To delete your ChatGPT account on the web: sign in at chatgpt.com, open your account menu and choose Settings, select Account, click Delete next to Delete account, enter your account email or phone number and type DELETE when prompted, then select Permanently delete my account. Deletion is permanent — the account cannot be reactivated — and, in OpenAI’s words on its deleting your ChatGPT account help page, deleting the account prevents you from using it to access OpenAI services, including ChatGPT and the API, with your data deleted within 30 days except for a limited set OpenAI may retain longer where required or permitted by law. Two things must happen before you confirm: cancel any subscription billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play (deleting the account does not cancel those), and export anything you want to keep, because afterwards there is nothing to export from. The phone routes and the no-sign-in route are below.

Before the steps, one distinction that saves most of the regret: deleting the account is not the only way to get what most people actually want. As OpenAI’s own page puts it, stopping payment, changing your email or sign-in, or removing a conversation can each be done without deleting — account deletion is the option for leaving OpenAI entirely. Everything below assumes that is genuinely the goal.

Before you delete: subscriptions and exports

Cancel app-store billing first. OpenAI’s rule is simple and easy to get wrong: deleting your account cancels a subscription billed directly by ChatGPT, but it does not cancel a subscription billed through the Apple App Store, and you are told to check and cancel any Google Play subscription yourself before deleting too. The failure mode is ugly — delete the account, lose the ability to sign in and check, and keep paying Apple or Google for a service you no longer have. OpenAI’s guide to canceling your ChatGPT subscription gives the rule in its general form: cancel through the platform where you purchased. On an iPhone that means the Settings app, your name, Subscriptions, then ChatGPT; on Android, Google Play’s Subscriptions list, signed in to the Google account that paid. Cancel at least a day before the next billing date. Note also that uninstalling the app cancels nothing, and cancelling stops future renewals — it does not refund charges already made.

Export what you want to keep. Signed-in Free, Go, Plus and Pro users can request an export of their data from ChatGPT’s settings — the Data controls section is where OpenAI groups the export, model-improvement and deletion controls, as its data controls page describes. Request the export and actually receive and open the file before deleting: after deletion there is no account to sign in to, no history to export, and no recovery route. If your only goal is clearing conversations rather than leaving, deleting chats or using the data controls achieves it without closing the account at all.

One more check, for advertisers. If your OpenAI account email is also how you access an Ads account, deleting may lock you out of it, and active campaigns may keep running and accruing charges rather than pausing. Pause campaigns and make sure another authorised person can access the Ads account first — or contact Support before deleting, if you are the only person with access.

Work and school accounts are different. Self-service deletion is not available in ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu or ChatGPT for Healthcare workspaces. If your account belongs to one of those, there is no Delete button to find — your organisation manages the account; contact it.

Delete your account on the web

From OpenAI’s deletion help page, the current web route:

  1. Sign in to ChatGPT.
  2. Open your account menu and select Settings.
  3. Select Account.
  4. Next to Delete account, select Delete.
  5. Enter your account email or phone number and type DELETE when prompted.
  6. Select Permanently delete my account.

The confirmation is deliberately effortful — your email or phone plus the typed word — because there is no step after it that can be undone. If the flow will not complete, sign in freshly and go straight through it; a stale session is a common reason such confirmations fail. When it completes, you lose access to that account’s ChatGPT and API immediately; the 30-day figure that follows is about OpenAI deleting the underlying data, not a grace period in which the account can be revived. It cannot be.

Delete your account on iPhone or Android

The mobile routes run through Data controls rather than the Account tab — the one structural difference from the web:

On iOS, per OpenAI’s page:

  1. Open the ChatGPT app and open your account settings.
  2. Select Data controls.
  3. Select Delete account.
  4. If you have an active Apple subscription, review the subscription warning — select Manage subscriptions to cancel it before continuing.
  5. Review the deletion confirmation, then select Delete account to continue, or Cancel to keep your account.

On Android:

  1. Open the ChatGPT app and open Settings from your profile menu.
  2. Select Data controls.
  3. Select Delete OpenAI account. In older app versions this same item may appear as Delete Account.
  4. Review the confirmation, then select Delete OpenAI account (or Delete Account) to continue, or Cancel to keep the account.

Follow any sign-in or verification prompts the app puts in front of you. OpenAI adds a caveat worth heeding: if the app returns you to your chats without showing a deletion confirmation, or you cannot finish the mobile flow, switch to the Privacy Portal route below — completing a sign-in prompt by itself does not confirm deletion. Deleting the account and deleting the app are unrelated acts in both directions: the app still needs uninstalling separately if you want it gone, and uninstalling it never deleted anything.

If you cannot sign in: the Privacy Portal route

Deletion does not require a working sign-in; it requires proof the account is yours. OpenAI provides the Privacy Portal for this case:

  1. Go to the Privacy Portal.
  2. Select Make a Privacy Request.
  3. Select I have a consumer ChatGPT account.
  4. Select Delete my ChatGPT account, then follow the verification steps.

The catch is verification: you must be able to verify the email address or phone number already linked to the account. If you can access neither — or the account is a deactivated phone-only account that cannot complete verification — OpenAI says to contact Support for an ownership review instead. There is no route that deletes an account you cannot prove is yours, by design.

