Braintrust Data Plane, Hosting & Security Checklist

Look forBraintrust's MSA bars it from using customer data to train or develop AI models, including model improvements. Pro includes a click-through DPA. Enterprise adds custom DPAs and legal terms, a HIPAA BAA, and the SOC 2 Type II report.

Look forThe data plane stores experiment, log, and dataset records, playground prompts and completions, human review scores, and project-level provider secrets. Braintrust always runs the control plane, whatever the hosting option. The control plane holds project and experiment names, git metadata, organization settings, API key hashes, and organization-level provider secrets. Clerk handles sign-in.

Look forChoose the US or EU data plane when you create the organization. You cannot change it afterward. Braintrust's security page recommends EU-resident BYOC or self-hosting for full GDPR compliance. Ingestion redaction sends selected text outside the EU, even for EU organizations.

Look forBoth require Enterprise. With BYOC, Braintrust operates the data plane inside your cloud and needs access to it. With self-hosting, your team deploys Terraform modules on AWS, GCP, or Azure, upgrades once or twice a month, and staffs on-call. Health and usage telemetry goes back to Braintrust until you turn it off. One self-hosting team caught a cold-start call to braintrust.dev. Another reported vulnerable dependencies in the published images for weeks.

Look forIn May 2026, an attacker used a compromised employee credential to reach decrypted AI provider keys in a migration backup. Braintrust found the activity limited to Anthropic keys, and 30 customers reported suspicious key use. Hosted organizations now connect OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Vertex AI, and Azure AI Foundry through workload identity federation, and Bedrock through assume-role. Both need a Braintrust-hosted organization, and workload identity federation covers organization-level providers only. Project-level providers and self-hosted deployments still store keys, so set a spend limit on each at the provider and rotate on a schedule. Braintrust flags provider keys older than six months on its secrets page.

Look forStrip sensitive values with SDK masking or span customizers before they leave the application. One team keeps Braintrust switched off until it has a signed DPA, 30-day retention, and a tested deletion path.

Look forStarter has only the Owner group. Pro adds the Engineer, Viewer, and All AI Provider Access groups. Enterprise adds custom groups, project and object permissions, SAML or OIDC SSO, domain mappings, and audit logs kept for the life of the subscription. Since October 2026, organization owners can list every member's API keys through the API. If logs contain untrusted image URLs, block rendering or require click-to-load.