Before you cancel Confluence.

What happens to the data when you cancel Confluence

1. When a paid subscription (Standard, Premium or Enterprise) is canceled, Atlassian stops renewals, the site stays usable for 15 more days after the paid period ends, and then the site is deactivated and its data enters a retention period; if payment is not received within 15 days, the site is likewise unsubscribed and deactivated.

   Plans: Standard, Premium, Enterprise (Atlassian's cancel page says Free plans are deactivated immediately)

   Atlassian’s words

   If we don’t receive payment within 15 days, you will be unsubscribed and your site will be deactivated, which means your app enters a data retention period. ... If you cancel your app subscription, we won’t process any further subscription renewals. After your subscription period ends, you’ll be able to access your site for 15 more days. Your site will then be deactivated, and your apps will enter a data retention period.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

2. Atlassian's storage page says the retention period depends on the plan and billing system, and its table lists 15 days for trials and 60 days for Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans; reactivating within that period restores the data, and after it the data is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. Atlassian's reactivation page gives free subscriptions only 15 days, so the Free figure is disputed between Atlassian's own pages.

   Plans: Trials: 15 days; Free, Standard, Premium, Enterprise: 60 days

   Atlassian’s words

   The length of your app’s data retention period will depend on the plan and billing system. At the end of this data retention period, your app’s data will be permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. ... Plan Data retention period Trials 15 days Free, Standard, Premium or Enterprise plan 60 days ... If you reactivate your subscription within the data retention period, your app's data and preferences will be restored.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

3. Atlassian's reactivation page, in its section for the improved billing experience, says data is kept 15 days after deactivation for free subscriptions and 60 days for paid ones and then permanently deleted; its section for the original billing experience says that once a site is deactivated you have two weeks to pay the outstanding quote or contact Atlassian before the data is permanently deleted. Atlassian's storage page instead lists 60 days for the Free plan.

   Plans: Free: 15 days; paid: 60 days (conflicts with the storage page, which lists 60 days for Free)

   Atlassian’s words

   Your app’s data is retained for 15 days (for free subscriptions) or 60 days (for paid subscriptions) after deactivation. If you reactive your subscription within this data retention period, your app's data and preferences will be restored. At the end of the data retention period, your app’s data will be permanently deleted and can’t be recovered.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

4. Deactivating a Free plan subscription takes effect immediately.

   Plans: Free

   Atlassian’s words

   Subscriptions on the Free plan will be deactivated immediately.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

5. Atlassian can deactivate a Free plan app for inactivity and then permanently deletes its data soon after, with notice sent first.

   Plans: Free

   Atlassian’s words

   Atlassian reserves the right to deactivate your Free Cloud app’s data (e.g. Jira and Confluence) due to inactivity. Any data associated with this Free Cloud app will be permanently deleted soon after. We will send notifications prior to any Free Cloud app deactivation and data deletion.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

6. On termination, Atlassian deletes the data after 15 days for evaluation sites or 60 days for paid sites; the data might remain in Atlassian's encrypted backups for up to 90 days, and any deleted data restored within that period is promptly deleted again.

   Plans: evaluation sites: 15 days; paid sites: 60 days

   Atlassian’s words

   Upon termination or at your request, Atlassian deletes your data (including migration data) after a specified period (15 days for evaluation sites or 60 days for paid sites). The data might remain in our encrypted backups for up to 90 days according to our retention policy. If a restore is needed within this period, any deleted data is promptly re-deleted after restoration.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

7. Deleting Confluence from the Atlassian subscription deletes the Confluence data immediately and removes everyone's access, with no retention period.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   To remove Confluence, you can delete it from your Atlassian app subscription. This will immediately delete your Confluence data and remove Confluence access from all users. No further Confluence renewals will be processed.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

8. Free plan Confluence sites are deactivated after a period of inactivity, and site admins get warning emails first.

   Plans: Free

   Atlassian’s words

   Confluence sites on the Free plan will be deactivated after a period of inactivity. If you’re a site admin, we’ll send you emails to let you know if your site has been inactive and is at risk of being deactivated.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

Who can export what, by plan

1. The Confluence Backup manager exports the whole site: pages, whiteboards, selected user and group settings, Team Calendars data and attachments if selected, but not spaces in the trash and not database content.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   This page tells you how to get a copy of all the content in your Confluence Cloud instance using the backup manager. ... The backup includes the following data: Each space’s default classification level when applicable Pages, including their classification level when applicable Whiteboards Selected user and group settings, such as permissions. ... Team calendar data Attachments (if selected) ... Soft-deleted spaces (spaces placed in the trash) will not be backed up. ... We can’t currently export databases They will appear in the tree when exported but won’t retain their content, data, or functionality.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

2. Space admins can export a whole space or selected content to PDF, CSV, HTML or XML; a CSV export includes attachments and comments by default, and exports contain only content the exporter can see, except CSV or XML exports by a site admin, which include all content.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Space admins can export a space (or a group of individually selected pages in a space) to PDF, CSV, HTML, or XML. ... For CSV, you will export everything you can view, including attachments and comments by default. ... Only content that is visible to you will be exported, except if you are exporting via CSV or XML as a site admin in which case all content will be exported.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

3. Atlassian Backup and Restore can only be run by people who are both organization admins and app admins, can run daily on a schedule, and its backups cannot be downloaded into your own storage.

