Where is ChatGPT data stored? What 12 AI chat apps say about where your chats go

The Morse teamPublished October 29, 20269 min read

ChatGPT data is stored mainly in the United States: as of October 29, 2026, OpenAI's privacy policy says it processes and stores your data "in our facilities and servers in the United States," or wherever its affiliates, partners, and vendors are. The company legally in charge of that data depends on where you live. It's OpenAI Ireland Limited if you live in the EEA or Switzerland, and OpenAI OpCo, LLC in San Francisco for everyone else, the UK included. OpenAI does offer storage in Europe and nine other regions, but only to organizations on its business plans. A Free, Go, Plus, or Pro account can't choose where its chats are kept.

We read the privacy policies, European addenda, and data residency help pages of 12 AI chat apps on October 29, 2026, and every cell in the table below links to the page it came from. Where a company's page doesn't say something, we say so. Mistral keeps chats in the EU by default for everyone, while xAI says it processes all of a European user's data in the United States.

Where do AI chat apps store your chats?

Read on October 29, 2026, from each company's own pages. Each "Company for" column names the company the policy calls the controller: the one that decides what happens to your data and answers your privacy requests.

Every residency setting above is for organizations, and none of them covers a personal account at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Microsoft. For UK users, Anthropic and Microsoft name their Irish company as controller, while OpenAI and Google name their American one.

Where is ChatGPT data stored for Free and Plus users?

In the United States, by OpenAI's own account, and in other countries where its partners and vendors work. OpenAI's European privacy policy says OpenAI "processes your Personal Data on servers located outside of the EEA, Switzerland and the UK," including "in our facilities and servers in the United States" (OpenAI). To send European data there, it relies on the European Commission's adequacy decisions and on Standard Contractual Clauses.

OpenAI publishes no consumer setting for any of this. Its data residency page lists the customers who can choose a region: "Eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise/Edu customers," with storage in Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, the UK, and the United States (OpenAI). Keeping the model's processing in a region as well, which OpenAI calls inference residency, comes only in Europe, the United States, and the UAE, and only for eligible Enterprise and Edu workspaces. OpenAI added that in-region GPU inference on January 16, 2026 (OpenAI).

Does ChatGPT Business keep your data in Europe?

Partly, and only once the option reaches your workspace. As of October 29, 2026, OpenAI's help page says Business data residency "is rolling out gradually and is not yet available to all customers" (OpenAI). The region you pick at checkout covers where prompts and responses are stored at rest. It "does not include inference residency," so it doesn't decide where ChatGPT processes a request.

The same page adds an exception. If you choose a region outside the United States, "a copy of every prompt and response is also stored in the United States for a limited time for safety, abuse monitoring, and enforcement," and abuse-monitoring logs stay in the US whatever region you choose. OpenAI's Enterprise residency has limits too. Its help center lists data that "may be stored outside the chosen data region," including data sent to web search and other integrations, workspace metadata, billing information, and user logins.

Which country stores Claude data?

The United States. Anthropic's privacy policy says your data "is transferred to our servers in the US, or to other countries outside" the EEA and UK, to provide the service, "to train our models, or to conduct research" (Anthropic). Its help page for business customers, dated June 15, 2026, says Anthropic may route traffic to "select countries in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia," then adds: "Note that data is stored in the US" (Anthropic).

Claude's only location setting is US-only inference, which keeps the model's processing on servers in the United States, and Anthropic offers it only on usage-based Enterprise plans (Anthropic). On Anthropic's API, "us" is the only storage location a workspace can choose (Anthropic). Anthropic does put every European user, the UK included, under Anthropic Ireland, Limited. Our piece on why Sweden blocked ChatGPT and Claude covers what a missing business contract means for those users.

Can you choose where your AI chats are stored?

Only on a business plan, with one exception. Every residency option in our table is a setting for an administrator: OpenAI's for Enterprise, Edu, and Business, Anthropic's for usage-based Enterprise plans, Google's data regions for Workspace editions, and Microsoft's EU Data Boundary for its "enterprise online services, including Azure, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft 365" (Microsoft Learn). That page doesn't list the consumer Copilot app. Microsoft's general privacy statement says that "typically, the primary storage location is in your region or in the United States, often with a backup to a data center in another region" (Microsoft).

The exception is Mistral, which hosts your data in the EU by default on every plan (Mistral). Its privacy policy still allows non-EU providers "in exceptional cases" under Standard Contractual Clauses (Mistral). Our review of whether Le Chat is private covers what Mistral keeps and trains on once your chats are in the EU.

Which AI chat apps keep your data in China or Singapore?

DeepSeek keeps it in China, and Qwen Chat in Singapore. DeepSeek's privacy policy, last updated February 10, 2026, names Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd. as the company in control and says it stores your data "in People's Republic of China," with the same line repeated in its section for European users (DeepSeek). We cover what that means in is DeepSeek safe.

Qwen Chat is run by NTH Power Global Tech Singapore Pte. Ltd., which says it stores your data in Singapore and sends what you type in AI chat to Alibaba Cloud (Singapore) Private Limited "to perform inference processing" (Qwen). The policy we read showed no date.

Does it matter which company controls your data?

Yes, because the controller decides what happens to your data and is the company you hold to account. For a UK user, a ChatGPT or Gemini account answers to a company in California, while a Claude or Copilot account answers to one in Dublin. Google's European privacy policy names Google LLC as the controller "for users of Google services based in the United Kingdom" (Google).

xAI goes further. Its Europe addendum, effective August 24, 2026, names SpaceX Super Intelligence LLC, "which is based in the USA," as controller for European users too, and says "we process all of your personal information in the United States, where we maintain our primary data centers" (xAI). Grok used inside X falls under X's privacy policy instead, the main xAI policy says.

Duck.ai saves recent chats on your device, and Proton Lumo keeps history on your device and syncs it to Proton's servers with zero-access encryption (Proton). Neither company's page names a country for its servers. AI that doesn't save your data lists where each app keeps copies, and for how long.

How Morse keeps your chat history on your device

Every row in that table has the same shape. Your chat history sits on a server the company chose, in a country it chose, under whichever of its companies covers where you live. A residency option moves the server for organizations on a business plan, but the history still sits on someone else's machine, under that company's jurisdiction.

Morse keeps the history with you instead. Your chat history, Studio images, characters you make, and settings are stored only in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers, so they sit wherever you and your device are. There's no region to pick and no business plan to buy for it. Our servers don't keep your messages or log what you write. History locks when you sign out and takes two keys to open: one that never leaves your device, and one our server gives you at sign-in, so a copy of the browser data alone can't be read. Each message still goes out to a model, and the mode you choose for the chat decides who can see it:

• Private, for chats you'd rather no host keep anywhere. Every new chat starts here, on open-weight models such as DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, and on Grok. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing. Where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't.
• E2EE, for the things no one should read. Your browser checks the enclave's hardware attestation, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and our servers relay ciphertext they can't read. The enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse, and the protection depends on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE comes with Pro, at $19 a month, and has no web search or image generation.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, and Gemini without your name on the request. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account, so the provider sees it without knowing it's you. The provider may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy, so leave names and details out of the message.

In every mode, Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads (Morse privacy policy). Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing your browser or deleting your account deletes the chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you need.

Send a first message from the Morse home page without an account, or start free with no card needed.