Crawl Retention

File > Settings > Crawl Retention (Windows, Linux)
Screaming Frog SEO Spider > Settings > Crawl Retention (macOS)

Crawls are automatically saved and available to be opened or deleted via the ‘File > Crawls’ menu in default database storage mode.

However, users are able to automate deleting crawls after a period of time by adjusting the crawl retention settings. This is useful for anyone who doesn’t want to keep crawls, but does want to take advantage of the scale that database storage mode offers (over memory storage).

You can ‘Lock’ projects or specific crawls in the ‘File > Crawls’ menu from being deleted by crawl retention settings.

If you wish to lock a single crawl or all crawls in a project, just right click and select ‘Lock’.

For project folders, this will lock all existing and future crawl files, including scheduled crawls, from being automatically deleted via the retention policy settings.