location, into a single profile. The policy says the app shows no cross-platform programmatic ads from outside companies for now. Data collected in China is stored in China.

The photo-deletion bug

In March 2026 Android users reported that photos and videos vanished from their galleries while they used Meituan. Meituan's explanation was a fault, not data collection: in rare cases its automatic cache cleaner clashed with a third-party SDK and treated the photo album as a cache folder. It said nothing was uploaded, that more than 180 users had contacted support, and that a few hundred might be affected. Meituan apologised, shipped a fix and offered one-to-one recovery help and compensation.

We count this under security, because an app deleted files outside its own storage. We found no breach of account data. Meituan says it holds China's level-3 cybersecurity certification, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS, and it runs a security response centre for outside researchers.

How to use Meituan more safely

1. Before ordering from an unfamiliar shop, open its page and check the food-business licence and address.
2. Switch off personalised ads and personalised content under My, Settings, Privacy management.
3. On Android, keep photos backed up and update the app promptly; deny storage access unless you are uploading a picture.
4. Refuse "refund" calls that ask you to share your screen or move money. Handle problems through in-app customer service.
5. If you travel to China, use the main app or Meituan Waimai from the official App Store, not look-alike mini-programs.

How we scored it

Privacy (32) is the weakest factor, because of the installed-app list, Wi-Fi scans and cross-service profiles. The regulatory record (40) is almost as low: two large SAMR fines, one for unlicensed food shops and one, at half weight, for exclusive deals with restaurants. Transparency and control (52) is the strongest, with in-app deletion and separate ad and content switches. Security (50) has no account-data breach but the 2026 photo-deletion bug.