---
title: "Is it safe to upload audio to a transcription tool?"
description: "Interviews, therapy sessions and board calls are sensitive. Here's what actually happens to your audio when you transcribe it - and the questions to ask any tool before you upload."
canonical: "https://speecho.app/blog/is-it-safe-to-upload-audio/"
language: "en"
author: "The Speecho team"
date_published: 2026-06-24
date_modified: 2026-06-24
publisher: "Speecho"
---
# Is it safe to upload audio to a transcription tool?

> Interviews, therapy sessions and board calls are sensitive. Here's what actually happens to your audio when you transcribe it - and the questions to ask any tool before you upload.

_The Speecho team · 2026-06-24 · Canonical: https://speecho.app/blog/is-it-safe-to-upload-audio/_

If you're transcribing a confidential interview, a client call or a therapy session, "just upload it" deserves a second thought. Your audio can be personal, privileged or commercially sensitive. Here's what actually happens to a file when you transcribe it, and the questions worth asking before you trust any tool with it.

## Where your audio goes

Most AI transcription tools don't run the model themselves - they send your audio to a speech recognition provider for processing, then hand you the text. So there are really two questions: **who receives the audio**, and **how long anyone keeps it**.

The risky pattern is a tool that stores your recordings indefinitely on its own servers "so you can access them later" - because now your sensitive audio lives in a second place, under someone else's retention policy, for as long as that company exists.

## What Speecho does

Speecho is built to hold as little as possible:

- **Audio is streamed for inference only.** Your file goes to our speech recognition providers to be transcribed and is **not stored on our servers** afterwards, unless you turn on Keep audio yourself to play it back next to the transcript.
- **Transcripts auto-delete after 90 days.** The text output isn't kept forever either - it's removed on a rolling basis.
- **No bot in your calls.** Because you record locally and upload, your meeting audio never has to flow through a third-party notetaker bot's account.

Our full [privacy policy](/privacy/) spells out the details in plain language.

## Questions to ask any transcription tool

Before you upload something sensitive - to us or anyone - get clear answers to these:

1. **Is my audio stored after transcription, or only processed?** "Processed and discarded" is what you want.
2. **How long are transcripts retained, and can I delete them?**
3. **Who is the audio shared with?** A reputable tool will name its AI provider.
4. **Is my recording used to train models?** For sensitive content, you want a firm no.

> If a tool can't answer these clearly, that itself is the answer.

## Practical habits for sensitive recordings

- **Get consent** when you record other people - it's often legally required, and always the right thing.
- **Strip what you don't need.** If only part of a call is relevant, trim before uploading.
- **Use speaker labels instead of names** where you can, and keep identifying details out of file names.

Sensitivity is exactly why the pay-as-you-go, no-bot, nothing-stored model exists. If you want the details first, read our [privacy policy](/privacy/) - or [transcribe a file free](/) and see the workflow for yourself.