Back up your Pinterest boards to a folder you own
Pinterest has no backup feature. How to back up Pinterest boards as ZIPs on your disk with Unpinned, how often to run it, and what a restore actually is.
- Downloading
- Workflow
A Pinterest backup is a ZIP of the board on your disk. Full-size images and videos, each section as a folder. Pinterest does not offer this. The account data download it gives you is a list of links, and links die when a pin or its source is gone. Unpinned makes the ZIP. This post is what to keep, how often, and what a restore looks like.
What you actually lose when a board goes
Boards disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with you. The owner deletes it. Someone leaves the group board. An account gets suspended. Pins go stale too. Copyright claims remove content, and a pin whose original image lived on a site that shut down turns into a grey box. Scroll to the bottom of a board you have been adding to for three years and count those boxes. It is more than you expect.
Your own account is the other risk. A lockout, or a two-factor phone you no longer have. Neither is a Pinterest bug. You cannot fix either on the day it happens.
A backup covers that because it does not need Pinterest to still exist.
What a good backup contains
The ZIP Unpinned produces is already the right shape. Named after the board. The largest file Pinterest stores for each pin, JPEG, PNG, or MP4 for video pins. Sections as subfolders. Nothing re-encoded, nothing watermarked. The Pinterest board downloader page shows the folder layout.
Keep the ZIP as is, or unzip it into a "Pinterest" folder with one subfolder per board. Do not rename the files inside. Those names are how you find the pin again if you ever need the source.
Private and group boards back up the same way, as long as your account still has access. Downloading a private board is the strongest argument I have for grabbing group boards before you need to.
How often to run it
Match the cadence to how the board is used.
| Board type | Cadence |
|---|---|
| Finished project or client reference | Once, when the project closes |
| Active moodboard you add to weekly | Monthly |
| Group board you do not own | Monthly, and again before any collaborator leaves |
| Archive boards you never touch | Once, then leave it |
Re-running a download on a board you already backed up tops up what changed. A pin saved twice comes down once. A monthly re-run on a 400-pin board is a small download, not a fresh 400.
Free plan maths
The free plan is 50 pins per day. A 200-pin board is four days of free downloads if you are patient, or one sitting on Pro. Pro is $7 a month in the US and 6€ elsewhere. Cancelling after the backup month is fine. For a one-off sweep of every board on an old account, one paid month is the sensible route. I would not pretend otherwise.
Restoring
There is no import. Pinterest has no way to upload a folder of images as a board, and no third-party tool can do it without violating Pinterest's terms. A restore means opening the folder.
You cannot put the files back onto Pinterest as a board. You can open the folder, which is what you were using the board for. Finder, Explorer, Figma or Canva all open it faster than Pinterest did. The sections to folders workflow turns it back into a working moodboard.
FAQ
Does Pinterest have a built-in backup?
No. Privacy settings offer a copy of your account data as links and metadata, not the images.
Can I back up someone else's public board?
Yes. Any board that opens in your browser downloads the same way, public or private.
Where should I store the ZIPs?
Anywhere you already back up. A synced drive folder is fine. The ZIPs are ordinary files. The step-by-step download guide covers the click-through if you have not run Unpinned before.