Cancel last
Cancelling is the last step, not the first. Vimeo's own pages say a source file may be deleted when the subscription ends, and that everything past 1 GB stops playing on the free tier. Here is the order that keeps every file and every link.
No credit card required. Cancel any time.
Updated September 2026
The order of operations
Two lines from Vimeo’s help center set the whole order. On source files: “If your subscription ends or the feature is disabled, your source files may be deleted and may not be recoverable.” On the free tier after a lapse: the cap is 1 GB, and “Your most recent uploads are the first to become restricted.” Do the irreversible things while the paid plan is live; cancel when nothing depends on it.
Source files exist on Vimeo only if a paid plan ticked the box to keep them, and ticking it later restores nothing. API downloads, the door that lets originals leave without your connection, need Standard or above.
Download each film from its page, Share then Download, or let the importer pull it. Do it before anything lapses: the source file lives only as long as the paid membership, and the download button needs one too.
Sign in to Vimeo from the import page and the library appears, ready to select. Nothing is uploaded from your machine.
Tick the films, or all of them. Files move server to server, nothing is re-encoded, and masters over 3 GB run as a chunked, resumable job that survives a closed laptop.
Your site, client pages, festival entries, press. List each Vimeo URL next to its replacement here. The list is cheap today and expensive the day a page goes dark.
Replace embeds and links while the paid plan is live, so nothing is restricted and no privacy setting has moved under you. There is no deadline.
If years of press point at Vimeo URLs, keep the free account as a redirect stub. It serves only what fits inside 1 GB and is Public, so trim the library to those films first.
End the subscription. Vimeo's Terms say the account then reverts to free or is deleted, at Vimeo's option. By now that decision cannot cost you a file.
Two things decide how much work this is: the plan you are on, which fixes whether originals can be pulled for you or must be downloaded one at a time, and how many places embed your work, because the swap is the one step that does not scale with a click.
What Vimeo’s pages say
Each line in the left column is what Vimeo’s help center or Terms state, fetched 2 September 2026. The right column is the move that makes it harmless, and every one of those moves comes before the cancel button.
Left column read from Vimeo's help center and section 4.4 of Vimeo's Terms of Service, fetched 2 September 2026. Quotation marks mark Vimeo's wording.
Downgrading and deleting are different actions; do the first and postpone the second. A lapse, as the help center describes it, keeps the account and, inside the cap, the URLs. Vimeo’s deleted-videos page says what a lapse can do: “If you canceled your Account, downgraded, or lapsed to another plan, you may have lost access to some of your video storage, and therefore, your videos got deleted.”
The stub is a courtesy, not an archive
Getting the originals out
A source file exists on Vimeo only if a paid plan chose to keep it; by default it is “permanently deleted if you are a Free or Basic member.” Whether it can leave without passing through your connection depends on the plan.
1 GB
Free cap after a lapse
Everything beyond it is restricted, most recent uploads first.
24 h
API download links
Vimeo's download links expire after 24 hours: pulling originals is a job to finish, not to start.
3 GB
One-pass import ceiling
Masters under 3 GB move in one pass; larger ones run as a chunked, resumable job.
None
Bandwidth metered here
The Terms make storage the only meter and set no bandwidth cap, on every plan including the free 1 GB one.
On Standard, Advanced or the other plans Vimeo’s API page names, Pro, Business, Premium and Enterprise, the API exposes a download field with expiring links, and among the qualities it can list is source, the video’s own source file. That is the door the importer uses: connect once and the originals move server to server, nothing re-encoded. The walk-through is at moving Vimeo videos without re-uploading.
On Starter that door is closed, so the original comes out by hand: open the film’s page, Share, then Download, pick the version. Vimeo says “there is no option to download multiple videos in bulk from your library,” so it is one film at a time, logged in, dropped into your library here as it lands. On Free, the download page says the feature “requires a paid plan” and the API exposes nothing either, so there is no download route at all; the master on your drive is the file to upload. Plan by plan, the detail is at downloading original files from Vimeo.
Whichever door you use, what comes back is the file Vimeo stored; if the finishing export on your drive is newer, or Vimeo never kept the source, the drive wins.
Links and embeds
The reason to pay for one more cycle is not the videos, which are here by now. It is the embeds. While the paid plan is live nothing is restricted and no privacy setting moves, so the swap can take an afternoon or a quarter without a page breaking.
Work through the inventory from the most visited page down. Each imported film has its own page and embed here, so a swap is a paste, and the review room takes over the client-feedback part of Vimeo, with comments timecoded and tied to a version. When the list is empty, the paid plan has nothing left to protect.
Then the stub. If years of press and festival listings point at Vimeo URLs, the free account can stay up so those links keep resolving, as the migration guide also says. Be exact about what it can carry, because Vimeo’s lapse page is exact. It serves what fits inside 1 GB, so trim the library on Vimeo to the films the press actually links, and since the most recent uploads are restricted first, leave nothing else. Password, Unlisted and Embed only videos are switched to Private on lapse, so set the stub films to Public first and put the new link in each description. If nothing outside your own site points at Vimeo, skip the stub.
Size the destination before the import: the pricing page carries the rate card and a calculator, and the hot versus cold guide explains which films stay hot and which rushes can go cold.
What does not transfer
Questions
Not on the day, according to Vimeo's help center, though the protection is thin. The account keeps 1 GB; everything past it is restricted, most recent uploads first, and a restricted video cannot be played, edited or downloaded. Source files may be deleted once the subscription ends, and the Terms let Vimeo delete the account outright. Get the files out first.
No. Vimeo's download page says there is currently no option to download multiple videos in bulk from your library. Manual downloads are one film at a time, on a paid plan, logged in. The importer is the bulk path: connect once, select the library, and the files move server to server.
Because Vimeo gates API downloads to Standard, Advanced, Pro, Business, Premium and Enterprise plans, and Starter is not on the list, so the importer has nothing to pull from a Starter account. Download each film from its page while the plan is paid, one at a time, and drop the file in here.
Inside the free cap and at a Public setting, yes, which is what makes a free account usable as a redirect stub. Outside it, no: Vimeo says the clip pages and embeds of restricted videos stop working, shared links no longer play, and Password, Unlisted and Embed only videos are switched to Private. Swap every embed while the paid plan is live.
None that Vimeo publishes for source files on the free tier. The older Basic tier gets 60 days, but Basic is no longer sold and the page on lapsing to Free gives no figure. Other clocks: recently deleted videos are recoverable for 30 days, deleting a restricted video is permanent, and upgrading within a year restores videos moved to archive storage. Treat the last paid day as the last safe day.
Vimeo accepts files up to 300 GB and 24 hours long on every plan. Here, masters under 3 GB move in one pass and larger ones run as a chunked, resumable job that survives a closed laptop. What lands is the file Vimeo stored, byte for byte; on a plan that exposes API downloads, that is the original.
Connect Vimeo once and the films move server to server, originals where your plan exposes them. Storage is the only meter here: Lite 100 GB, Pro 500 GB, Max 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold, Vault 2 TB hot plus 2 TB cold.