Snapchat rankled some of its most loyal (and heavy) users when it announced last week it will begin charging for storage plans for Memories, its version of a digital archive for Snaps and stories.
Even though the Santa Monica, California-based social media company promised that “nothing will change” for the vast majority of Snapchatters, who have less than 5 gigabytes (GB) of Memories, it will begin rolling out paid storage plans, at a yet undisclosed date.
The company told TechCrunch that plans will range from $1.99 per month to $15.99 per month for storage plans, depending on the amount of data of Memories. The company indicated you could have thousands of Snaps saved before you’re bumped into a paid plan.
But there is a workaround: You can download your data for free. Here’s what you need to know if you want to download your Snapchat data.
How to save your Snapchat Memories
The popularity of the Memories feature, which was introduced by Snapchat in 2016, will now come at a cost. The company said that users have saved more than 1 trillion Memories since 2016, which is why it’s rolling out the storage plans.
“It’s never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost,” the company said in a blog post last week.
While Snapchat will provide 12 months of temporary Memories storage for any Memories that exceed the 5GB storage limit, it hasn’t specified when that free period will begin.
That’s why you may want to be proactive if you really want to hang onto some Memories and download them to your device now.
Luckily, that’s really easily accomplished. After opening the Snapchat app, navigate to the Memories section, then choose “select” at the top of the page, and select up to 100 Memories at a time that you want to export. Then select a destination and tap “download.”
If you have more than 100 Memories, you’ll need to repeat this process.
How to save your Snapchat data
If you want to squirrel away more data than your Memories, Snapchat is required by laws in various jurisdictions to allow its users to download their personal data—which is true of other social media platforms, as well.
If you’ve never downloaded this type of data in the past, a slight caveat: Depending on what information you’re after and how active a Snapchatter you’ve been, you may be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data at your disposal.
While you may opt for the kitchen sink approach and download everything you can, those files may include minutiae you don’t care about (like your login and search histories), along with more sentimental information you likely do care about (like your Memories and saved chat history). The good news is, you can also select the specific categories of data you want to download.
Snapchat doesn’t provide all of your information in a single neat file—rather, you’ll receive a zip file—so you’ll want to be sure you have sufficient storage for the data.
Here’s the step-by-step process to download whatever Snapchat data you fancy:
- Open the Snapchat app, go to your profile and navigate to the “settings” icon
- Scroll to select “My Data”
- Select the specific you want to include in your data download
- Specify a specific data range of data you’d like to download or receive all available data
- Confirm the email address where you’d like to be notified
- Click “submit” to officially submit your data request
Once your data is ready to be downloaded, you’ll receive an email from Snapchat with a link where you can access your information.
As the company notes, “this process can take time to complete,” which users report can range from several hours to several weeks.
Griping about Snap’s plan
What Snapchat is doing, in essence, is transferring the cost of storage over to users.
Download all those Memories onto your iPhone, for example, and that will just ratchet up the amount of data you have saved in your iCloud. Nearly two-thirds of Apple customers paid for iCloud storage in 2024, making it Apple’s most popular paid service, according to CIRP data.
But unlike some of its rivals, including Instagram and TikTok, Snapchat is testing the waters of whether its users are willing to pay for storing social media posts.
As people have lamented online, this may be the future of all social media platforms, or just another example of so-called subscription creep, in which we’re all paying for more and more subscriptions for things that once were free.
But no matter their gripe, some people see these sorts of moves by social media giants as an excuse to bail.
“Now give me reasons why I should continue using Snapchat in 2025,” one person wrote on Reddit. “Oh wait, there aren’t any except my friends.”
Added another user on a different subreddit: “It would be a shame if we just deleted social media.”