ChatGPT Business export chats gap gets an unofficial workaround
Scrapemychats lets Business and Enterprise users archive accessible ChatGPT chats locally, a feature OpenAI’s standard export does not support.
By Dominic Okoye · Staff Writer
· 3 min read
A new free tool is giving ChatGPT Business export chats coverage that OpenAI’s standard data export feature does not provide. Scrapemychats, published on GitHub this week by freelance journalist Conrad Quilty-Harper, is an unofficial utility for saving accessible ChatGPT workspace conversations and available file attachments into a local archive.
The gap is straightforward. OpenAI’s help page says chat exports are available to Free, Plus, Pro and some Edu users. The same page says Business and Enterprise workspaces do not have that export option. The company does not give a reason there, and The Register reported that OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Quilty-Harper told The Register he built the tool after moving from a personal account to a Business account and finding that OpenAI did not make data export easy for that tier. He said he wanted to know why paying customers could not get straightforward access to their data.
How can ChatGPT Business users export chats?
OpenAI does not provide the standard chat export feature for ChatGPT Business workspaces, according to its help page. Scrapemychats works around that by using a logged-in browser session to open conversations the user can access and save the loaded chat data locally.
The tool is not a sanctioned OpenAI product, and its durability is uncertain. Quilty-Harper told The Register he expected OpenAI to block the method after public attention and said it is “probably a breach” of OpenAI’s terms of service. He framed the tool as a way for users to recover content they wrote, pasted, created or generated in ChatGPT.
What does Scrapemychats save?
According to the project’s GitHub README, Scrapemychats creates a local archive with an email-like HTML interface that can be opened offline in a browser. The stored data is separated from the interface, and Quilty-Harper told The Register the archived chats can be used however the user wants.
The tool also attempts to store file attachments that are available through the browser. That limit matters for operators and teams considering an exit from a ChatGPT workspace: it is a capture of accessible material, not a guarantee that every past asset or deleted record can be recovered.
Scrapemychats runs through a normal browser session because ChatGPT’s bot protection prevents it from operating as a headless tool, according to the README. In practice, it opens conversations one by one and saves the data and attachments that load. That approach is slow. The README says downloading an archive of 600 chats can take “a few hours,” partly because OpenAI throttles activity that makes too many requests quickly. The process can be paused and resumed.
Installation is handled from the command line, with setup steps listed in the GitHub documentation.
What does OpenAI offer Enterprise customers?
OpenAI does provide Enterprise administrators access to workspace conversation logs through its Compliance Platform. That is a different product path from the standard export tool, and the logs are retained for 30 days unless the customer archives them elsewhere.
For ChatGPT Business users, the practical issue remains portability. OpenAI’s lower consumer tiers can export chats through the standard route, while Business users paying for a workspace are left without a simple local archive option unless they use an unofficial browser-based tool such as Scrapemychats.
This story draws on original reporting from The Register.
