How to back up your Claude conversations

Claude is great for long, thoughtful work: writing, research, coding and planning, often inside Projects with their own instructions and files. All of that lives in your Claude account. If you want a copy you control, here is how to back it up.

Option 1: Anthropic’s data export

Claude has a built-in way to download your data:

1. In Claude, open the menu with your name or initials and go to Settings.
2. Open the Privacy section.
3. Click Export data.
4. You will get an email with a download link. Download the file while the link is still valid.

The download is a ZIP file with your conversations as JSON data. That is a good safety copy, but JSON is made for programs, so it is not pleasant to read. It also is not a document you can print or share.

Option 2: Save one Claude chat as PDF, Word or Markdown (free)

With AI Chat Exporter you can turn any Claude conversation into a clean, readable file:

1. Open the conversation in Claude.
2. Click the AI Chat Exporter icon in your browser toolbar.
3. Choose a format. Markdown is ideal for Obsidian or Notion, PDF for sharing or printing, and Word if you want to keep editing.
4. Click Export.

Code blocks, tables and maths come out properly formatted, and the Markdown version starts with the chat’s title, date and link, so it fits neatly into a notes app.

Moving a chat to another AI

Sometimes you want to continue a Claude conversation somewhere else, or bring a ChatGPT conversation into Claude. AI Chat Exporter can send the conversation to another AI so you can carry on where you left off. That is free, too.

Option 3: Back up everything, including Projects (Premium)

If Claude is part of your daily work, you probably have many conversations and several Projects. AI Chat Exporter Premium saves them all in one go:

• Export All (ZIP) saves every conversation on your account, one file per chat.
• Also save projects, memories and instructions adds your Project instructions and knowledge files to the backup.
• Save pictures and attached files as real files keeps the images and documents from your chats.
• Skip chats already exported makes the next backup quick: only new or changed chats are saved.
• Automatic backups run every day or every week while your browser is open.

Everything is saved straight to your computer. Your chats are never sent to our servers.

Make your backup searchable

A backup is most useful when you can find things in it. AI Chat Exporter Premium includes a library where all your saved chats, from Claude and every other AI you use, sit in one place. You can search by words or by meaning, add tags and stars, and organise chats into folders. You can also import the ZIP from Anthropic’s data export into the library.

A simple backup routine

1. Request Anthropic’s data export every few months as an official copy.
2. Export important chats as PDF or Markdown as soon as you finish them.
3. If you use Claude a lot, let automatic backups do the rest.

Ten minutes of setup now can save you from losing months of work later.