Field Audit Trail for compliance retention
Key Takeaway
Field Audit Trail keeps field history until you delete it. Even if you never deploy a retention policy of your own, a default policy archives field history after 18 months in production and after one month in a sandbox.
Field Audit Trail is a paid add-on that extends Field History Tracking. Field History Tracking on its own loses field changes after 18 to 24 months, but Field Audit Trail keeps them for as long as you need. Companies use Field Audit Trail to keep a long-term history of who changed what and when, which supports data integrity and compliance with industry standards.
How Field Audit Trail extends Field History Tracking
Field History Tracking is the base feature that Field Audit Trail builds on. Field History Tracking records changes to tracked fields in the object's related history object, such as AccountHistory. Salesforce shows those changes on the history related list.
| Field History Tracking | Field Audit Trail | |
|---|---|---|
| Tracked fields per object | Up to 20 | Up to 200 |
| How long field history is kept | 18 months in the UI, up to 24 months through the API | Until you delete it |
| How you access history | UI and API | Archived data: API only |
Because Field Audit Trail keeps history until you delete it, Field Audit Trail fits long-retention requirements that Field History Tracking alone cannot meet. Field History Tracking data and Field Audit Trail data do not count against your data storage limits, so a longer retention period does not use up data storage.