diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
index 11a7c45ac0bd88f552dae629193381b68d610b52..f0742e1cd72b29d9192ee081d3ccd1b1c9f37729 100644
--- a/HISTORY.md
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 ## Unreleased
 ### New Features
 * Add a new option OptimisticTransactionDBOptions::shared_lock_buckets that enables sharing mutexes for validating transactions between DB instances, for better balancing memory efficiency and validation contention across DB instances. Different column families and DBs also now use different hash seeds in this validation, so that the same set of key names will not contend across DBs or column families.
+* Add `WriteBatch::Release()` that releases the batch's serialized data to the caller.
 
 ### Public API Changes
 * Add `WaitForCompact()` to wait for all flush and compactions jobs to finish. Jobs to wait include the unscheduled (queued, but not scheduled yet).
diff --git a/db/write_batch.cc b/db/write_batch.cc
index 726b14f0988d6332dccd699ee0e6ee73c25e9266..47e34e6f9cb5235a88cfcddc8a6f05b43387f178 100644
--- a/db/write_batch.cc
+++ b/db/write_batch.cc
@@ -293,6 +293,12 @@ size_t WriteBatch::GetProtectionBytesPerKey() const {
   return 0;
 }
 
+std::string WriteBatch::Release() {
+  std::string ret = std::move(rep_);
+  Clear();
+  return ret;
+}
+
 bool WriteBatch::HasPut() const {
   return (ComputeContentFlags() & ContentFlags::HAS_PUT) != 0;
 }
diff --git a/db/write_batch_test.cc b/db/write_batch_test.cc
index 4bd74f71e17b363c6d65602b85fa9c819af3daa7..174052644f4a5891e68fb3bdba4c0c1d7fa63537 100644
--- a/db/write_batch_test.cc
+++ b/db/write_batch_test.cc
@@ -247,6 +247,22 @@ TEST_F(WriteBatchTest, SingleDeletion) {
   ASSERT_EQ(2u, batch.Count());
 }
 
+TEST_F(WriteBatchTest, OwnershipTransfer) {
+  Random rnd(301);
+  WriteBatch put_batch;
+  ASSERT_OK(put_batch.Put(rnd.RandomString(16) /* key */,
+                          rnd.RandomString(1024) /* value */));
+
+  // (1) Verify `Release()` transfers string data ownership
+  const char* expected_data = put_batch.Data().data();
+  std::string batch_str = put_batch.Release();
+  ASSERT_EQ(expected_data, batch_str.data());
+
+  // (2) Verify constructor transfers string data ownership
+  WriteBatch move_batch(std::move(batch_str));
+  ASSERT_EQ(expected_data, move_batch.Data().data());
+}
+
 namespace {
 struct TestHandler : public WriteBatch::Handler {
   std::string seen;
diff --git a/include/rocksdb/write_batch.h b/include/rocksdb/write_batch.h
index 61ba5a7391366d12a893d8507fa5fa366cb518c6..307cd7559c76e2a7cc7f95859dd83bc826d531f4 100644
--- a/include/rocksdb/write_batch.h
+++ b/include/rocksdb/write_batch.h
@@ -356,6 +356,9 @@ class WriteBatch : public WriteBatchBase {
   // Retrieve the serialized version of this batch.
   const std::string& Data() const { return rep_; }
 
+  // Release the serialized data and clear this batch.
+  std::string Release();
+
   // Retrieve data size of the batch.
   size_t GetDataSize() const { return rep_.size(); }