A related situation OpenAI covers on the same page: recurring charges on the account of someone who has died. If the subscription sits in an Apple or Google account you are authorised to manage, cancel it there (Apple: Settings > your name > Subscriptions; Google: Subscriptions in the paying Google account). If you cannot access the purchasing store account, that store is the first call; OpenAI Support can help with charges it billed directly and with a deletion request, without access to the account holder’s email.

What gets deleted, what is retained, and the API

OpenAI’s stated position is that on deletion, your data is deleted within 30 days, except that a limited set of data may be retained for longer where required or permitted by law. The specifics it gives:

  • Chats. Deleted chats are permanently removed from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days, unless they were already de-identified and disassociated from your account, or must be retained for security or legal reasons. A deleted chat cannot be recovered; archiving, not deleting, is the way to hide a chat you may want again.
  • Access. The account can no longer be used for ChatGPT or the API Platform — this is one OpenAI account, not separate products. Any API use tied to that account ends with it, so developers should treat account deletion as deleting their API access too, including the keys that depend on the account; anything in production using those keys stops working. Rotate or migrate anything that matters before deleting, not after.
  • Phone verification limits survive deletion. A phone number can verify the first API key for up to three accounts, and deleting an account does not reset that limit — even though the number itself can be reused for a new ChatGPT account after 30 days (OpenAI says it removes the number from its system after 30 days for a permanently deleted consumer account that was not disabled for a policy violation). Phone verification is not required to create an account, but it is required before a new account generates its first API key.
  • Model training. For personal accounts, eligible content may be used to improve OpenAI’s models depending on your settings; OpenAI states that by default it does not use content from Business, Enterprise, Edu or Healthcare workspaces or the API Platform for training. Deleting the account is not a retroactive switch for that setting — the data-controls page is where the setting itself lives, while the account exists.

What deletion does not do is equally worth listing: it does not cancel Apple or Google Play billing (above), it does not refund the current billing period, it does not let you change your sign-in method — OpenAI notes that if you signed up with Google, Apple or Microsoft, you may be able to add a password from Settings > Security and login without deleting — and it does not reactivate or transfer anything to a new account. A new account starts empty: no chats, files or saved memories carry over. None of this is an account problem in the way an outage is — if ChatGPT itself is failing before you can even reach Settings, check whether ChatGPT is down first and delete on a calmer day.

Can you use the same email again? OpenAI’s current answer, carefully

This is the point on which OpenAI’s help pages have historically disagreed with each other, so it is worth stating precisely what the current pages say, and where the disagreement stood.

As checked in November 2026, OpenAI’s main deletion article answers directly: yes — you can create a new account using the same email address after 30 days, provided the prior account was fully deleted (not deactivated). A second, dedicated OpenAI article — creating a new account after deletion — says the same: wait at least 30 days, then sign up with the same email; use a different email or an alias if you need one sooner; and if sign-up still refuses the address after 30 days, check the old account was deleted rather than deactivated, and contact Support if it was.

The contradiction a careful reader may still meet: older OpenAI app-specific help pages for iOS and Android stated the opposite — that you would not be able to create a new account using the same email address — and that wording still circulates in guides written from those pages. It was not the current position when this article was checked: the main deletion article, which now contains the iOS and Android steps itself, is the more recently updated source and states the 30-day rule without a mobile exception. So plan on the 30-day rule, keep the after-deletion article bookmarked in case you need to quote it to Support, and treat any “never again” wording elsewhere in OpenAI’s help as outdated — while understanding that no route lets you reuse the address immediately either way. Two hard exceptions stand regardless: OpenAI does not permit reusing addresses previously associated with an Enterprise organisation, or addresses disabled for a policy violation. And deleted is not deactivated: waiting does nothing for a deactivated account — if you see the “deleted or deactivated” sign-in error for an account you did not delete yourself, check your email for deactivation, age-verification or policy instructions instead.

Frequently asked questions

Is deleting my ChatGPT account permanent? Yes. OpenAI states it plainly and repeatedly: account deletion is permanent, and deleted accounts cannot be reactivated. The 30-day figure is the window for OpenAI to delete your data and free your email address — not an undo period.

Does deleting my account cancel my ChatGPT subscription? Only if ChatGPT bills you directly. Deleting cancels subscriptions billed directly by ChatGPT; it does not cancel an Apple App Store subscription, and Google Play subscriptions must be checked and cancelled in Google Play. Cancel store billing before deleting — afterwards you cannot sign in to check.

What happens to my API keys when I delete my account? The account’s access to OpenAI services, including the API Platform, ends — treat the API keys tied to the account as gone with it, and migrate anything that depends on them first. Note the surviving limit: deleting does not reset the rule that one phone number can verify the first API key for up to three accounts.

Can I delete my account if I can’t sign in? Yes — through the Privacy Portal (privacy.openai.com): Make a Privacy Request > I have a consumer ChatGPT account > Delete my ChatGPT account, then verify the email or phone number linked to the account. If you can verify neither, OpenAI offers a Support ownership review instead.

I only want to stop paying / clear my chats. Do I need to delete my account? No. Cancelling a subscription stops charges, deleting chats clears conversations, and the data controls manage training and exports — all without closing the account. OpenAI itself lists these as the alternatives to consider first, because deletion cannot be undone. Other services run deletion differently — see how to delete your Facebook account for that service’s separate route.

This article is based on OpenAI’s own Help Center pages linked above and checked in November 2026. OpenAI revises these pages often; if a label in your app differs slightly, follow the same-named control, and treat the deletion article itself as the final authority.