How to export and analyse a WhatsApp chat

Step 1: Export the chat from WhatsApp

WhatsApp has a built-in export that writes the conversation out as a plain-text transcript, with the media files attached if you ask for them. You do this in WhatsApp itself: Chat Forensics never connects to your account and never sees your phone. The steps below follow WhatsApp's own help page. How to export your chat history (WhatsApp Help Centre)

On iPhone

1. Open the individual or group chat.
2. Tap your contact's name or the group name at the top of the screen.
3. Tap Export chat.
4. If the chat contains media, choose Attach Media or Without Media.
5. Choose Save to Files.
6. WhatsApp exports an iPhone chat as a ZIP file. Upload the ZIP from the Files app as it is: there is no need to unzip it.

On Android

1. Open the individual or group chat.
2. Tap More options (the three dots at the top right), then More, then Export chat.
3. Choose Without media or Include media.
4. Choose how to send it to yourself, for example email or your own notes app.
5. Android gives you a .txt file, or a ZIP file when you include media. Upload whichever you have, without unzipping it.

Which export should I choose?

Without media is smaller and quicker, and it still keeps a placeholder line for every photo, video and voice note, so the conversation reads in the right order. Include media (Attach Media on iPhone) gives you a ZIP file with the files themselves: upload the ZIP and tick the voice notes and images you want transcribed and described. The chat on its own already produces a full report; media is optional and priced separately.

• An export is a text file, not a backup, so it cannot be imported back into WhatsApp.
• View once messages are not exported by WhatsApp, and deleted messages appear only as a "This message was deleted" placeholder.
• When you include media, WhatsApp attaches the most recent media from the chat rather than all of it, so check that you have the files you actually want analysed.

Step 2: Upload the chat and any media

Sign in, open the upload page and drop in the .txt or ZIP file. Choosing the voice notes and images you want analysed is optional, and you can limit the analysis to a date range if you only care about part of the conversation. Go to the upload page

The chat file

WhatsApp's .txt export, or its ZIP file as it is (up to 2 GB). The chat text can be up to 10 MB.

Media files

Up to 20 files per chat, each up to 25 MB: tick them in the ZIP, or attach them next to a .txt. Images can be JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP; voice notes can be OGG, MP3, M4A, WAV or WebM.

Checked on the server

Every file is identified from its own bytes and each voice note's length is measured from the file, so the price is never based on what a browser claims.

Encrypted on arrival

The chat and its media are encrypted as soon as they reach the server. The plaintext copy of the upload is deleted straight away.

Your confirmation

Before the upload starts you confirm that you are 18 or over and that you are allowed to analyse this conversation.

A short free preview runs automatically as soon as the upload finishes, so you can see that the chat parsed correctly and get a feel for the output before deciding whether to buy the full report.

Step 3: Check your quote, then pay

Pricing is per report, and the price depends on how much there is to analyse. Your quote is worked out from the upload the server measured, itemised line by line, and locked to your order for 24 hours. Nothing is analysed and nothing is charged until you accept it. See the current prices

Base price

Covers the report type you chose and the first 10,000 messages.

Extra messages

Charged per started 1,000 messages above the included allowance.

Voice notes

Charged per started 30 seconds, per file, because each one is transcribed separately.

Images

Charged per image, because each one is described separately.

Videos

Charged per started 30 seconds, per file, because each one is described separately.

• UK customers are quoted in pounds and everyone else in US dollars; the server picks the currency, not the browser.
• You can pay by card through Stripe, or with account credits if you have them.
• The quoted total is what you are charged. It never goes up after you pay.
• If a paid report cannot be produced, the payment is refunded automatically, to your card or back to your credits.

Step 4: What the AI actually sees

This is the part most tools are vague about, so here it is plainly. The chat text is anonymised before it leaves the server, and the media files are not, because they cannot be.

Names become labels

Participant names, phone numbers, email addresses and links are replaced before the text is sent. Senders become Participant A, Participant B and so on; other people mentioned in the messages become Person 1, Person 2; places become Place 1.

The map is never stored

The link between a real name and its label exists in memory for the length of one job. It is never written to the database, the logs or a provider.

Structure is preserved

Timestamps, message order and who said what are kept intact, so the analysis is still about the real conversation.

Media goes as-is

A voice note, image or video cannot be anonymised, so the file itself is sent to the AI provider. Transcripts and descriptions that come back are run through the same anonymiser before they are stored.

Which providers

Chat text is analysed by a large language model at OpenAI. Voice notes and images go to whichever media provider this deployment is configured with, which is OpenAI unless an operator has set Google Gemini or OpenRouter.

If you would rather a particular file never left our server, simply do not attach it. The chat text on its own still produces a complete report. Read the privacy page

Step 5: Read your report

The report opens in your browser and stays in your dashboard. Findings are tied back to short verbatim quotes from the conversation, under the same participant labels the AI saw, so you can check any claim against the chat itself. Look at a sample report

Overview

Message count, the participants the export contains and the date range actually analysed.

Participants

Per-sender message counts and how each person shows up in the conversation.

Relationship dynamics

Balance of power, attachment patterns and how conflict gets handled, each with quoted examples.

Behaviour patterns

Rhythm, reply speed, message length and what each person does when a topic gets difficult.

Time analysis

How the conversation and its tone shifted across the period you uploaded.

Specialised analysis

The section for the report type you chose: relationship, claim consistency, denial and contradiction patterns, coercive control, behavioural patterns, emotional intensity and repair patterns, sentiment or network analysis.

Media

Transcripts of your voice notes and descriptions of your images, labelled to match the chat.

Recommendations

Practical suggestions drawn from what the analysis found.

Follow-up questions

Ask your own question about the conversation and get an answer grounded in the same chat. Each question costs one credit.

PDF export

Download the whole report as a PDF to keep or share.

How long it takes

Analysis runs as a background job on our servers rather than in your browser tab, so you can close the page and come back to it. A short, text-only chat is a single AI call and finishes quickly. A long chat, or one with a lot of voice notes, takes longer, because every voice note is transcribed and every image described separately before the report is assembled. If a job fails for good, it is refunded automatically instead of being left in limbo.

What happens to your upload afterwards

• Your chat is stored encrypted from the moment it arrives. It is never kept as a readable file.
• The encrypted upload and the media attached to it are deleted within an hour of your paid report finishing.
• An upload that nobody buys a report for is swept away after seven days.
• The report stays in your account in its anonymised form, so you can reread or download it later.

What Chat Forensics does not do

It is not evidence

Reports are AI-generated interpretations. They can be incomplete or wrong, and they are not legal evidence, a medical or psychological diagnosis, or a substitute for professional advice.

It cannot prove what happened

A claim consistency or denial and contradiction report points at patterns in the language that are consistent with a behaviour. It cannot establish what anyone actually did or intended.

It does not touch WhatsApp

There is no login to your WhatsApp account, no access to your phone and no way to recover messages that were never exported.

It is not a monitoring tool

It analyses a conversation you already have and are entitled to analyse. It cannot watch a chat as it happens.

Still have a question? The FAQ covers exports, file limits, pricing, privacy and refunds in more detail. Read the FAQ