Manual method
- In Flickr’s web interface, open your profile settings.
- Find Your Flickr Data and request the complete data download.
- When notified, return to settings and download every archive part.
- Keep the original media and JSON metadata. Open sample originals and compare the exported photo count to your intended scope.
What you get: The full account-data request is available to Free and Pro members. It differs from Camera Roll/album downloads, which have separate limits on batch size, resolution and video. Keep the JSON metadata beside the originals: information added in Flickr may not be embedded in their EXIF. Provider instructions.
Size and waiting time
Planning example: 50 GB; light/heavy scenarios: 1–1000 GB. These are estimates, not a measured population average or fixed limits. About 10,000 photos averaging 5 MB; large original images and video make terabyte collections plausible.
Preparation: Flickr says full data preparation can take a few hours to a few weeks, depending on volume. Links expire; retrieve them promptly.
Network transfer of 50 GB: about 15.9 hours at 10 Mbps, 3.2 hours at 50 Mbps, or 1.6 hours at 100 Mbps. This assumes 70% sustained throughput and excludes preparation, manual work and extraction. These are download estimates; online backup takes additional time at your upload speed. Transfer calculations and large-file examples.
Store and check your archive
An encrypted external SSD or hard drive is a good main archive for this collection. Allow roughly 150 GB of working space for the example, including an original, an extracted working copy and room to check it. Very compressed packages can need more. A USB key is useful for a spare copy, but should not be the only one. An encrypted online copy protects against losing the local devices.
Keep the original in flickr/YYYY-MM-DD/original/. Record the account alias, selected scope, date range and missing items. Open old and recent records and sample attachments offline, then compare file sizes or checksums after copying. Keep the source account until you have checked the result. Storage and recovery instructions.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.