Data retention and deletion requests

Admin > Data collection and modification > Data retention controls how long GA4 keeps user-level and event-level data: 2 months (the default) or 14 months; 360 properties can choose 26, 38 or 50. There is also a Reset user data on new activity toggle that restarts the clock for a user each time they return.

What it affects: explorations, audiences built on past behaviour, and anything else that reads raw events, such as User explorer and cohort tables. An exploration whose date range reaches further back than the window simply has no data there.

What it does not affect: standard reports. They are built from aggregated tables that are kept regardless, so your Acquisition report for two years ago still works. Age, gender, and interest data is always deleted after two months no matter what you pick, and the BigQuery export is unaffected because the data already left.

Set 14 months on day one. There is no cost, and the change is not retroactive: raising it later does not bring back the months already expired.

Deleting data has three routes:

• Data deletion requests (Admin): remove all parameters, selected parameters, selected user properties or all events of a certain name in a date range, for the whole property. There is a 7-day grace period in which you can cancel; after it the deletion runs and is permanent, and it also affects standard reports.
• Per-user deletion: the trash icon in User explorer, or the User Deletion API for automation, for "delete my data" requests when you know the client ID or User-ID.
• Deleting the property moves it to a 35-day trash before permanent removal.

All deletion requests are logged in the property's change history, which auditors like.