Delete your account

Closing your account deletes all sites you own and all their content. In this guide, you will learn how to close your WordPress.com account and restore it if needed.

Before you can permanently close your WordPress.com account, you must cancel any active subscriptions. Once you cancel active subscriptions, follow these steps to close your WordPress.com account:

1. In your WordPress.com dashboard, hover over your profile icon in the top right and select the “My WordPress.com Account” button to access your account profile.

2. On the left, select Account Settings.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the “Delete your account permanently” option.

4. You will receive an email with instructions to restore your account. Keep this email in case you want to restore your account within 30 days.

Our support team cannot delete your account on your behalf. If you’ve lost access to your account, see our account recovery guide.

When you close your account, the following changes occur:

• All your sites and content will be deleted.
• You will not be able to reuse your email address for a new account for 30 days.
• After 30 days, all data associated with your account will be purged from our servers and cannot be reversed.
• Your account username will be unavailable forever to prevent impersonation.
• You will not be able to log in to any other Automattic services that use your WordPress.com account as a login, including WooCommerce.com, Crowdsignal.com, IntenseDebate.com, and Gravatar.com.

Note: Closing your WordPress.com account also affects other Automattic services. Before proceeding, consider your use of the following services:

• WooCommerce.com: Check your WooCommerce dashboard for purchases and support history you want to keep.
• Gravatar: Your profile images will be removed from all sites.
• Akismet: Your Akismet account will be closed as well.
• Jetpack: Self-hosted sites will disconnect from Jetpack. Approximately 30 days after Jetpack disconnects, your data will be removed from our servers. For some features like Jetpack’s Site Accelerator feature, your images, and static files may be removed from our CDN sooner to free up server space. Download backups if you have a backup plan.

Before closing your account permanently, review these alternatives:

• Cancel your purchases to ensure no future charges from WordPress.com.

• Delete a site in your account, but keep your account.
• Reset your site for a fresh start and continue using the same address.
• Transfer your site to another WordPress.com account.

• Change your username if you are unhappy with it.
• Change your email address.
• Reuse an existing email address.
• Create a new site in your existing account.
• Unsubscribe from WordPress.com email notifications.

You must cancel all active WordPress.com purchases before closing your account. To cancel your purchases, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Purchases page in your WordPress.com account.
2. Cancel each active subscription or upgrade.

Visit our guide on removing subscriptions from your site for detailed instructions.

If you closed your WordPress.com account in error, you can restore the account within 30 days. After 30 days, the account and all of its associated data is purged from our system and cannot be recovered.

To restore a closed account:

1. Locate the email you received when you closed your account (subject: “Your account [username] has been deleted”).
2. Open this email, and click the “Restore account” button in the email.
3. On the confirmation screen, click the “I made a mistake! Restore my account” link.
4. On the next screen, log into your restored account.
5. Optionally, visit https://wordpress.com/sites to restore any sites that were deleted when you deleted your account.

If you are unable to locate the email or restore your account, please contact us immediately. We will assist you in reopening your account during this 30-day window. However, once the 30 days have passed, all your sites and account data are purged and cannot be restored.