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How to export everything from Claude.

Guide · Export your Claude dataLast checked

Anthropic will give you every conversation on your account. It is free and it is complete. What it is not is convenient: there is no button on a conversation, no Markdown option, and what arrives is a JSON file written for a program to read.

Here is the whole process, what lands in your inbox, and what to do with it once it does.

Step by step

5 steps

  1. Open Settings in a browser

    Sign in to Claude on the web and open Settings from your account menu. Do this in a browser rather than a mobile app — the export control lives in the web settings.

  2. Go to Privacy

    Inside Settings, open the Privacy section. This is the account-level privacy page, not the per-conversation menu.

  3. Choose Export data

    Select Export data and confirm the request. There is nothing to configure — the export is account-wide by design, so there are no boxes to tick for particular conversations or projects.

  4. Wait for the email

    Anthropic processes the export and emails you a download link when it is ready. It goes to the address on the account, which is not always the one you are expecting — if you signed in through Google, it goes there.

  5. Download it promptly

    Download the file as soon as the email lands and keep it somewhere you will find it again. Convert it afterwards, at your leisure — but get the file itself off the link while the link is fresh.

There is no per-conversation export

It is worth saying plainly, because people spend a while looking for it: Claude has no export button on an individual chat and no export for a single project. The account-wide data export is the export. Anything offering you one conversation at a time is reading the screen, not the account.

For individual accounts the control is in your own settings. On Team plans the account-wide export is a Primary Owner action rather than something every member can run for themselves.

What is actually in the file

The export contains your conversations as JSON. Unlike ChatGPT, Claude does not store a branch tree — the messages in a conversation are a flat list in order, which makes the file simpler and the failure modes different.

Three things about it regularly surprise people:

  • The sender field says `human`, not `user`. Tools written against ChatGPT exports frequently assume user and silently produce transcripts where half the conversation is attributed to nobody.
  • Timestamps are ISO 8601 strings, not the Unix seconds ChatGPT uses. Again fine, and again a thing that breaks converters written for the other format.
  • Attachments may be text, not files. Claude often stores the extracted text of a document you uploaded rather than the original bytes. That is genuinely useful, but it is not the same thing as having your file back, and an honest converter labels the difference rather than presenting extracted text as the original attachment.

Making it readable

The JSON is not designed for you to read, and there is no official path from it to anything that is. Every route people currently take runs through a command line: a Python script from a repository, or asking Claude to write one for you and hoping it handled the edge cases.

Drop the file below instead. It is read in this browser tab — nothing is uploaded — and comes back as Markdown notes, an Obsidian vault, a self-contained HTML archive, or a PDF. Every message is either rendered or listed by name with a reason, and the totals are shown to you at the end so you can check that they add up.

Keep the original

Whatever you convert it into, keep the export file itself as well. It is the thing that proves what Anthropic actually handed over on a given date; the converted archive is the thing you read. They do different jobs and the original costs you almost nothing to keep.

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Related

Questions

5 answered

Does Claude have an export feature?
Yes — account-wide, under Settings → Privacy → Export data. For individual accounts you run it yourself; on Team plans the account export is a Primary Owner action.
Can I export a single Claude conversation?
No. Anthropic provides no per-conversation and no per-project export. The account-wide data export is the only official route.
How long does the Claude export take?
Anthropic processes it and emails a download link when it is ready. Download the file promptly once the email arrives rather than leaving the link sitting in your inbox.
What format is the Claude export?
JSON. Conversations are a flat list of messages with ISO 8601 timestamps, the user marked as human, and attachments sometimes stored as extracted text rather than the original file.
Do I have to upload the file to convert it?
No. The converter on this page runs entirely in your browser. The file is opened and read on your own machine and never sent anywhere.