GoHighLevel Call Recording: Setup & Consent Rules (2026)
By Dr Priya Jaganathan, GoHighLevel Certified Admin · HL Growth Partner, Australia · Updated 25 September 2026 · 10 min read
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GoHighLevel call recording is one of the quickest features to switch on and one of the easiest to get legally wrong in Australia. The toggle takes four seconds. The consent thinking behind it takes rather longer, and it is not the same in Perth as it is in Brisbane.
This guide walks through where the setting actually lives in a sub-account, what recording and storage cost, where the audio ends up, who on your team can play it, and the federal-versus-state split that decides whether your client in Sydney can lawfully keep the file at all.
Quick Facts
| Where the setting lives | Settings > Phone System > Phone Numbers > Edit Configuration — per number, not sub-account wide |
| Recording cost | $0.0025 per minute, plus $0.0005 per minute per month to store, per HighLevel's phone number settings documentation (2026) |
| Consent announcement | Play Call Recording Message toggle; text-to-speech billed at $0.00084 per 100 characters |
| Where recordings appear | The contact's Conversations timeline, plus Reporting > Call Reporting with CSV export |
| Transcription | Settings > Phone System > Voice tab; requires recording enabled; $0.024 per recorded minute |
| File format | Twilio, the underlying carrier, serves recordings as WAV or MP3 per its 2026 Recordings API docs |
| Dedicated user permission | None — recording access follows the Conversations permission on the user's role |
Where the GoHighLevel call recording toggle actually lives — and why per-number matters
Most agencies assume there is a single master switch at sub-account level. There is not.
Recording is enabled number by number
In LeadConnector telephony, recording is a property of the phone number. You open Settings > Phone System > Phone Numbers, click the three dots beside the number, choose Edit Configuration, and flip Call Recording on.
If a sub-account owns six numbers, you do that six times. Numbers you buy next month do not inherit the setting, which is the single most common cause of "why is this call missing its recording" tickets in a multi-number build.
The per-number design is useful: record the sales line, leave accounts alone. If you run number pools and dynamic number insertion, every number in the pool is its own configuration object.
What recording and storage actually cost
HighLevel publishes the telephony rates in its phone number settings documentation. Recording is billed at $0.0025 per minute, with storage at $0.0005 per minute per month — so the audio keeps costing a fraction of a cent every month it sits there.
Two adjacent charges matter when you are pricing a client build:
- Call Transcription — $0.024 per recorded minute, on top of the recording fee, per HighLevel's 2026 transcription article.
- The recorded announcement — generated with text-to-speech, billed at $0.00084 per 100 characters.
None of these are large numbers, but they are recurring and per-minute — a different shape from the flat rate clients expect. Price them into your GoHighLevel phone system and call tracking build rather than absorbing them quietly.
Why HighLevel call recording consent trips up Australian agencies in 2026
Two layers of law sit on top of a recorded phone call in Australia, doing different jobs.
The federal layer: the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979
Section 7 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 prohibits intercepting a communication passing over a telecommunications system. The concept of interception turns on doing it without the knowledge of the person making the communication.
That single phrase is the whole reason the announcement toggle exists. Once you have clearly told the caller the call is being recorded, you are no longer recording without their knowledge, and the federal interception problem falls away.
The state layer: eight Acts, two different answers
State and territory surveillance devices and listening devices legislation then asks a separate question: may a party to a private conversation record it? The answer depends on where you are.
| State / territory | Governing Act | Can a party record without the other party's consent? |
|---|---|---|
| NSW | Surveillance Devices Act 2007 | Generally no — only inside narrow exceptions |
| Victoria | Surveillance Devices Act 1999 | Generally yes — the offence targets non-parties |
| Queensland | Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 | Generally yes — a party to the conversation is exempt |
| South Australia | Surveillance Devices Act 2016 | Generally no |
| Western Australia | Surveillance Devices Act 1998 | Generally no |
| Tasmania | Listening Devices Act 1991 | Generally no — narrow exceptions only |
| ACT | Listening Devices Act 1992 | Generally no — narrow exceptions only |
| Northern Territory | Surveillance Devices Act 2007 | Generally yes — the offence targets non-parties |
Even in the three permissive jurisdictions, what you may do with the recording afterwards is restricted separately from whether you could make it. Sharing audio with people who were not on the call is its own question — which is exactly what QA and coaching involve.
