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 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.