For hikes, backyards & dog walks

Every tick bite, logged — nowhere but your phone.

STIKK helps you record bite location, photos, and follow-up reminders for yourself, your kids, or your pets. It's a private medical log, not a social app — so it behaves like one.

Open the web app → 🍎 iOS & 🤖 Android — coming soon

Free to use. No account, no sign-up, no data leaves your device.

New bite entry

Today, 6:42 PM

On device

Left calf

Photo attached

Geotag saved locally

Follow-up reminder · Day 14 check-in

The whole point of STIKK

Tick bites are medical history. We treat them that way.

No cloud database. No account to hack. No third party to sell to. Your log — and every photo in it — lives in your device's own storage, full stop.

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Never leaves your device

Bites, photos, and notes are stored locally. There is no server that holds your medical data — we couldn't hand it over if we wanted to.

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Never shared, never sold

Nobody else — no partner, no advertiser, no "trusted third party" — ever sees your entries. Not even us.

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Analytics, and only analytics

We run self-hosted, anonymous product analytics — things like "a follow-up was completed" — to see what's used. It never includes your bite data, photos, or location.

Read the full privacy policy →

What you get

Built for the moment you find one, not for a feed.

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Track more than yourself

Keep separate profiles for kids and pets — one app, everyone's bite history in one place.

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Body location & map

Mark exactly where the bite was and, if you choose, where it happened outdoors.

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Photo timeline

Watch a bite site change day by day — useful for you, and for showing a doctor later.

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Follow-up reminders

Gentle nudges to re-check a bite at the intervals that actually matter.

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Archive, don't delete

Resolved bites move to an archive instead of vanishing, so history stays intact.

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Your data, exportable

Export or import your log whenever you like — it's yours, on whichever device you choose.

Why a log matters

The bite takes a minute. The risk window lasts weeks.

Most tick bites come to nothing. But in Norway and across Europe, two tick-borne illnesses are worth knowing by name — and both are easier to catch early if you know exactly when and where you were bitten.

715

reported borreliosis cases in Norway (2025)

Up from 641 in 2024 and 571 in 2023 — a steady climb.

96

TBE cases in Norway (2025)

Telemark (24), Vestfold (15) and Agder (14) led the count.

24–48 h

the window that decides Borrelia risk

Transmission is unlikely before 24 hours and rises sharply after 48.

~128,000

Lyme cases reported yearly in Europe

Plus roughly 2,500 TBE cases a year across 23 countries. Both are likely undercounts.

Bacteria · treatable with antibiotics

Lyme borreliosis

Caused by Borrelia bacteria. Up to a quarter of Norwegian ticks can carry them, but only about 2 % of bites lead to infection — and just 5–10 % of those infected develop symptoms.

  • The tell-tale sign is erythema migrans: an expanding red patch or ring around the bite, showing up 3–30 days later.
  • Untreated it can spread — neuroborreliosis brings facial palsy and radiating nerve pain, and later stages can reach joints and skin.
  • Transmission is unlikely in the first 24 hours the tick is attached and climbs considerably after 48 — so removing it quickly genuinely helps.
  • Antibiotics work, and they work best early. A dated photo of the bite site is exactly what a doctor wants to see.

Norway's official count only covers the disseminated forms. A single erythema migrans treated at a GP's office isn't notifiable, so the real number of infections is far higher than 715.

Virus · no cure, but a vaccine

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE)

Caused by the TBE virus, found in only around 0.3 % of ticks — but unlike Borrelia, it can transfer the moment the tick starts feeding. Fast removal is no defence here.

  • Incubation is 2–28 days, and the illness usually arrives in two waves: flu-like symptoms, about a week of feeling fine, then the neurological phase.
  • Roughly 30 % of symptomatic cases go on to neurological illness — high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, confusion, paralysis.
  • About 10 % of those who develop encephalitis are left with lasting neurological symptoms and around 3 % with permanent paresis. Fatality in Western Europe is under 1 %.
  • There is no antiviral treatment. Vaccination is the only thing that prevents it.

A study from Sykehuset Telemark followed Norwegian TBE patients for a year: 41 % still had complaints affecting their quality of life, 14 % needed rehabilitation, and 7 % were still on full-time sick leave.

The rest of the list

Norwegian ticks also carry Anaplasma, Babesia and Neoehrlichia. These usually cause no more than mild flu-like symptoms 1–4 weeks after a bite, though they can be serious for people with weakened immune systems. Further south in Europe, the ECDC also tracks Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.

Where and when

The castor bean tick (Ixodes ricinus) is the one that matters here — active from roughly April to November, along the coast of southern Norway and as far north as Brønnøysund, and in woodland across Europe from early spring to late autumn. Milder winters keep pushing both its range and the TBE virus further out.

Vaccination

One of the two has a vaccine. The other is close.

TBE vaccine

Available now

FHI recommends it for children and adults who get tick bites often — more than a couple a year — in areas where TBE occurs.

