Data residency

Gradium runs inference in both the European Union and the United States. By default you call a single endpoint, api.gradium.ai, and requests are routed to the nearest cluster. For most customers this already means that, in practice, sessions are processed close to home. Data residency is for when “in practice” is not enough. Once enabled on your plan, processing in a chosen region becomes a guarantee that is enforced on every request: your sessions are never re-routed out of that region, and every response tells you so.

Endpoints

Endpoint	Behaviour
`api.gradium.ai`	Default. Routed to the nearest cluster; no residency commitment.
`eu.api.gradium.ai`	EU-pinned. For organizations enrolled in EU data residency, sessions are guaranteed to be processed in the EU.
`us.api.gradium.ai`	US-pinned. For organizations enrolled in US data residency, sessions are guaranteed to be processed in the US.

The three endpoints are the same API: same API key, same routes, same request and response formats. Only the host changes.

https://eu.api.gradium.ai/api      wss://eu.api.gradium.ai/api
https://us.api.gradium.ai/api      wss://us.api.gradium.ai/api

What is guaranteed

For an organization enrolled in data residency for a region:

Inference stays in the region. Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text and Speech-to-Speech sessions, over WebSocket or the POST REST endpoints, run on our clusters in that region.
No cross-region fallback. Under load a session may be served by another cluster in the same region, but never by a cluster outside it.
Fail closed. If a pinned request ever reaches a cluster in another region, it is refused rather than processed out of region (see Rejections).
Session data is written in region. Whatever session data we retain (see Zero data retention to retain none) is written by the cluster that served the session.

EU data residency

eu.api.gradium.ai is served by our EU clusters. For an organization enrolled in EU residency, a session that starts on one of them stays within Europe: it is never handed to a US cluster, and a pinned request that reaches one is refused. EU residency is the more complete of the two, because our control plane, which manages account data, is hosted in the EU for all customers, enrolled or not. So for an EU-pinned organization, both the audio processed in a session and the account metadata behind it stay in the European Union.

US data residency

us.api.gradium.ai is served by our US clusters, on the East and West coasts. For an organization enrolled in US residency, sessions are guaranteed to run on those clusters and are never re-routed to the EU.

US residency covers inference: the audio and text of your sessions. Our control plane is hosted in the EU for all customers, so account data, custom voices and pronunciation dictionaries are still stored — and management calls still served — in the EU. If you need the control plane in the US as well, talk to us about a self-hosted deployment.

How to opt in

Data residency is available on our paid plans. It is enabled on your plan by our team; there is no self-serve toggle yet. On a free plan, the Request a change button in Studio is greyed out. Hover it to see why, and use Upgrade plan at the top of the Data controls section.

To check your organization’s current setup, open Gradium Studio and go to Organization > Data controls > Data residency. The card shows the Region (European Union, United States, or no region) and the Enforcement mode. Every member of the organization can see it. Studio names the enforcement modes for what they guarantee. Our support team uses the technical names:

Studio	Technical name	What it means
Flexible	none	We aim for your region, but sessions may run elsewhere. No residency commitment.
Per endpoint	explicit	Sessions stay in your region when you call your regional endpoint.
Strict	implicit	Sessions always stay in your region, whatever endpoint you call.

1. Ask us to enable it

On a paid plan, an organization admin can request the change from Studio:

Click Request a change, next to the Data residency title.
Choose the Region (EU or US) and the Enforcement mode (Flexible, Per endpoint or Strict), and add a note if you need to.
Click Send request. It is disabled while your choice matches the current setting.

The request goes to our support team, who apply the change and reply by email. Next to the title, the card then shows the date the request was sent and Resend request, which reopens the form with your last request. Studio remembers a sent request in that browser only. Members see “Only admins can request a change.” and should ask an admin of their organization. See Organization. If you use the API without Studio, or cannot access Studio, contact support@gradium.ai with your organization name and the region you need (eu or us). Whichever way you ask, pick one of two modes (Studio shows them as Per endpoint and Strict):

Explicit (default): sessions are pinned when you call the region endpoint. Calls to api.gradium.ai keep today’s behaviour. Choose this if only part of your traffic needs the guarantee.
Implicit: your whole organization is pinned to its region, whichever endpoint you call. Choose this if all of your usage is in scope.

An organization has at most one residency region. If different parts of your traffic need different regions, use explicit mode and pick the endpoint per integration.

2. Point your integration at the region endpoint

import gradium

client = gradium.client.GradiumClient(
    api_key="your-api-key",
    base_url="https://eu.api.gradium.ai/api",  # or https://us.api.gradium.ai/api
)

# -D - prints the response headers, including x-gradium-residency
curl -L -D - -o bonjour.wav -X POST https://eu.api.gradium.ai/api/post/speech/tts \
  -H "x-api-key: your-api-key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Bonjour !", "voice_id": "YTpq7expH9539ERJ", "output_format": "wav", "only_audio": true}'

wss://eu.api.gradium.ai/api/speech/tts
wss://us.api.gradium.ai/api/speech/asr

With implicit mode this step is optional, since every endpoint pins your sessions to your region, but we still recommend it.

3. Verify

Every response reports the residency the request actually got, so you can check it instead of trusting a hostname:

REST: the x-gradium-residency response header.
WebSocket: the residency field of the ready message.

Value	Meaning
`pinned; zone=eu`	The guarantee is in force: this session is processed in the EU and will not leave it.
`pinned; zone=us`	Same, for the US.
`best-effort; zone=eu`	The request landed in the EU, but your organization is not enrolled: no commitment is made.
`best-effort; zone=us`	Same, for the US.
`none`	No region is involved: default endpoint, organization not enrolled.

TTS ready

{
  "type": "ready",
  "request_id": "req_...",
  "model_name": "default",
  "residency": "pinned; zone=eu",
  "sample_rate": 48000,
  "frame_size": 3840
}

If you rely on the guarantee, assert pinned in your client and treat anything else as a configuration error. best-effort on a region endpoint means residency has not been enabled on your plan yet.

Rejections

A pinned request that reaches a cluster outside its region is refused instead of being processed out of region:

REST: 403 Forbidden
WebSocket: close code 1008 (policy violation)

Both carry the reason This request must be sent to the <region> region endpoint. In practice this happens when an organization in implicit mode calls an endpoint that is not pinned to its region; the fix is to use eu.api.gradium.ai or us.api.gradium.ai.

Residency and Zero data retention

The two are independent and combine:

Data residency governs where your requests are processed.
Zero data retention governs whether request and response payloads are retained at all. See Zero data retention to turn it on.

For SOC 2 Type II attestation, ISO 27001 certification and security resources, see Security and compliance. For a Data Processing Agreement, contact support@gradium.ai.

Getting Started

Text-to-Speech

Speech-to-Text

Speech-to-Speech

Shared

Real-time Recipes

Migrations

Voices

Self-Hosted

Data controls

Resources

Endpoints

What is guaranteed

EU data residency

US data residency

How to opt in

1. Ask us to enable it

2. Point your integration at the region endpoint

3. Verify

Rejections

Residency and Zero data retention

​Endpoints

​What is guaranteed

​EU data residency

​US data residency

​How to opt in

​1. Ask us to enable it

​2. Point your integration at the region endpoint

​3. Verify

​Rejections

​Residency and Zero data retention

Endpoints

What is guaranteed

EU data residency

US data residency

How to opt in

1. Ask us to enable it

2. Point your integration at the region endpoint

3. Verify

Rejections

Residency and Zero data retention