Switching from ChatGPT to Claude: What to Save Before You Cancel

Do this before anything else, because it is the slow step. In ChatGPT, open Settings → Data controls → Export data and confirm. OpenAI emails you a download link; it usually arrives within hours, but their help centre allows up to seven days.

The link expires 24 hours after it arrives, so download the ZIP as soon as you see the email. Inside you will find conversations.json (your full history) and chat.html (a basic readable view of the same data). Chats you have already deleted are not included.

For a closer look at the export and the alternatives to it, see How to Export Your ChatGPT Conversation History.

ChatGPT's memory is not in the data export in a form Claude can use, but Claude has an import flow built for exactly this. Anthropic describes it as experimental, and it works on the Free, Pro, Max and Team plans on the web and the desktop app.

1. Ask ChatGPT to list every memory, preference and instruction it has stored about you, in a single code block.
2. In Claude, open Settings → Memory and choose Start import.
3. Paste the text and click Add to memory.

Claude's memory focuses on work context, so it may leave out personal details, and it will not always pick up everything you paste. Check what it learned afterwards, and keep your own copy of the text either way.

Custom instructions live under Personalization in ChatGPT's settings. Copy them into a text file. In Claude, the closest equivalents are your personal preferences in settings (applied to every chat) and a Project's instructions (applied to chats inside that Project). If your instructions were really about one kind of work, such as a client, a codebase or a writing style, a Project is usually the better home.

Most people have five or ten prompts they use every week, scattered across old conversations. Pull them out now, while you still remember which chats they are in. ChatGPT's search can find it by wording, but only while you still have the account, and a prompt you reuse weekly deserves a better home than search results.

Put them in one document. If a prompt has parts you change each time, mark them as {{variables}} so you can see at a glance what to fill in.

conversations.json is complete, but it is hard to read. ChatGPT stores each conversation as a tree rather than a list: every edited message and regenerated answer is kept as a branch. A naive conversion mixes those abandoned drafts back into the conversation. A good converter follows only the branch you actually ended on.

Our free Chat Export Converter does that in your browser, with no upload, and gives you Markdown. From there you can:

• keep the archive in Obsidian or Notion, where it is searchable like any other note
• paste the relevant old conversation into a Claude Project when you need its context again

If you will keep using both assistants, ChatPeer adds folders and full-text search across ChatGPT and Claude, stored only in your browser, so the old history stays findable without exporting it again.

Cancelling a paid plan does not delete your account or your conversations; you drop back to the free tier. That makes the free account a reasonable fallback archive while you settle in. Deleting the account does remove your history, so only do that once your export is downloaded and checked.

• Chat history: Claude cannot import ChatGPT conversations. The export is an archive, not a migration.
• Custom GPTs: there is no equivalent import. Copy each GPT's instructions and rebuild it as a Claude Project, uploading its knowledge files again.
• Files and images in chats: download any you need from the export or the original conversations.
• Shared links: links you shared from ChatGPT keep pointing at ChatGPT, and stop working if you delete the account.