How to Export Character.AI Chats and Save Your Characters (2026)

To back up Character.AI, request the account-wide data export in your settings, then copy anything you care about by hand: the full text of each character you made, your pinned memories and Story Memory, and a short summary of each story so far. The export is a bulk file that arrives by email later, and it is not a clean way to rebuild a character elsewhere, so the manual copy is the part that matters. Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on 12 October 2026 and says the app stays up during the sale, so there is time, but it is worth doing this week. Steps are as of 13 October 2026.

Why back up now

Character.AI is being sold in a court-supervised process that the company expects to finish by late November or early December 2026. If no buyer offers to keep the platform running, the company says it will be wound down, and it has not said what would happen to chats or characters in that case. Our explainer, Is Character.AI shutting down?, covers the bankruptcy and the timeline. For now, the company says your data stays under its existing privacy policy and that export and account deletion work through the app or the website.

What to save, and how

What	How	Why it matters
All chats, account data	Account-wide export in settings	Your full record, in bulk
A favourite conversation	Copy the text, or Print > Save as PDF	Readable straight away
Characters you made	Copy every field into a document	Needed to recreate them anywhere
Pins and Story Memory	Copy into the same document	The facts your story depends on
The story so far	Write a 10-line summary	Lets you pick the plot up in another app

Step 1: Request the account export

Character.AI has no per-chat export. Instead, you request a copy of all your account data, and the company prepares it in the background.

1. Sign in on the website or open the app.
2. Go to your profile settings and open the account or privacy section. Guides describe the path as Account > Manage Account & Data on the web, and Settings > Privacy (or Legal & Privacy) in the app; the label varies by version.
3. Choose Export my data and confirm.
4. Wait for an email with a download link.

Third-party testers report waits from about an hour to a few days, with no progress indicator, and say the link expires after a limited time, so download it as soon as it arrives. Submit one request, check your spam folder, and only try again if nothing turns up after a day or two, since repeat requests queue separately. The official help article is linked in the sources below; it is the authority if the menus have moved.

Step 2: Check what is in the file

One guide that tested the export found a ZIP archive with JSON files in a folder named after your username: account details, character metadata such as titles and timestamps, and messages, with the message text stored in a field called raw_content. JSON is readable in any text editor but not pleasant to browse. The same guide found pinned memories did not reliably appear in the export.

The practical point is that the export is a record, not a migration tool. Keep it somewhere safe, but do not count on it to recreate a character or remind you where a story left off.

Step 3: Save your favourite chats as readable files

For the handful of conversations you would actually reread, make a readable copy now. In a desktop browser, open the chat, scroll up until the part you want has loaded, and use Print > Save as PDF, or select the text and paste it into a document. On a phone, copying long chats is slow, so the browser on a computer is easier.

Step 4: Copy every character you made

This is the backup most people skip and most regret. For each character you created, copy every field into one document per character: name, tagline, description, greeting and the Definition, which can run up to 32,000 characters. Add a line on the avatar and save the image itself.

While you are at it, note what made the character work: the behaviours you leaned on, the example lines that set the voice, the corrections you kept having to make. That is far more useful when rebuilding than the raw text alone. Our guide on how to create an AI character explains which parts of a definition carry the most weight, which helps you trim a long one down when you move it.

Step 5: Save your pins, Story Memory and the story so far

Pinned messages and the 400-character Story Memory field hold the facts your chat depends on, and the export may not include them. Open each important chat, copy the pins and Story Memory into your document, and then write a short summary of the story so far: who everyone is to each other, where you are, what has happened, and what is unresolved.

Ten lines is enough. A summary like that is how you restart a story in any app, and it is the same habit that keeps long chats coherent in the first place; see how to get AI to remember your story.

Step 6: Rebuild somewhere else (and a disclosure)

There is no official way to move a character from Character.AI to another service. What you can do is paste your saved text into a new app’s equivalent fields. Most chat apps ask for something similar: a name, a personality or description, a greeting and often example dialogue, so a well-saved character usually comes across with light editing. Use an out-of-character note in the first few messages to correct drift while the new model learns the voice.

We make Euphoria: AI Choices, a competing app, so take this part with that in mind. If what you were really doing on Character.AI was telling a story, a story app may suit your saved material better than another chat. In Euphoria, you describe your own character in words and the app draws them into every illustrated scene, in outfits you pick. Stories run across chapters, with a plot and memory that carry from one chapter to the next, and you type any action in free text. Your story-so-far summary makes a good premise. You can also create and share your own stories. The differences between the two kinds of app are laid out in AI story app vs AI chat app, and the wider field is compared in Best Character.AI alternatives.

Who should do this, and who can skip it

Do it this week if you have built characters, run long stories, or have chats you would be upset to lose. The manual copies take an evening at most.

You can skip it if you mostly chat with popular community characters and have nothing of your own invested. Those characters belong to their creators, and you can find similar ones elsewhere.

Do not rush to delete your account. Wait until your export has arrived and you have opened it. Deleting is permanent, and while the app is running, nothing forces your hand.