Alternatives
Gmail's own sorting and filters,
beside Brood.
If you sort your mail with Gmail's own categories, or with filters you wrote, this page sets out what Gmail reads and does, from Google's own pages, beside what Brood reads. Each line about Gmail links to the page it comes from, with the day we read it.
What each reads.
How it reaches your Gmail
Gmail
It is the mailbox: Google holds the mail and sorts it as it arrives. From Gmail Help, Organize your inbox, read 9 October 2026.
Brood
- Email metadata: sender, recipients, date, existing labels
- Permission to create and modify labels in your Gmail
- Permission to create and modify Gmail filters
What it reads
Gmail
It marks mail important partly from words in the mail you usually read. From Gmail Help, Gmail importance markers, read 9 October 2026.
Brood
It never reads:
- The subject line of any message
- The body of any message
- Attachments of any kind
- Anything you've drafted but not sent
- Anything in Drive, Calendar, Meet, or Contacts
- Anything we'd use to train a model
Whether your mail goes to a model
Gmail
Gemini, on eligible plans; Google says Workspace content does not train models outside the domain without permission. From Gmail Help, Collaborate with Gemini in Gmail, read 9 October 2026; Google Workspace Admin Help, Generative AI in Google Workspace Privacy Hub, read 9 October 2026.
Brood
Brood decides what to propose by rules and counts you can read, and never sends your data to a model, its own or anyone else's. If you point an assistant of your own at what Brood has learned, that is your assistant, reading your record, because you asked.
The permission that lets Brood file your mail also lets it read your mail. Google does not offer a narrower one that can label a message you have already received. Brood never uses it to read. Every request it makes asks for metadata only, through one module, and the subject line is not among the headers it asks for, so it never arrives at all. So the promise is that Brood never reads what your mail says, not that it can't.
What else Google says Gmail does
Sorts a default inbox into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. From Gmail Help, Organize your inbox, read 9 October 2026.
Lets you write filters that label, archive, delete or forward mail. From Gmail Help, Create rules to filter your emails, read 3 October 2026.
Is rolling out one place to see your subscriptions and leave them. From Gmail Help, Manage your email subscriptions, read 9 October 2026.
Moving over to Brood.
Brood's rules are Gmail filters too. When you confirm a home, Brood writes a filter in Gmail for what comes next, so new mail is filed as it arrives, at Google's end, beside the filters you wrote.
Brood writes the filters you confirm, so Gmail files that mail as it arrives. Of your own filters, it reads what each does and who it names, so it does not propose what you already handle, and never anything else a filter matches. It reads which addresses you send from, and changes no other setting.
On the Classifications page, Show my own filters lists them, and Brood keeps nothing of them. On Pro, Brood can take over one that names a single sender and files that sender's mail under one of your labels, out of the inbox. It adds the exceptions for the senders who must always reach you, and undoing it puts your filter back as it was.
Brood's own filters download as Gmail's own filter file, to make again in any Gmail if you leave.