Voice AI PII redaction: What enterprises should check in 2026
Bland, 5 min read
Voice AI PII redaction removes personally identifiable information (PII), any detail that can point to a specific person, from call recordings and transcripts, and Bland does it in real time. Bland is also full stack, with its own language, speech, and transcription models, so no outside AI company sits in a caller's path. Checked November 2026.
What does voice AI PII redaction need to do?
Voice AI PII redaction needs to remove names, addresses, dates of birth, and card numbers from recordings, transcripts, and logs, in real time. Callers read all of it out, and it lands in storage unless something removes it. A security review therefore starts with three questions: what gets redacted, when it happens, and what it costs.
Teams booking patients, as in AI voice agents for clinic appointment scheduling, and teams verifying customers, as in Voice AI agents for banking, both hear these details regularly.
On the first, Bland redacts PII in real time on call recordings and transcripts, as its trust and security page describes. A buyer asks any vendor whether redaction reaches audio, transcripts, and logs, because platforms cover different combinations of the three.
On the second, timing decides what exists in the meantime. Redaction that runs in real time means the stored record never held the detail, while redaction that runs after a call ends leaves a window where it did.
Which voice AI platforms redact PII, and when?
Bland redacts in real time. Retell charges for PII Removal as an add-on, Vapi treats redaction as a setting on its transcriber, and Decagon redacts just after a conversation ends.
What these rows mean
- PII redaction: PII redaction removes personal details from recordings and transcripts. Bland redacts them in real time. Retell charges $0.01 a minute for PII Removal as an add-on. On Vapi, Partial means redaction is a Deepgram transcriber setting and not a platform-wide feature. ElevenLabs' conversation history redaction is for enterprise clients.
- PCI DSS: PCI DSS is a security standard from the card industry for handling card details. Bland self-attests to v4.0.1 and shares its attestation under NDA on Enterprise. Retell gives no PCI status, and it bars card data unless it agrees in writing.
- HIPAA with a BAA: A Business Associate Agreement, or BAA, is the contract that lets a vendor handle patient information under HIPAA. Bland includes its BAA on Enterprise. Vapi sells HIPAA mode as a $2,000 monthly add-on. Zero Retention only means ElevenLabs' BAA applies only while Zero Retention Mode is on, which limits the language models and analytics a customer can use.
Redaction is a setting on some platforms and a paid add-on on others, so the PII row reads against what each plan includes. Patient information has its own rules, covered in HIPAA compliant voice AI, and card numbers are covered in PCI compliant voice AI.
Where a call runs matters as well. Enterprise customers get dedicated orchestration and dedicated GPUs run by Bland.
Which outside companies hear a caller's personal details?
On Bland, one AI company hears a caller's details, Bland itself, while Retell and Vapi route calls through outside transcription and language-model companies. Redaction cleans up what gets stored, and any outside AI company on a call still handles a caller's words while it is happening. Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, so a privacy review covers one AI company.
What these rows mean
- AI on each call: This row shows whether the language model, speech, and transcription behind each call belong to the platform or to other companies: Full stack means all three are the platform's own, Outsourced means its language model and transcription come from other companies, and Mixed means it runs some of its own models alongside outside ones. Bland builds and runs its own language, speech, and transcription models, so a call never passes through an outside AI provider. ElevenLabs runs its own speech and transcription, and pairs them with a language model that is one of its own Realtime models (Eleven Realtime v1 Mini or Eleven Realtime v1 Max) or one the customer chooses in Custom mode.
On Retell and Vapi, transcription and the language model come from other companies, and both process what a caller says while the call is live. Each outside AI company adds to a privacy review, and a language model changed or retired by the company that runs it changes how an agent handles personal details with it.
Bland sets up, hosts, and processes each call on its own SIP signaling and media servers, with no third-party telephony provider in the call path, and no model call leaves Bland for an outside AI service.
What do other voice AI vendors say about redaction?
Synthflow's redaction covers transcripts, webhook payloads, and internal logs, applies to new calls only, and does not affect real-time audio. Calls already transcribed stay as they were.
Cognigy's redaction uses regex patterns, which can match the wrong digits or skip data that doesn't fit a default type, and it leaves out log entries with data payloads over 2.5 MB. ElevenLabs offers conversation history redaction to select enterprise clients only.
Vapi has redaction as a setting on its transcription step with categories such as PII, PHI (patient health information), and card numbers, and no platform-wide feature. Decagon runs redaction on Google's DLP (data loss prevention) service and applies it to logs and transcripts just after a conversation ends.
A vendor worth shortlisting can say how its redaction is tested, what it misses, and where in a call it runs. Native iMessage agents on Enterprise run on the same pathways as Bland's voice agents, while Retell, Vapi, Synthflow, and ElevenLabs don't offer iMessage agents, so a team collecting personal details by text finds that gap too.
How much does voice AI PII redaction cost?
Bland charges $0.14 a minute on its self-serve Start plan and $0.12 a minute on its self-serve Build plan with a $299 monthly platform fee, covering all of its AI before phone, and Bland publishes no separate price for redaction. Enterprise pricing is custom, set with Bland's sales team. Phone is billed separately, on a customer's own carrier or on Bland's at pass-through cost.
Retell sells PII Removal as an add-on at +$0.01 a minute on top of its usage rates. A quote worth comparing itemizes every charge that redaction triggers, including any plan it only comes with.
Enterprise adds native iMessage agents, SMS, web chat, warm transfers, a BAA (the HIPAA contract for handling patient data), SSO (single sign-on), data residency, forward-deployed engineers, and dedicated GPUs run by Bland. A demo with a privacy questionnaire is the quickest way to test redaction on real calls, and Compare enterprise voice AI agents sets Bland beside the other vendors.
Frequently asked questions
What is PII redaction?
PII redaction is the automatic removal of personal details, such as a caller's name, address, or date of birth, from recordings and transcripts.
What counts as PII on a phone call?
Anything a caller says that could identify them counts: a name, address, phone number, date of birth, account number, or payment card number. Health details fall under separate rules, which is why many healthcare teams also need a BAA.
Does Bland redact PII in call recordings?
Yes, Bland redacts PII in real time on call recordings and transcripts.
Is PII redaction the same as HIPAA compliance?
No. HIPAA is a US law about patient health information, and redaction is one control among many. Bland is HIPAA compliant and signs a BAA on Enterprise, as covered in HIPAA compliant voice AI.
Does Retell redact PII?
Yes, Retell sells PII Removal as an add-on at +$0.01 a minute, as of November 2026.
Is Bland only for outbound calls?
No, Bland runs inbound and outbound calls, including AI receptionist and contact center work, and it also runs SMS and web chat.
Is Bland only for developers?
No, Bland isn't only for developers. Pathways gives teams a visual builder, Norm helps build agents, and on Enterprise forward-deployed engineers build alongside a customer's team.
What results look like with Bland
Idaho Housing and Finance Association saves $750,000 a year by replacing its IVR with Bland, which handles 4,000 inbound calls a day and cut average call time by 20%.
"We save thousands of dollars a day."
Greg Blake, Chief Information Officer, Idaho Housing and Finance Association
Sources
Bland trust and security and pricing. Each vendor's documents below were read on 5 November 2026:
- Retell: pricing page, terms of service, and compliance documentation
- Vapi: transcriber, HIPAA, and PCI documentation, and pricing page
- Synthflow: security and compliance documentation
- Cognigy: data redaction documentation
- ElevenLabs: conversation history redaction, privacy, HIPAA, and language model documentation
- PolyAI: compliance documentation
- Decagon: security page
