What moves, step by step.
01
Export your ChatGPT data
In ChatGPT, go to Settings > Data Controls > Export Data. OpenAI emails you a zip with a conversations.json holding your full chat history. Keep it: it is your archive, whatever you switch to. Want it readable? Our free ChatGPT to Markdown converter turns it into clean markdown files.
02
Use Claude's native memory import
Claude can import your memory from other AI providers: open Settings > Capabilities > Import memory (or claude.com/import-memory), copy the prompt it gives you into ChatGPT, and paste the result back. Use it, it carries your preferences and working context in about a minute. Know its limits: Anthropic labels the feature experimental, notes Claude may not always incorporate imported memories, processing can take up to 24 hours, and it does not bring your conversations.
03
Keep the part that matters: a living memory
Bring your ChatGPT history into MemoryPlugin in a few clicks, no scripts. And that first import is the last manual step: from then on, your new conversations keep syncing into the same archive on their own, Claude and ChatGPT alike. From your next conversation, Claude can draw on everything you have already discussed, and so can every other AI you use. Your context stops living inside one vendor's app.
The full move, piece by piece.
What Claude's memory import carries, and what it skips.
The import prompt is the fastest wire. Claude hands you a prompt, ChatGPT answers it with a summary of what it knows about you, and Claude absorbs the result: preferences, working style, the shape of your current projects. The copy-and-paste takes about a minute.
Know what it skips. Anthropic labels the feature experimental, notes Claude may not always use imported memories, and says processing can take up to 24 hours. It does not touch your conversations, your Projects, or your custom GPTs. Those need the routes below.
Your chat history: the conversations.json route.
The export zip OpenAI emails you contains your full chat history as conversations.json (a large archive arrives split into several numbered conversations files). You can upload the JSON into a Claude chat or a Claude Project, but there are real ceilings: project files cap at 30MB each, and everything you upload competes for the context window. A few years of history blows past both.
Two honest options. Run each conversations file through the free converter linked in step 1 and add only the chats that still matter to a Project. Or import the whole archive into MemoryPlugin in a few clicks: your history becomes searchable from inside Claude and every other AI you use, and new conversations keep syncing into the same archive on their own.
Projects, custom GPTs, and custom instructions.
No import moves these, so budget ten minutes of copy and paste. Open each custom GPT's configuration, copy its instructions, and paste them into a new Claude Project's instructions, along with any knowledge files. Your ChatGPT custom instructions map to Claude's profile preferences in Settings.
Rebuild the two or three you actually use and skip the rest. A move is a good excuse to drop the setups you stopped needing months ago.
The order that saves you a headache.
Request your ChatGPT export first, because OpenAI prepares it in the background and emails you a download link. While you wait, run Claude's memory import and rebuild your top projects. When the export lands, download it promptly and bring the archive into MemoryPlugin. That first import is the last manual step; from then on the archive maintains itself.
The part no import can carry.
An export file is not a memory. The native imports are worth using, and they hand Claude a snapshot of what ChatGPT knew on the day you left. Snapshots age: your projects move on, your preferences shift, and the pasted summary stays frozen.
MemoryPlugin is the layer above the switch: your full chat history, synced automatically and searchable from inside Claude, and one memory that keeps growing with you, in whichever AI you open. A memory that gets better with age, not worse. And if you end up using ChatGPT and Claude side by side, like most people do, they finally share one brain, and one archive that stays current on both sides.