This is general information for Australian business operators, not legal advice. For a client in a regulated sector, get the specifics checked.
One-party versus all-party, in practice
Agencies love the one-party framing because it sounds like permission. In an agency context it is close to useless, for three reasons:
- You rarely know which state the caller is in — a 1300 number takes calls from everywhere.
- Your client's team may be distributed across states, so the "recorder" location shifts by roster.
- Recordings that will be replayed in a coaching session are being disclosed to non-parties by design.
How to configure the announcement so consent is built into the call
The recorded greeting on inbound numbers
Beside the Call Recording toggle sits Play Call Recording Message. Switch it on and HighLevel announces the recording to the participants before the conversation begins.
HighLevel made that announcement optional in a change dated 4 April 2025, and its own changelog note tells users to consider local regulations before disabling it. For an Australian sub-account, leave it on. It is the cheapest compliance control in the platform.
Where you want control over the wording, put the disclosure in an IVR greeting instead — a line naming the business, the recording and its purpose, before any menu options. That gives the caller a real chance to hang up, which is the behaviour the law cares about.
Outbound calls and the script problem
Outbound is where builds leak. The announcement plays, but a rep who has heard it hundreds of times talks over it, and the greeting lands as noise rather than notice.
Fix it in the script, not the settings: the rep's first line confirms the recording and asks whether the caller is happy to continue. If they are not, the rep has somewhere to go — a callback on an unrecorded number, or a note on the contact record. At dialler volumes, sloppiness here becomes systematic.
Where GoHighLevel call recordings live, and who can play them
Storage and retrieval
Recordings attach to the contact's Conversations timeline with an inline player, beside that contact's SMS and email history. That is the right place for them — a recording is context on a lead, not a file in a vault.
For volume review, Reporting > Call Reporting gives you the call log with direction tabs, number filters, and a CSV export where you choose the columns. IVR calls that produced multiple legs expose a dropdown so you can pick which recording to play.
Underneath, LeadConnector telephony runs on Twilio, whose 2026 Recordings API documentation serves recordings as WAV or MP3 — that is what you get when you pull a file out for a client.
User permissions: the gap to plan around
Here is the part that surprises people. There is no dedicated "call recordings" permission on a sub-account user role. HighLevel's role documentation lists granular toggles for Conversations, Contacts, Automation, Reporting and the rest — and recording playback rides along with Conversations.
Practically: if a user can open Conversations, they can hear the calls. An open feature request on HighLevel's ideas board asks for per-user recording control, which tells you it has not shipped.
Until it is, your levers are role scope and assigned-data restrictions. Work through sub-account permissions and user roles properly before you hand a VA or contractor a login, because "they only needed to check appointments" is not a defence once they have played 200 recorded consultations.
Retention and deletion
There is no retention policy set for you. Recordings persist — and keep accruing storage cost — until someone removes them.
So write the policy per client and make it boring: how long recordings are kept, who reviews them, when they are purged. Under the Privacy Act 1988, OAIC guidance puts the small business exemption at an annual turnover of $3 million or less — but health service providers are covered regardless of turnover. That carve-out catches most of the clinics agencies build for, so read it alongside GoHighLevel for psychologists and allied health practices.
Workflow triggers that make call recordings useful, not just archived
A recording nobody listens to is just a storage line item. Workflows route the ones that matter.
The Call Status trigger fires on call outcome — HighLevel's documentation lists busy, canceled, voicemail, completed and not answered — filtered by call direction. That is enough to build the patterns that actually get used:
- Call completed, inbound, duration handled downstream → tag the contact and drop a review task on the sales manager.
- Not answered or busy, inbound → fire the missed-call recovery sequence.
- Voicemail, inbound → notify the owner and move the opportunity stage in the pipeline.
