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Where your audio goes

HyperWhisper supports three transcription paths, each with different privacy implications:
If you want zero risk of your audio being used for training, use local transcription. It’s offline and the audio physically never leaves your Mac or PC.

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HyperWhisper Cloud

When you use HyperWhisper Cloud, we forward your audio to a backing speech-to-text provider, and your transcribed text to a backing LLM for post-processing. We don’t store your audio on HyperWhisper’s own servers — it’s processed in memory at the edge and discarded after the response is returned. We apply the strongest data-protection control each provider offers, so your audio isn’t used to train their models:
  • Where a provider has a per-request no-train / no-store flag, we set it on every call (for example, Deepgram’s mip_opt_out).
  • Where the control is account-level, we enable zero-data-retention on the HyperWhisper account (for example, Groq).
  • Where neither exists, we delete the transcript as soon as we’ve fetched it (for example, AssemblyAI, where we’ve also opted out of model training).
A few providers keep data briefly for abuse monitoring — Grok and Mistral retain it for roughly 30 days — but do not use it to train their models. One provider, ElevenLabs, retains data by default; its zero-retention mode is limited to enterprise plans and we’re working toward enabling it. If retention is critical for your use case, choose a different cloud model or use local transcription in the meantime. So as a HyperWhisper Cloud user, you don’t need to configure anything — your audio is excluded from model training across the stack, and retained nowhere except the limited cases noted above.

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Your own API keys (BYOK)

When you configure your own API key in Settings → API Keys, your audio is sent directly from your device to that provider, using their account, on their terms.
You are usually responsible for your own opt-out when using your own API keys. HyperWhisper cannot toggle dashboard-level settings on accounts we don’t control. Each provider has its own default — some don’t train on API data, some do unless you opt out.

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Deepgram BYOK — we opt out for you automatically

For Deepgram specifically, HyperWhisper does the work for you on both macOS and Windows: every direct Deepgram request the app sends includes mip_opt_out=true in the query string. You don’t need to change any setting on your Deepgram dashboard for this to take effect — it applies on a per-request basis. Verify it on a recent request in console.deepgram.com under Usage → Logs: the request detail should show mip_opt_out: true.

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Other providers — quick reference

This table reflects publicly stated policies as of when this page was written. Providers can change their terms — for any provider whose policy is critical to your use case, verify directly using the prompt below.

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Verifying any provider

Provider data policies move around — pages get renamed, settings get redesigned. The most reliable check is to ask a current language model. Open ChatGPT, Claude, or any LLM with web access and paste:

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If you’ve already used a key without opting out

A few things you can do:
  1. Opt out now — most providers stop using future requests for training the moment you flip the setting, even if past requests were used.
  2. Request deletion — many providers honor data deletion requests for previously sent content. The same LLM prompt above can ask “how do I request deletion of past API data on {PROVIDER}?”
  3. Rotate the key — if you want a hard line in the sand, generate a new key on the provider’s dashboard and replace the old one in Settings → API Keys.

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Summary

  • Local = nothing leaves your device.
  • HyperWhisper Cloud = we don’t store your audio, and we apply each provider’s strongest no-train / no-retain control. Most providers retain nothing; a couple keep data briefly for abuse monitoring (no training), and ElevenLabs retains by default until we complete an enterprise zero-retention upgrade.
  • Your own API key = mostly your responsibility — except for Deepgram, which HyperWhisper auto-opts-out by adding mip_opt_out=true to every request the app sends.
Related documentation: