Pendo retains subscription raw event data for a period of 7 years (84 months) from the date of collection, which serves as the data retention time limit. After a subscription surpasses the retention time limit, raw event data older than the specified period is automatically deleted from the Pendo database.
This data retention follows a rolling threshold. As a subscription ages beyond 7 years, the data retention date progresses daily, ensuring that no raw event data is stored for more than 7 years. For instance, when a subscription reaches 7 years and 1 day, only the raw event data from the day of installation is deleted. Subsequently, the data from the day after installation is deleted on the following day, and so on. Subscriptions that are younger than 7 years aren't impacted by this process.
As part of this data retention limit, data beyond 7 years prior to the current date isn't available for analytics or queries using the Pendo API. This limitation applies specifically to the raw event data used for analytics purposes and doesn't impact any content created within your Pendo subscription, such as configuration settings, integrations, tagged Features, tagged Pages, Track Events, guides, saved reports, segments, or Feedback requests. However, any Visitor or Account IDs that haven't been used since the data retention date are also automatically removed from the system.
Shorten the data retention time limit
You can shorten the data retention time limit for your subscription so that event data is deleted sooner than 84 months. You can choose any duration between 1 and 84 months.
If you'd like to request a change to your data retention time limit, contact your Pendo account representative or Technical Support. Once requested, a review process takes place to verify that you completely understand the impact of the change and that the request is approved by the appropriate subscription managers.
You can also choose to delete data for an individual app following the same request process. The Application Start Date controls when Pendo begins storing data for an app. If the Application Start Date is moved, any data collected prior to the start date is permanently deleted. The Application Start Date won't move automatically until the app is old enough to match the subscription data retention time limit.
Following request approval, there's a brief processing time as the app configuration is changed. Once the change is made, older data is immediately queued for deletion. If an error occurs in the selected data retention time limit, it might be possible to recover deleted data if the change request is received and processed within 28 days of deletion. You must request data recovery as soon as possible to improve the chances of recovering deleted data. Event data older than 84 months can't be recovered.
Data retention date calculation
The date used to set the data retention time limit is the current date minus 84 months (or customer-specified duration). To determine the data retention date, subtract the number of months of the data retention time limit from the current date.
The day of the month doesn't change unless the month of the data retention date isn't long enough to match the current day of the month. In this case, the data retention date defaults to the last day of the month. The deletion process has a 2–3 day buffer to ensure that no data younger than the data retention time limit is deleted when months don't have the same number of days. Consider the following examples:
- If the current date is May 28, 2022, subtract the default data retention limit of 84 months, and the resulting data retention date is May 28, 2015.
- For a customer-specified data retention time limit of 18 months, if the current date is May 31, 2022, subtract 18 months, the resulting data retention date is November 30, 2020. November doesn't have 31 days, so the data retention date falls on the last day, the 30th.
Data retention for Pendo Free and Starter
If you're on our Pendo Free or Starter plans, the data retention limit of 7 years (84 months) remains the same. However, access to the data within the Pendo UI is limited to 1 year (12 months) for Pendo Free and 2 years (24 months) for Pendo Starter. To gain access to your data beyond these time limits, you can upgrade your plan.