  • Norwegian risk areas: Sørlandet and the western side of the Oslofjord from Flekkefjord up to the old Hurum municipality, plus the eastern side from Vestby to the Swedish border.
  • Ages 1–60: three doses — the second 1–3 months after the first, the third 5–12 months later. From 60, or if immunocompromised: four doses.
  • First booster after 3 years, then every 10. Best started in late winter, before the season opens in April.
  • In Norway you pay for it yourself, at a GP's office, vaccination clinic or pharmacy.

It protects against the TBE virus and nothing else — not against bites, and not against Borrelia or anaplasmosis. A dose taken after a bite comes too late to help, so it isn't recommended.

Lyme vaccine

In development

There is no Lyme vaccine on the market today — Borrelia comes in too many variants for that to be easy. But the candidate PF-07307405 (formerly VLA15) reported around 73 % efficacy in the phase 3 VALOR trial in March 2026, in everyone from age five up.

Pfizer and Valneva have regulatory filings under way, and the EMA has validated the European application. Until it's approved, checking yourself, removing ticks quickly and watching the bite site is the whole toolkit.

Neither vaccine stops a tick from biting you. Covered ankles, a look-over after every trip, and a log of what you find still do the heavy lifting.

Finding, removing, watching

Find it. Get it off. Then watch the spot for four weeks.

Nearly everything you can do about a tick bite happens in that order. The last step runs the longest and is the one that gets forgotten first — which is exactly the gap STIKK exists to close.

1

Check after every trip

You never feel the bite — the tick numbs the spot so it can feed in peace. A proper look-over after time outdoors is the only thing that finds them, and on children the scalp matters most.

Researchers Vivian Kjelland and Randi Eikeland, University of Agder, via forskning.no

2

Pull it straight out, now

Grip as close to the skin as you can and pull straight out — no twisting, since the tick isn't screwed in. Skip the grease, oil and ointment; they only delay you. Don't squeeze the body either, which can push its contents into the wound. Borrelia usually needs a full day attached, so the hours you save are real ones.

Flåttsenteret · Store medisinske leksikon · CDC: “Delaying tick removal to get help from a healthcare provider could increase your risk.”

3

Then watch the spot for four weeks

Flåttsenteret's advice is blunt: keep an eye on the bite site for up to four weeks. A reddish rash spreading outward from the bite and larger than 5 cm across needs a doctor. The CDC says the same in its own words — watch for symptoms for 30 days.

Flåttsenteret, the Norwegian national advisory unit for tick-borne diseases · CDC

“If you can manage it, take a picture of the tick.”
Yvonne Kerlefsen, biologist and adviser at Flåttsenteret, to forskning.no, August 2026

She makes the same point about the record itself: note where and when you were bitten. Different regions carry different tick species and different diseases, and without knowing which, a doctor is largely guessing. Four weeks after the fact, nobody remembers whether it was a Tuesday in June or the weekend before — or which calf it was on.

Call a doctor if…

  • A red patch or ring spreads out from the bite 3–30 days afterwards, wider than 5 cm.
  • You get fever, headache, muscle aches or unusual fatigue in the weeks after a bite.
  • You notice facial drooping, numbness, a stiff neck or nerve pain radiating from anywhere.
  • The bite site gets more sore, swollen or angry-looking instead of less.

FHI's own advice: see a doctor if you develop a fever, a rash, or a sore at the bite area during the first month after a tick bite.

In Norway, a photo can be assessed

Flåttsenteret runs a free service called Flåttsjekk: you send in photos and details of the rash and get advice back, usually within a couple of days. It has already gathered around 500 photos from 300 people who developed a rash — dated photos of a bite site are genuinely clinically useful.

STIKK is where yours accumulate: same spot, same angle, one photo per check-in, with the date attached. Neither the service nor this app replaces your GP or legevakt.

STIKK is a logbook, not a doctor. Nothing on this page is a diagnosis or medical advice — if you're worried about a bite, contact your GP, or in Norway Helsenorge or legevakt.

Sources for this section +

Where to get it

One log, on every device you use.

🌐 Live now

Web app

Installable PWA at web.stikk.app — works offline once loaded.
🍎 Coming soon

iOS app

In development. Same local-only storage, no changes to how your data is handled.

🤖 Coming soon

Android app

In development alongside iOS, built from the same private-by-default core.

Good to know

Questions people actually ask

Does anything ever get uploaded to a server? +

No. Your bites, photos, notes, and profiles are stored in your browser or device's own local storage. There's no backend database holding a copy.

What exactly do the analytics collect? +

Anonymous, aggregate product events — for example, that a bite was logged or a follow-up completed — through a self-hosted analytics tool we run ourselves. No names, no photos, no bite details, no ad networks, no cookies sold to anyone.

If it's all local, what happens if I lose my phone? +

You can export your log at any time and keep the file wherever you trust — your own backup, your own drive. STIKK just won't do that syncing for you behind the scenes.

Is STIKK free? +

Yes. The web app is free with no account required. The iOS and Android apps will follow the same principle.

Found a tick? Start the log.

It takes under a minute, and it stays exactly where you put it — on your device.

Open web.stikk.app →