Deleting your account is permanent and cannot be undone.
Deleting your account will prevent you from using the account to access OpenAI services, including ChatGPT, API, and DALL·E. You will NOT be able to create a new account using the same email address. If you delete your account, we will delete your data within 30 days, except we may retain a limited set of data for longer where required or permitted by law.
Deleting the account yourself in ChatGPT Settings or through our Privacy Portal should include canceling any active Plus subscription. Also, deactivated/deleted accounts are not recoverable.
How to delete your OpenAI account
Option A: Submit a request to our Privacy Portal
First, click on Make a Privacy Request in the top right corner:
Second, select the most applicable option for your account status:
If you do have access to the email address you need to delete click I have a ChatGPT account.
If you do not have access the email (i.e. an old work/school email) click I have a ChatGPT account, but cannot access it which will include a verification step using the phone number associated with that account.
If you do not have a ChatGPT account, while you still want to exercise your privacy rights, click I don't have a ChatGPT account.
Third, click Delete my ChatGPT account:
Last, follow the prompts to submit your email for account deletion.
Option B: Self-serve in ChatGPT
In the top right, click your profile icon.
Click Settings.
In Settings click Data Controls.
Under Delete account click Delete.
You may only delete your account if you have logged in within the last 10 minutes.
If you haven't logged in within the last 10 minutes then you'll need to sign in again.
Confirmation screen will appear where you need to type your account email + "DELETE" into the input fields to unlock the "Permanently delete my account" button
Once the inputs are filled out you unlock the "Permanently delete my account" button
Click "Permanently delete my account" to delete your account.
Common issues
Chat retention for deleted vs archived chats
Deleted chats are hard deleted from our systems within 30 days, unless they have previously been de-identified and disassociated from your account or we have to keep them for security or legal reasons.
You cannot recover chats once you delete them. If you want to remove a chat from being visible in your chat history but retain it in your account, you should use the archive function.
Please refer to this article to understand how content may be used to improve model performance and the choices that you have.
Archived chats are retained just like your unarchived chats. Archiving a chat simply removes it from your chat history sidebar. Archived chats can be found and managed in your ChatGPT Settings.
For more see How chat retention works in ChatGPT.
User content opt-out
ChatGPT, DALL·E and our other services for individuals
When you use ChatGPT, DALL-E, and our other services for individuals, we may use the content you provide to improve model performance. Learn more about your choices on how we use your content to improve model performance here.
Enterprise services (such as API and ChatGPT Enterprise)
OpenAI does not train on business data. Learn more about our Enterprise privacy commitments here.
If I delete my account can I create a new account with the same email?
No. You cannot create a new account using the same email address.
However, you can create a new account with a new email address. Since every email address is unique per account, we require a different email address for new accounts.
Can I reactivate my account after it's been deleted?
No. But you can create a new account with a different email address.
Click “Sign up” on the ChatGPT login page or our API login page. There are a couple caveats of which to be mindful:
Email addresses: You'll need to use a new email address.
Since every email address is unique per account, we require a different email address for new accounts. If you don't have an alternative email address, you can try using what's known as an email subaddress: instead of jane@example.com, try jane+alt@example.com. Emails to this address should still go to the same inbox (everything after the + is typically ignored by your email provider), but we'll treat this as a unique email address.
Phone numbers: New accounts are still subject to our limit of 3 accounts per phone number. Deleted accounts also count toward this limit. Deleting an account does not free up another spot. A phone number can only ever be used up to 3 times for verification to generate the first API key for your account on platform.openai.com.
Phone verification is not required to create an OpenAI account.
Phone verification is required for a new account to generate their first API key on platform.openai.com.
Can I still use ChatGPT without logging in?
Yes. Please note that you can only save a conversation by logging in or creating an account. While logged out, we only support one conversation at a time. Please refer to our FAQ for more information.
We don't support unlinking a phone number from an existing account
We do not allow you to unlink phone numbers from existing accounts.
How many times can I use my phone number to create OpenAI accounts?
While the location where phone verification occurs has changed from account creation to first API key generation, the requirements around phone verification are still the following:
A phone number can only ever be used for phone verification up to 3 times.
This means if you have 3 OpenAI accounts you can use the same number for all three when completing phone verification on each initial API key generation across those three accounts.
For anti-fraud and abuse reasons, we do not allow you to unlink phone numbers from OpenAI accounts to free up that number for reuse. This means deleting an OpenAI account does not free up the number to get around the limit. There is no workaround.
See our Phone Verification FAQ.
Can I change my authentication method after account deletion?
⚠️ Deleting your account does NOT allow you to change your authentication method.
That said, if you originally signed up for OpenAI / ChatGPT with an email and password then in future logins you can choose Google/Apple login allowing users in that situation to then login either way.
Why do I get the error, "You do not have an account because it has been deleted or deactivated"?
If you get this error when you try to login or create an account it means the account associated with the email address you're trying to use to sign up for / login to an account underwent an account deletion:
This will happen either because you deleted your account in ChatGPT -- or -- you deleted your account by submitting the email to our Privacy Center for deletion.
If you previously deleted an OpenAI account, we unfortunately don't support creating a new account with the same email or reactivating the old account.