Glossary
What is zero data retention?
Zero data retention (ZDR) means a provider processes your request and stores none of it afterwards — no prompt, no output, no copy held for review — so there is nothing left to log, breach, hand over or train on once the answer is delivered.
What it covers, and what it does not
It covers the content of the request. It does not usually cover operational metadata: that a request happened, when, from which account or key, and how many tokens it cost. Billing has to work, so something is always counted.
It is a contractual state, not a feature you can switch on. A provider either has agreed to it for a given model, or has not. This is why the tier matters more than the brand — the same company often runs some models with no retention and others in an "anonymised" mode that still keeps the text with identifiers stripped.
Anonymised is not zero. Stripping identifiers reduces who can be linked to a prompt; it does not stop the prompt existing. For anything you would not want read back to you, the distinction is the whole point.
How to check a claim
Ask which models it applies to, not whether the company "supports" it. A ZDR agreement covering three of a provider's twenty models is true and nearly useless if the one answering you is among the other seventeen.
Ask what happens on the front end too. A chat product can sit on a genuinely no-retention API and still store your conversation itself, to show you a history sidebar. Both halves have to hold.
nokeep is built to pass both: every engine it routes to runs under a no-retention agreement, that tier is re-checked against the provider's live catalogue every day, and nothing is stored on our side either — there is no account for a history to attach to.
Asked before you asked
Is zero data retention the same as encryption?
No. Encryption protects data in transit or at rest — it presumes the data exists. Zero retention means it does not exist after the request completes.
Does zero retention mean the provider cannot see my prompt?
It has to be readable to be answered. Zero retention means it is not kept afterwards. Confidential-computing setups go further by making it unreadable even during processing, at some cost in speed and model choice.
Why do some providers offer it only on certain models?
Because a model they host themselves can be run under whatever terms they choose, while one they resell from another company inherits that company's terms. Mixed rosters are common, which is why the per-model tier is the thing to check.