Session Replay Data Retention: How Long Tools Keep Recordings

Session replay data retention is how long a tool keeps your recordings, heatmap events and summaries before deleting them. It ranges from about 30 days on free tools to 12 or 24 months on higher tiers, and it often differs between recordings, heatmaps and session summaries. Choose it by how far back you actually need to look.

What the tools state

The figures below come from vendor and comparison pages, mainly BusinessMCP’s Hotjar and Clarity comparisons, which say they were verified in September 2026. Confirm on each vendor’s own site.

Tool	Replay retention	Other retention
Microsoft Clarity	30 days	Favourites and heatmap click data 9 months
Hotjar Free	1 month	1 month of data
Hotjar Growth	2 months	13 months of data
Hotjar Pro	Up to 24 months	Not stated
FullStory Free	12 months	Not stated
Mouseflow	1 to 12 months by tier	Not stated
Lucky Orange	60-day storage	Not stated
BusinessMCP	7 days Growth, 30 days Scale, unlimited Business	Heatmap raw events 30 days; summaries for life of account

Key takeaway: compare three clocks per tool: recordings, heatmap events and summary data. They are rarely the same.

Why the three clocks differ

Recordings are large event streams and are expensive to store, so they get the shortest windows. Heatmap raw events are smaller but still numerous; BusinessMCP describes a fixed 30-day limit on the event store for every plan. Summaries such as pages visited, goals and duration are small and can be kept indefinitely: BusinessMCP says its session summaries are kept for the life of the account on every plan, and a workspace can choose a shorter replay window but not a longer one.

How much do you need?

1. Weekly UX reviews. 30 days is plenty. Clarity-style windows work.
2. Release validation. One or two release cycles; 30 to 60 days.
3. Quarterly research. You need 3 months or exports of the key sessions.
4. Evidence for stakeholders. Save clips and notes as you go; do not rely on tool retention.
5. Compliance or dispute handling. Keep the minimum necessary and document why.

Retention and privacy

Keeping recordings longer increases exposure. Under GDPR, the storage limitation principle says personal data should not be kept longer than necessary for the purpose. The European Commission’s data protection pages describe the framework. Set a retention period you can justify, document it and make sure the tool enforces it. Our GDPR compliant session replay guide includes a checklist. This is not legal advice.

Workarounds for short windows

• Save clips. Favourite or label sessions you may need again; on Clarity, that extends them to 9 months per the comparison.
• Write findings, not footage. A short note with a screenshot and the date outlives a recording.
• Export reports. Keep CSVs of summaries and heatmap screenshots at fixed intervals.
• Use summaries. If summary data persists, build dashboards from them.
• Choose a tier for the question. If you run annual research, the retention tier may justify its price. See Hotjar pricing.

Retention when you switch tools

Recordings rarely transfer between vendors. Before cancelling, download what you need and record the finding behind each clip. Our migration checklist lists the steps. Also check what happens when you leave: BusinessMCP says recordings on the Business plan are kept until the account closes, which implies deletion afterwards; ask any vendor about account closure timing.

Evaluating a vendor on retention

Ask:

1. What is the retention for recordings, heatmap events and summaries on my plan?
2. Can I shorten it per workspace?
3. Can I delete a specific visitor’s data on request?
4. Where is data stored and who are the sub-processors?
5. What happens at downgrade or cancellation?

Put the answers in a table and keep it with your privacy documentation. The vendor’s session replay page is an example of what a clear retention statement looks like: it states each window by plan and what is kept indefinitely.

Verdict

Pick the shortest retention that answers your real questions, supplement it with saved clips and written findings, and treat longer windows as a cost, in money and in privacy exposure. For tool shortlists, see our session replay tool comparison and the vendor’s Hotjar alternative page.

Example: choosing a window for a product team

A product team ships weekly and reviews recordings every Monday. Their question is “did last week’s release break anything?” A 30-day window answers it ten times over. The same team runs a quarterly onboarding study and wants to compare behaviour from the start of the quarter with now. A 30-day window cannot do that, but a year of summaries can answer part of it, and a set of saved clips can illustrate the rest.

So the plan is: use the short window for weekly work, rely on long-lived summaries for trends, and save clips with a written finding for the quarterly study. That is cheaper than buying the longest recording retention, and it also limits privacy exposure.

For a team that does need unlimited recordings, the price matters. BusinessMCP lists keeping recordings for the life of the account as a feature of its Business plan at $499 a month; see the vendor’s pricing page. Compare that with simply exporting clips on a lower tier.

Deletion and requests

Retention is also about deleting on request. Check that you can find and delete a specific visitor’s recordings, that backups age out and that sub-processors are bound to the same schedule. Document how long a deletion takes, so you can answer a request with facts. These are operational details that marketing pages seldom discuss; ask the vendor directly and keep the answer on file.

Retention checklist for your own setup

• Write down the retention for recordings, heatmap events and summaries on your current plan.
• Compare it with the longest lookback your team has needed in the last six months.
• If the window is shorter, decide between a higher tier and a habit of saving clips.
• Confirm the setting in the tool, because defaults and plan limits can differ, and a workspace can usually shorten but not extend a plan’s window.
• Put a review date in the calendar, since plans, prices and vendor terms change.

Most teams find that a short window plus disciplined note-taking beats an expensive long window nobody uses. If you do discover that you routinely need older sessions, that is a clear, evidence-based reason to pay for more history.