Data retention
How long Unhandled keeps each kind of data, how admins shorten it per category, what happens when a plan changes, and when deleted projects and organizations are erased.
Unhandled keeps each kind of data for a set number of days, then deletes it. Your plan sets the most it can keep. Organization admins can keep any kind of data for less. This page is for admins deciding how long to keep data, and for anyone who needs to know when data is gone for good.
Categories
Retention is set separately for six kinds of data:
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Errors | Exception occurrences, their per-minute counts, and the issues built from them |
| Traces | Spans, trace summaries, request rollups and release markers |
| Logs | Log records and log volume |
| Metrics | Metric points and the metric catalog |
| Analytics | Page views and custom events |
| Uptime | Individual uptime check results |
Plan maximum
Each category can keep data for up to your plan's retention: 30 days on Starter and 90 on Business. Analytics and uptime allow at least 90 days on every plan. Unhandled staff can raise or lower the maximum for an organization, for example on a custom contract; that maximum applies to every category, analytics and uptime included.
The available periods are 7, 14, 30, 60 and 90 days, then 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years, up to the maximum.
Changing retention
Open Settings > General and find Data retention. Every member can see the period for each category and the plan maximum. Only admins can change them. Pick a period for each category, or Plan maximum to follow the plan, then Save retention.
- Shorter. Unhandled asks you to confirm first and lists each shortened category with its old and new period. Data older than the new period disappears from every page, search and API answer at once, and Unhandled deletes it from storage at the next nightly cleanup. Each shortening is recorded with who made it, whether in the app or through MCP.
- Longer. Applies to data that arrives from now on. Data already stored keeps the period it arrived with, so lengthening logs from 14 to 90 days does not bring back logs older than 14 days.
Ingest picks up a change within 30 seconds.
Plan changes
A plan change moves the maximum. Moving to a plan with shorter retention works like shortening it yourself: older data is hidden at once and deleted overnight. Moving to a longer one lets new data stay longer. Settings you saved stay as they are, held to the new maximum.
Issues
An issue nobody triaged is deleted once it has had no new occurrence for 90 days, or for your errors retention if that is longer. Issues archived forever, assigned, linked, commented on or changed in status by a person are kept.
Deleting projects and organizations
Deleting a project or an organization makes its telemetry unreachable at once. Uploaded source maps and avatars are deleted at once, and AI prompt and response content is erased from spans within minutes. Everything else stored for it, in every category, is erased 7 days later. Copies in backups expire within the following five weeks.
The staff audit log and the record of who left an organization are kept after deletion. They hold who did what and when, not telemetry, and they are what answers a later question about a deleted account.