Security and data handling

This page says what ai-tally keeps about your AI calls, what it never keeps, and how access works.

What ai-tally stores

For each AI call, ai-tally stores numbers and names, not content:

• the provider and model
• token counts and the cost
• the feature tag, and the hashed customer id if you sent one
• timing, reply code and request sizes
• trace and session ids

What ai-tally never stores

• Prompts, answers and retrieved text.
  • The proxy reads only the model name and token counts from a response. It never saves the request or the answer.
  • The Python SDK never sends them.
  • For OpenTelemetry, attributes that hold text (names ending in prompt, completion, messages, content, text or body) are dropped before anything is saved.
• Your AI provider keys.
  • With the proxy, your OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini key passes through to the provider untouched and is not recorded.
  • With the SDK or OpenTelemetry, your provider key never reaches ai-tally at all.
• Your real customer ids. Only a hashed customer id is stored (see below).
• Raw personal details. A span containing an email address, or attributes named like email, user_id or phone, is refused.

Customer ids are hashed

To see cost per customer, you attach a hashed customer id that cannot be traced back:

• Each organization has its own secret hashing key. ai-tally’s database stores only a reference to it, never the key itself.
• Hashing uses HMAC-SHA256. It turns your customer id into a 64-character code with that key.
• The same id always gives the same code within your organization.
• The code cannot be turned back into the id. Codes from different organizations never match, so they cannot be joined.
• The raw id stays with you when you send calls. The Python SDK hashes inside your app before anything is sent. With the proxy or OpenTelemetry, you hash the id yourself before sending it.
• Uploaded revenue is hashed on arrival. If you upload a revenue file, it carries your real customer ids. ai-tally hashes each one as the file is read and does not save or log the real id.

Only a key with write or admin scope can fetch the hashing key, and only for its own organization.

API keys

An API key identifies your organization when you send data.

• Seeing a key. A key is shown once, when it is created. ai-tally stores only a fingerprint of it (a SHA-256 hash), so it cannot show the key again.
• Scope. Scope decides what a key may do. write and admin keys can send data. A read key cannot send data or fetch the hashing key.
• Who manages keys. Only organization admins can create, rotate or revoke keys. Other members can see the list of keys, but not the keys themselves. Admins manage members on the Members page.
• Rotate. Rotate creates a new key with the same name and scope, and revokes the old one in the same step.
• Revoke. Revoke stops a key from working.

How quickly a revoked key stops working:

Path	Takes effect
Python SDK and OpenTelemetry	On the next request. The key is checked every time.
Proxy	Within about a minute. The proxy keeps a copy of your keys and updates it about every 45 seconds.

The proxy is in your request path

When you use the proxy, every AI call goes through ai-tally on its way to your provider:

• It adds a little time to every call. Each call makes one extra network hop.
• If the proxy is down, calls sent through it fail. The hosted proxy currently runs as a single instance.
• The SDK and OpenTelemetry do not have this risk. They send their records separately from your calls, so an ai-tally outage never stops your AI calls. If your product cannot accept that risk, use one of these instead.

The proxy is off until an organization admin turns it on.

Cloud credentials

When you connect a cloud bill on the Connectors page, you give ai-tally a reference to a credential, such as a cloud role ARN or a secret manager name. You never paste a raw access key. ai-tally rejects values that look like raw keys.

ai-tally does not currently claim any security certification.

Next

• Choose the way to connect that fits your risk: Proxy, Python SDK or OpenTelemetry.