Slack Message Retention: How Long Slack Keeps Messages, Tested on Free

Slack keeps messages for the life of the workspace on paid plans unless an Owner sets a shorter limit. On the free plan you can see and search only the last 90 days; older messages are hidden, and Slack's help center says free-plan data more than one year old is deleted (it started those deletions on 26 August 2024). Owners on any plan can choose to delete messages sooner.

We checked the free-plan part on 3 October 2026 in a real Free workspace that is six months old, and read its Data retention settings as the workspace Owner. The results are below.

What the 90-day limit looks like in a real Free workspace

We used the busiest channel in a Free workspace created in late March: an alerts channel that has received messages every day since 2 April. Through Slack's API (conversations.history, the same data the app shows) it returned 17,400 messages. The oldest was posted on 5 July at 07:30 UTC, exactly 90.00 days before our check. Nothing older came back, and the API marked the channel is_limited: true.

Search follows the same line. In that workspace, a search for before:2026-07-04 found 0 messages, while after:2026-07-05 before:2026-07-12 (6 to 11 July, since Slack leaves out the typed dates) found 1,388. Across 12 channels created between 30 March and 5 May, not one message older than 90 days came back.

So on Free the hidden messages are not shown in channels, search or the API. The Owner's settings page says they are still kept: "Messages older than 90 days will continue to be hidden, but retained by Slack. They can be restored by switching to a paid plan." Our workspace is younger than one year, so we could not see the one-year deletion ourselves.

Slack retention settings on the Free plan

As the Owner of a Free workspace, we opened Admin, then Settings, Settings & permissions, and clicked Expand next to Data retention.

The Channel messages menu had four options. Two are locked as paid features:

The default never deletes on a timer, but it does not keep the old version of an edited message or a copy of a deleted one. Deleted means gone, for everyone. Can Slack see deleted messages shows what a deletion leaves behind, including the "This message was deleted." line under a thread.

File history has its own menu: Keep all files (default) or Keep files for 90 days only, with four paid options that keep deleted files or set a number of days. Canvas and list history has the same shape: keep all, or 90 days only, on Free.

Retention by plan

The paid rows come from Slack's help center; we only had Free workspaces to test. Upgrading a Free workspace brings back hidden messages that Slack has not yet deleted. Retention covers public channels, private channels and DMs, and the other free-plan limits are in Slack free plan limits.

Message edit time limit

The same admin area sets how long people can edit their own messages. On the Permissions tab, the Message editing menu offered: Any time (the default), Never, and up to 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 24 hours or 1 week after posting. We saw all of these on the Free plan. This limit is separate from retention: it stops edits, it does not delete anything.

Who can change retention

Only Owners can change the workspace setting, from the screen above. On paid plans, an Owner can let members set a shorter retention for channels and DMs they are in. To keep your own history beyond 90 days on Free, export it; how to export Slack messages without admin covers the ways that work.

After you leave a job, your messages stay in the workspace for as long as its retention keeps them, even when your account is deactivated; see how to delete your Slack account.

Frequently asked questions

Does Slack delete messages after 90 days on the free plan? It hides them. In our Free workspace nothing older than 90 days came back from channels, search or the API, and the settings page says hidden messages are kept and come back with a paid plan. Slack deletes them only when they pass one year, or after 90 days if the Owner chose that option.

Can I see Slack messages older than 90 days without paying? Not in the app, search or the API, in our test. Upgrading to a paid plan is the way Slack offers to bring hidden history back.

Can I recover messages deleted by a retention setting? No. Slack says data removed by retention is deleted for good.

Does deleting a Slack message delete it for everyone? Yes. A deleted message disappears for every member, admins included. On a paid plan with edit and deletion tracking, the company can still keep a copy in its exports.