Zero data retention (ZDR)

By default, model providers keep API data for a period under their published policies, for purposes such as abuse monitoring. Zero data retention is a stricter arrangement: the provider doesn't store prompts and responses once the request completes, apart from narrow exceptions such as legal obligations and certain safety signals. Customers in healthcare, finance, and legal work often require it in their contracts.

ZDR is usually not a self-service switch. Expect an enterprise agreement and an approval process. It also excludes features that store data by design, such as uploaded files kept until you delete them and other endpoints a provider lists as ineligible. If your feature depends on one of those, ZDR may not cover it.

The bigger misconception is that ZDR makes your product zero-retention. It covers only the provider. Your own logs, traces, caches, vector indexes, eval datasets, and third-party observability tools still hold user data, and that's where most retention questions end up. ZDR also means the provider can't look at a failed request to help you debug, so your own logging matters more. Offer it to customers who need it, and get your own data map right first.