Our Recent Team Activity feed and analytics tools, such as Recordings and Heatmaps, retain data for 365 days from the date of capture. This applies to all accounts and plans.
After 365 days, our automatic deletion process will begin. Data will be deleted from Hotjar servers, including backups, and cannot be retrieved. Deletion includes the entire report and not just the data collected. See the table below for a breakdown of the tools and data retention periods:
| Hotjar tool | How long the data is kept |
| Recent Team Activity | 365 days starting the date of capture |
| Recordings | 365 days starting the date of capture |
| Heatmaps | 365 days starting the date of capture |
| Survey and Feedback | Hotjar does not automatically delete data for Surveys and Feedback. They can only be deleted manually by an admin in your organization. |
| Highlights | Hotjar does not automatically delete Highlights. However, if a user does a User Lookup and locates a recording with Highlights and deletes that recording, then the Highlight will also be deleted. |
| Engage recordings (audio and video) | All Engage research media data, which includes raw and processed session video and audio recordings, are deleted automatically after 2 years. |
User Attributes data works slightly differently. All user attributes will be deleted once the associated users have not visited your site for a set period of time.
- Identified users (who have a user ID) will be deleted after 365 days assuming they have not visited your site in that time period.
- Anonymous users (who do not have a user ID) will be deleted after 3 months.
Deleting Recordings will result in lost Heatmaps data
Heatmaps rely on Recordings data in order to generate heatmaps on demand. This means that if you delete one or more recordings, the deleted session data will no longer appear in Heatmaps.
Data Retention Policy FAQs
Common questions about our data retention policy:
- What happens if I delete collected data?
- What happens if I delete my account?
- Do you have backups of my data?
What happens if I delete collected data?
Once you delete data collected by any of Hotjar’s tools, such as Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, etc., Hotjar starts an automated deletion process. This process takes up to 30 days in total and all data is hard deleted. As soon as you opt to delete the data, the process starts and the data is not retrievable.
What happens if I delete my account?
Once you delete a Site, Organization, or Account, Hotjar starts an automated deletion process. This process starts with a soft deletion which can take up to 7 days, from that point on, a hard deletion occurs and removes all of the data stored within your Site, Organization or Account. This process takes a total of 30 days to complete.
Do you have backups of my data?
After a completed cycle of the deletion process described above, all backups will have no trace of data you have collected, Site, Organization or Account information.