Session Replay Data Retention: How Long Should You Keep Recordings?

Keep session recordings only as long as your review cycle and a documented purpose require. For weekly or monthly UX review, seven to thirty days is often enough. Longer retention suits audits and support investigations but raises privacy exposure and cost, so choose a window deliberately instead of accepting a plan’s default.

What vendors offer

Retention is both a pricing lever and a privacy setting. The windows below come from vendor-published pages, so confirm them before relying on them.

Tool	Replay retention (as stated)	Notes
BusinessMCP Growth	7 days	Heatmaps and replay at $79/mo
BusinessMCP Scale	30 days	Adds A/B testing at $199/mo
BusinessMCP Business	Until deleted	$499/mo; Enterprise also until account closes or data deleted
Microsoft Clarity	30 days	Heatmaps and favourites 9 months
Hotjar	1 month free; 2 on Growth; up to 24 on Pro	From BusinessMCP’s comparison
Mouseflow	1 to 12 months by tier	Retention depends on tier
Lucky Orange	60 days	Per the same comparison
FullStory	12 months on free; contract-set on paid	Aimed at engineering teams

The BusinessMCP figures come from its session replay page, the rest from its comparison of session replay tools, a vendor page that says prices were verified in September 2026.

Two clocks: recordings and heatmaps

Heatmap data often has a different lifespan than recordings. BusinessMCP states that raw heatmap click and scroll events expire after 30 days on every plan, including Business, while replays follow the plan. Clarity lists heatmaps and favourites for nine months. If you want to compare a page’s behavior across quarters, save screenshots and key numbers rather than relying on the tool to hold the raw data.

There is also a third kind of data: summaries. BusinessMCP says summaries (pages, goals, duration) are kept for the life of the account on every plan. Know what each tool keeps after the recording itself is gone.

How to choose a window

Start from the purpose

Write one sentence: “We keep recordings to find and fix usability problems.” Then ask how old a recording must be before it stops being useful for that purpose. For most product teams, a recording from three months ago describes a site that no longer exists.

Match your review rhythm

• Weekly reviews: 7 to 14 days.
• Monthly reviews and post-release checks: 30 days.
• Quarterly audits or long sales cycles: 60 to 90 days, if you can justify it.
• Support investigations: consider keeping only flagged recordings rather than everything.

Consider the privacy principle

The GDPR’s storage limitation principle says personal data should be kept no longer than necessary for the purposes of processing. That does not prescribe a number of days, but it does mean “forever” needs a reason. See session replay and GDPR for the broader checklist, and take legal advice for your situation.

Key takeaway: longer retention is a decision with a cost in money and risk. Pay for it only when a specific task needs it.

Shorter windows on longer plans

Some plans let you shorten retention below the maximum. BusinessMCP states that a workspace can choose a shorter window only. That is useful: you can buy a plan for its other features, such as Business with 10 seats, and still set a short window for privacy. Always check whether the setting applies to existing recordings and how deletion is carried out.

Practical rules

1. Set retention in the tool the day you install it.
2. Use favourites or exports for the handful of recordings you need long term, and review them periodically.
3. Document the period in your privacy notice and internal records.
4. Make sure deleting a user’s data on request also covers recordings. Ask the vendor how.
5. Review the setting each time you change your site or purpose.

Trade-offs by team

Small marketing team. Short retention is fine. You should be looking at current behavior.

B2B sales team. A longer window may help if you want to see how an identified account behaved before a call. Our article on session replay for B2B websites explores that, with the privacy caveats.

Engineering team. Console and network capture matter more than long retention, and recordings may be most useful in the days after a release.

Compliance-heavy organisation. Prefer the shortest workable window and restrict who can watch.

How retention affects price

Retention is a main reason plans differ in price. In BusinessMCP’s structure, the step from 7 to 30 days is the difference between Growth and Scale. See session replay pricing for how to include retention in a cost comparison, and session replay software for the other criteria.

The bottom line

Pick the shortest window that lets you finish your analysis, document it, and revisit it. If you are not sure why you would need recordings older than a month, you probably do not.

What to do when retention is shorter than your needs

Sometimes the plan you can afford keeps recordings for less time than your process requires. You have options short of upgrading. First, change the process: review sooner, such as weekly instead of monthly, so evidence is still available. Second, capture what matters: save screenshots, notes and counts of patterns as you review, since those summaries do not carry the same privacy burden as raw recordings. Third, use favourites or similar features where the tool offers them to preserve a small number of key sessions, and review that list regularly.

You can also look at how plans bundle retention. On the vendor plans listed above, the step up in history often comes with other changes, such as seats, visitor allowances or testing. Look at BusinessMCP’s plan details or the other vendor pages to see whether the higher tier delivers value beyond the extra days. If it mainly adds days you do not need, the cheaper plan plus a faster review rhythm is usually better.

Deletion requests and retention

Retention policies also have to cooperate with individual rights. If a person asks you to delete their data, you need to be able to find and remove recordings that relate to them. That is easier when recordings are short-lived, and harder when they are held for years. Before relying on a long window, ask the vendor how deletion requests are handled and how identifiers are matched to recordings. Where recordings are linked to identified companies or contacts, as in session replay for B2B websites, the question is more pointed.

A sample policy statement

A one-paragraph internal statement can keep teams aligned. For example: “Session recordings are kept for 30 days to support usability review. Recordings are masked at capture. Access is limited to the product and marketing leads. Recordings of sensitive pages are not captured. Selected recordings may be retained as examples for up to 90 days with approval. Retention is reviewed twice a year.” Adapt the numbers to your own purposes and have your privacy lead review them.