How to get your recipes out of Pinterest

A recipe pin on Pinterest is a pointer. The ingredients and steps live on the website the pin links to. Pinterest does not store them. So the useful thing to save from a board is each pin's link to the original site. Pinterest has no board export button in anything we read. It does have a data request, but it does not say what that download contains.

Steps

Request your Pinterest data

This is the one official route to a copy of your account, and Pinterest says you can request it at any time. The steps are from Pinterest's help article.

On the web:

1. Log in and click the more-options icon at the bottom left.
2. Choose Settings, then Privacy and data.
3. Under Request your data, click Start request.

In the app:

1. Tap your profile picture at the bottom right, then your profile photo at the top left. On a business account, tap the ellipsis at the top right and choose Settings instead.
2. Choose Privacy and data.
3. Choose Request your data, then Start request.

Pinterest emails a link to the address on your account, within "up to 48 hours". It is sent through a service called SendSafely, and only the account holder can open it. Another Pinterest help article says to make the request from a web browser, so the web steps are the safer choice.

Pinterest's help does not say what format the download is in or which fields it has. Articles by other sites disagree about it, so this guide does not describe it. Open yours and see.

Save the source link of each recipe pin

This is the route that works for recipes.

1. Open the pin.
2. Follow its link to the original website.
3. Copy the website's address into a note or spreadsheet, with the recipe's name.

Do this for each recipe you want to keep.

What comes out and what does not

• A recipe pin holds: a link, a title, a description and its images. Pinterest's own developer code also lists a private note. It has no ingredients or steps field.
• Rich pins: the title, serving size, cook time, ratings, diet and ingredients that some recipe pins show are pulled from the source website's markup, per Pinterest's rich pins page. They are not entered on Pinterest.
• The recipe text: it exists only on the source page. If that page is gone, so is the recipe.
• Video and Idea pins: in a check Halite ran in September 2026, these had no link to an outside site. For these there is nothing to save but a screenshot or what you type yourself.
• Your boards: board names come with Pinterest's developer interface, but the data request does not document them.

Pinterest has a developer interface (an API) that can list boards and pins. It requires an approved developer app, so it is not a practical route for most people. See Pinterest's developer docs.

Tips

• Dead links are common on the web. No study of Pinterest links exists that we could find. As a general measure, Pew Research found that some 38 percent of web pages from 2013 were gone by October 2023, and about 8 percent of pages from 2023. See Pew's report. It is not specific to recipes or Pinterest.
• Save the recipes you actually cook first. Open the link and check the recipe is still there.
• Watch for spam pins. Plan to Eat warns that some pins lead to unrelated sites.

Where to take your recipes

No recipe app we found imports a whole board from a Pinterest download. The apps below take one pin or one web address at a time.

• Plain files. Keep your list of recipe names and links in a spreadsheet or note. It costs nothing and works anywhere.
• ReciMe says to open a pin, choose Share, then More, then ReciMe. It finds the original recipe site linked from the pin. Its help covers single pins only. See ReciMe's help.
• Plan to Eat says to open the pin and use its Recipe Clipper if the recipe is in the pin details, or clip from the original website. It has no board import. See Plan to Eat's help.
• Halite takes a single pin address, including short pin.it links. It follows the pin to the original website and imports the recipe from there, credited to that site. If the original page holds several recipes, the web app lists up to 12 for you to choose from. It does not take board or profile addresses, and it has no bulk import for Pinterest. It handles one address at a time. If a pin will not import, open it and paste the original site's address instead. A video pin with no link returns a message asking for the original site's link.

Halite keeps a recipe's source and the order of its steps. It does not promise the original wording. If the original site is gone, there is nothing to import.