How long does Gmail keep emails?
Gmail keeps your email for as long as your account is active, with three exceptions that delete mail on their own.
Gmail keeps your email forever, as long as you do not delete it and your account stays active. There are three exceptions.
Trash: 30 days
Deleted emails go to Trash and are removed for good after 30 days.
Spam: 30 days
Emails in Spam are removed after 30 days. Check Spam now and then for anything that landed there by mistake.
Inactive accounts: 2 years
Google may delete a personal Google account, and all of its email, if it has not been used for two years. Signing in, sending an email or using any Google service counts as use. Work and school accounts follow their organization's rules instead.
Work accounts can have their own rules
A Google Workspace administrator can set retention rules that delete email after a set time. Ask your IT team if old work emails seem to vanish.
What about archived email?
Archived email is kept, the same as anything else in All Mail. Archiving never deletes.
Running out of space?
Your Google storage (15 GB free, shared with Drive and Photos) is usually the real limit. Search larger:10M to find the emails taking the most room.
How Perfect Mail treats old email
Perfect Mail never deletes your mail on its own. When you mark an email Done, it is archived in Gmail and stays searchable. Mass archive in Settings clears old mail out of your inbox the same way, without deleting anything.