Alcoven

How to move from ChatGPT to Claude without losing your projects

Blog · Published 23 September 2026 · Updated 30 September 2026

You can move your ChatGPT projects to Claude, but most of the moving is by hand. Files and instructions go into a Claude project, and your ChatGPT memory comes across as a copy through Claude’s memory import. Your chat history stays behind: Anthropic says it is “not possible to import conversation history from another AI provider into Claude at this time”.

Here is the order that loses the least, step by step, as OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s help pages describe it today.

What moves from ChatGPT to Claude, and how?

Almost everything in a ChatGPT project has a place in Claude. Chats are the exception.

In ChatGPT Where it goes in Claude How it gets there
Project files Project knowledge Download, then upload
Project instructions Project instructions Copy and paste
Custom instructions Instructions for Claude, in Settings Copy and paste
Memory Memory Claude’s import prompt
Chats No import Keep the export; copy the chats you need into text files and upload those
Custom GPTs A project or a skill Rebuild by hand
Connected apps, scheduled tasks Connectors, scheduled tasks Set up again

How do you export your ChatGPT data?

Do this first, before you cancel anything.

  1. Sign in to ChatGPT and open Settings.
  2. Select Data controls.
  3. Under Export data, select Export, then Confirm export.
  4. Wait for the email or text message. OpenAI says an export can take up to 7 days, and the download link expires 24 hours after it arrives.
  5. Download the ZIP while signed in to the same account.

What does a ChatGPT export contain?

OpenAI describes the ZIP as “your chat history and other relevant account data”. Your conversations are in a file called conversations.json (larger exports split it into numbered files), and OpenAI confirms your custom instructions are included. An export can’t bring back chats you already deleted.

OpenAI’s page doesn’t say whether project files and project instructions are in the ZIP, so copy those yourself in the next step.

If your company is on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise, there is no self-service export: OpenAI tells members to ask their workspace owner. Start that conversation early.

How do you move a ChatGPT project into a Claude project?

For each project you want to keep:

  1. In ChatGPT, open the project and download each file from its sources list.
  2. Open the project’s ••• menu, choose Project settings, and copy the instructions.
  3. Still in the project, ask ChatGPT for a one-page summary: what the project is, what was decided and why, and what is still open. With memory on, chats in a project can draw on the project’s other chats, so it has something to work from. Read the summary and correct it.
  4. In Claude, go to claude.ai/projects and select + New Project.
  5. Select Set project instructions and paste the instructions. Change anything that names a ChatGPT feature.
  6. Select + in the project knowledge area and upload the files and the summary. Claude accepts PDF, DOCX, CSV, TXT, HTML, JSON and more, up to 30MB per project file.

Step 3 carries what the chats worked out, because the chats themselves won’t come across. It also stands in for the project’s memory: ChatGPT shows no list of what a project remembers, so there is nothing to copy directly.

Two plan limits to know: a free Claude account holds up to five projects, and on paid plans Claude switches a large project to search (RAG) when its knowledge nears the context limit, so it can hold more.

How do you transfer your ChatGPT memory to Claude?

Claude has a built-in import, and it works through a prompt:

  1. In Claude, open Settings > Memory and select Start import. Claude shows a prompt and a text box.
  2. Paste the prompt into a new ChatGPT chat. It asks ChatGPT to list every memory and preference it holds about you, in one code block.
  3. Read the answer. Delete anything you’d rather not carry over.
  4. Paste it into Claude’s text box and select Add to memory. Claude turns it into separate memory entries you can review in Settings > Memory.

Before you rely on it:

  • Anthropic’s import article lists it on Free, Pro, Max and Team plans, on the web and in Claude Desktop, and calls it experimental: Claude “may not always successfully incorporate imported memories”. Its getting-started FAQ names only Free, Pro and Max.
  • On Team plans, memory is off until an owner turns it on, so ask them first.
  • Claude’s memory is built around work, and it “may not retain imported personal details unrelated to work”.
  • What ChatGPT hands over is its own answer about you, so check the result and add what’s missing, in Settings > Memory or by telling Claude in a chat.

What doesn’t carry over?

  • Chat history. Keep the ZIP. It keeps your chats in conversations.json (or numbered files), so copy the few you’ll need into text files while you still have ChatGPT, and upload those to the Claude project.
  • Custom GPTs. Anthropic’s help pages describe one import from another AI, and it is memory. Rebuild a GPT as a Claude project (its instructions and files) or, for a task you repeat, as a skill.
  • Shared projects. When you leave a shared ChatGPT project, you can copy your own chats first; the other members’ chats stay with the project. Claude projects can be shared on Team and Enterprise plans, with people in your organisation.
  • Your colleagues. The import carries what ChatGPT lists about you. A decision a colleague made in their own AI was never in your memory, so no export brings it across. If half the team stays on ChatGPT, the project now lives in two places.

If you want to know what Claude will remember once you’re there, see Does Claude remember across chats and projects?

Where Alcoven fits

Every copy of a project starts to drift from the one left behind: in a colleague’s ChatGPT, or in the next AI you try. The other way is to keep the project outside both of them.

Alcoven holds a project’s brief, documents, tasks and history for the people and agents on it. Each project has its own address. Add that link to Claude as a connector, or to ChatGPT on plans where an MCP tool can write, and your AI reads and writes the project itself; Alcoven runs no model for this. From Claude Code or Codex, clone the project with git instead. Whatever your AI changes comes back under your name for everyone on the project. When you change AI again, you add the same link to the new one, as long as it speaks MCP. To leave Alcoven, clone the project with git on any plan: every document, task and past version comes with it.

Free for one project and up to five people writing to it, no card. Start a project free

Sources

All checked on 30 September 2026.