How to export your claude.ai conversations, and what the export leaves out

This page explains how to export your conversation history from claude.ai, what the export contains and leaves out, and how Anthropic’s retention rules work. Last updated August 5, 2026.

Requesting the export

Click your initials in the lower left of claude.ai, open Settings, go to Privacy, and click Export data. The export arrives by email as a download link that expires 24 hours after delivery.

Exports run from the web app or the desktop app only, not from the iOS or Android apps. They are available on individual Free, Pro, and Max accounts. On Team and Enterprise plans, individual members cannot export their own history. Only the organization’s primary owner can run exports.

There is no API for claude.ai conversation history. The Anthropic developer API is a separate product for sending new messages. The email export is the only bulk mechanism.

What the export contains

The export is a ZIP of JSON files: your conversations, your user record, and your projects. Anthropic does not publish a format specification. Project knowledge arrives as extracted text, not the original files. A PDF you uploaded comes back as its text content, not the PDF.

What the export leaves out

• Memory is not in the export. Claude’s memory has its own separate flow: you can view and copy it from Settings under Capabilities, but it does not travel with the account export.
• Original uploaded files are not returned as files. Text extracts only.
• Anything you deleted before requesting the export is not in it.
• An export cannot be imported into another personal Claude account. There is no migration path between accounts.

Retention, deletion, and training

When you delete a conversation on claude.ai it disappears from your history immediately and is removed from Anthropic’s backend systems within 30 days.

In September 2025 Anthropic asked every consumer user to choose whether their chats may be used for model training. That choice is still the current regime, and it controls how long your data lives:

• Training on: new and resumed chats are retained for up to 5 years, in a form stripped of identifying details, and are used to train models.
• Training off: the standard policy applies, with deleted data removed within 30 days.

The setting is in Settings, Privacy, under Help improve Claude. Turning it off stops future use, but data already included in completed or in progress training runs stays there.

Two exceptions sit outside your setting. Conversations flagged by Anthropic’s safety systems are retained for up to 2 years, with classification scores kept up to 7 years, and under policy language added in mid 2026 flagged conversations may be used for training regardless of your choice. Incognito chats are never used for training under any setting.

Keeping the record

Take the export now and keep the ZIP. An export can only contain what still exists when you request it, so the copy worth taking is the current one. Capsa’s dropzone at capsa.hammerai.ai reads claude.ai exports: drop the ZIP and every conversation is banked byte for byte and becomes browsable in your archive. A large account arrives as several ZIPs named batch 0000, 0001 and so on; drop each one.