   Plans: Premium, Enterprise (paid add-on, per the Backup and Restore overview page)

   Atlassian’s words

   Who can back up and restore? You need to have organization admin and app admin permissions to backup and restore data. ... Can I run backups daily? Yes, you can run backups daily. You can schedule them to run automatically. ... Can I download the backup into my storage? No, currently you can’t download a backup into your storage.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

What can stop or limit an export

1. Confluence keeps only one backup file at a time, a new backup overwrites the old one, and the download link works for 14 days.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Only one backup file is stored at a time. Any existing backup is overwritten by the new one. ... After the backup is complete, you will see the link to the backup file. You can download the file by following the link. This link is available for 14 days.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

2. A Confluence backup file can be up to 30 GB plus 800 GB of attachments.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Confluence cloud backup file can be up to 30 GB in total size, plus 800 GB of attachments.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

3. Space exports have gaps: PDF space exports leave out blog posts and never include comments, HTML exports currently do not export page comments and leave out blog posts, and space exports do not include Team Calendars (the site backup does include team calendar data); organizations can also block exports.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Blog posts aren't included when exporting to PDF using this method, and comments are never included when exporting to PDF. Exports do not include Team Calendars. ... Page comments are currently not being exported during HTML export. ... Blog posts aren't included in the HTML export. ... Your organization may choose to prevent people from exporting data in particular product instances or with certain classification levels.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

4. Backup and Restore add-on backups expire on the 31st day and cannot be restored after that, and the add-on can only be bought on Premium or Enterprise plans.

   Plans: Premium, Enterprise (paid add-on)

   Atlassian’s words

   You can purchase the Atlassian Backup and Restore add-on only for the following apps if you have a Premium or Enterprise plan. ... Backups are stored in Atlassian-owned storage for 30 days, and expire on the 31st day. Once a backup expires, you can’t restore it.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

What the export looks like

1. A space export arrives as a zipped archive of CSV, HTML or XML files, or as a single PDF file.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Confluence will create a zipped archive of the CSV, HTML or XML files, or a single, downloadable PDF file.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

2. A Confluence site backup is a zip file holding XML files, at least one named entities.xml, and Confluence Cloud can only import a site backup whose uncompressed XML is 200 megabytes or less.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Site import in Confluence Cloud is restricted to a maximum 200 megabytes for the uncompressed XML files inside the backup zip file. ... Sum the sizes of the XML files in the root directory of the zip file (this will be at least the file named entities.xml and may also include XML files added by plugins).

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

3. Single pages export to Word or PDF, and the Word files open only in Microsoft Word.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   To send a page or a blog post to people who don't have access to Confluence Cloud, you can export it as a Word document or a PDF. ... Due to the format of exported Word files, they can only be opened in Microsoft Word and aren't compatible with other applications like Open Office, Libre Office, or Google Docs.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

What is deleted while you still pay

1. Since January 6, 2025, Confluence permanently deletes spaces that have been in the trash for at least 60 days.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Starting on January 6th, 2025, we will permanently delete spaces that have been in the trash for at least 60 days.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

2. The Confluence audit log keeps events for one year by default and a weekly cleanup deletes older entries; admins can shorten this to 31 days, and records kept longer than 12 months require a CSV export.

   Plans: paid plans (the audit log isn’t available on the Free plan)

   Atlassian’s words

   Events remain in the log, by default, for one year. ... However, you can adjust the log settings to keep events for as short as one standard month (31 days). Once a week the system will run a clean up and delete any log entries that are older than the time frame you’ve set. ... To save a record of logs for longer than 12 months, or to explore the log in more detail, you can export the log to CSV format.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

3. Atlassian keeps its own daily database backups for 30 days but cannot use them to roll back changes such as deleted issues, projects or sites, and it recommends making regular backups of your own.

   Plans: all

   Atlassian’s words

   Automated Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) backups are generated daily and retained for 30 days to allow for point-in-time data restoration. ... We cannot use our RDS backups to roll back changes. These include changes such as fields overwritten using scripts, or deleted issues, projects, or sites. ... To avoid data loss, we recommend making regular backups.

   support.atlassian.com, read October 29, 2026

What Atlassian’s pages do not say

• Atlassian's pages disagree on free plans: the data storage page lists 60 days of retention after deactivation, the reactivation page says 15 days for free subscriptions, and the cloud migration FAQ names only evaluation and paid sites. Until Atlassian settles it, plan on 15 days for a Free site.
• The Confluence backup page does not name the role needed to run Backup manager.