Turn on Call Transcription (Settings > Phone System > Voice tab) and the text appears under the playback control in Conversations via View Transcript. Note the limit: transcription is not retroactive. If you are layering Voice AI setup and pricing over the same numbers, enable it first so you have a text corpus.
Using recordings for QA and coaching without creating a privacy problem
Coaching is the best argument for recording and the weakest link in the consent chain: it means playing a customer's voice to people who were not on the call.
Three things keep it clean. Name the purpose in the announcement — quality and training, not a vague "for our records". Keep the review group small and named. Coach from transcripts where the lesson is about language rather than tone.
Score against a rubric, not a vibe. Five calls a week per rep, logged as a task with the recording linked, reviewed in a standing slot. That runs for years; "listen to some calls when we get time" does not.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Enabling recording on one number and assuming the sub-account is covered. Every number is configured separately, including ones purchased later.
- Switching off the recording announcement to shorten the call. It is optional in the platform and load-bearing in Australia.
- Treating one-party consent as national. Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory are not New South Wales, and your caller's location is unknowable in advance.
- Handing contractors a Conversations-enabled role. With no separate recording permission, that grants access to every recorded call in the sub-account.
- Never purging anything. Storage bills monthly per minute, and an indefinite archive of customer audio is a liability, not an asset.
- Enabling transcription after a big campaign and expecting back-catalogue transcripts. It only applies to calls recorded from that point forward.
If you want your sub-accounts configured with recording, consent announcements, retention and QA workflows done properly the first time, book a strategy call with the HL Growth Partner team.
Or if you just need the software first: grab the 30-day HighLevel trial and book us when you're ready to scale it.
Frequently asked questions
Does GoHighLevel record calls automatically?
No. Call recording is off by default and is switched on per phone number under Settings, Phone System, Phone Numbers, Edit Configuration. If a sub-account owns six numbers, you enable it six times. Numbers purchased later do not inherit the setting.
Is it legal to record phone calls in Australia?
It depends on the state and on whether you tell the caller. The federal Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 targets recording a communication in its passage without the knowledge of the person making it, so a clear announcement at the start of the call addresses the federal question. State and territory surveillance and listening devices Acts then apply and they differ, which is why announcing and obtaining consent on every call is the practical approach for a national business.
Which Australian states allow one party to record a call?
Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory frame the offence around recording a conversation you are not a party to, so a participant can generally record. New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory are more restrictive and permit it only inside narrow exceptions. Even in the permissive three, passing a recording to people who were not on the call is restricted separately.
How much does call recording cost in GoHighLevel?
HighLevel's phone number settings documentation lists call recording at $0.0025 per minute, with storage at $0.0005 per minute per month. Call transcription is a separate charge of $0.024 per recorded minute on top of the recording fee. The recorded announcement is generated with text-to-speech, billed at $0.00084 per 100 characters.
Where do GoHighLevel call recordings appear?
Recordings attach to the contact's Conversations timeline with an inline player, alongside that contact's SMS and email history. They also appear under Reporting, Call Reporting, where you can filter by direction and number and export the call log to CSV with the columns you choose. For IVR calls with multiple legs, a dropdown lets you select which recording to play.
Can I stop some users hearing call recordings in GoHighLevel?
Not with a dedicated toggle. Sub-account roles expose a Conversations permission, and recording playback rides along with it, so any user who can open Conversations can play the audio. There is an open feature request on HighLevel's ideas board for per-user recording control, so until it ships your levers are role scope and restricting users to assigned data only.
Do I have to play a recording announcement on every GoHighLevel number?
Technically no. HighLevel made the announcement optional in a change dated 4 April 2025, and its changelog note tells users to consider local regulations before disabling it. For Australian sub-accounts, leaving Play Call Recording Message enabled is the cheapest compliance control available and it removes the federal knowledge question entirely.
Related Articles on HL Growth Partner
Phone system foundations
- Missed call text-back: the full setup walkthrough
- GoHighLevel vs CallRail: the true cost of call tracking
- Building an outbound dialling stack that reps actually use
Voice AI and automation
- Answering inbound calls with a Voice AI agent
- Manual actions inside Workflows, explained
- Workflow folders and naming conventions that scale
