Manage replay retention and deletion

Amplitude retains raw replay data for a defined period from ingestion and uses its existing APIs for privacy and deletion requests. Use this guidance to plan how long recordings remain available and handle requests to access or delete user data. It covers retention by SDK path, available metadata, and user or project deletion.

For privacy notices, disclosure examples, and consent controls, go to Best practices for managing user consent.

Retention period

If your Amplitude plan includes Session Replay, Amplitude retains raw replay data for 30 days from ingestion by default. Retention periods apply at the organization level.

Browser and React Native plugin retention

You can purchase extra retention time, up to a maximum of 12 months. For more information, contact Amplitude Support.

If you purchase extra session volume, Amplitude retains raw replay data for up to 12 months from ingestion. For a stricter policy, contact Amplitude support to set retention to 30 days.

This guidance applies to the browser plugin, browser standalone SDK, and React Native SDK plugin.

Native and Flutter SDK retention

For the native Android and iOS SDK paths and the Flutter standalone SDK, extra session volume includes 90 days of raw replay retention from ingestion. For a stricter policy, contact Amplitude support to set retention to 30 days.

Effective date of retention changes

Changes to retention affect replays ingested after the change. Sessions captured and ingested before a retention change keep the previous retention period.

Replays outside the retention period aren't viewable in Amplitude. Bookmarked replays use a separate retention period, which defaults to 360 days and is configurable between 30 and 360 days in Session Replay settings. Commenting on a replay doesn't automatically bookmark it.

DSAR API

The Amplitude DSAR API returns metadata about session replays, but not raw replay data.

Amplitude automatically creates the [Amplitude] Replay Captured event when Session Replay captures a session. This event includes the [Amplitude] Session Replay ID property, which provides information about replays collected for the user.

In native and Flutter SDK implementations, events that are part of a session replay include the [Amplitude] Session Replay ID event property and the metadata collected with each event.

The replay ID has the format <deviceId>/<sessionId>. For custom ID constraints and configuration, go to Configure custom Session Replay matching.

Example replay metadata:

{
 "amplitude_id": 123456789,
 "app": 12345,
 "event_time": "2020-02-15 01:00:00.123456",
 "event_type": "first_event",
 "server_upload_time": "2020-02-18 01:00:00.234567",
 "device_id": "your device id",
 "user_properties": { ... },
 "event_properties": {
 "[Amplitude] Session Replay ID": "cb6ade06-cbdf-4e0c-8156-32c2863379d6/1699922971244"
 },
 "session_id": 1699922971244,
}

Data deletion

Session Replay uses Amplitude's User Privacy API for deletion requests. Successful requests remove all session replays for the specified user.

When you delete an Amplitude project that uses Session Replay, Amplitude deletes that project's replay data.

Bot filter

Session Replay uses the same block filter as the Amplitude app. Session Replay doesn't block traffic based on event or user properties.