This article is for customers lapsing from Starter, Standard, or Advanced plans. If you are lapsing from Plus, Pro, Business, or Premium, read this instead.
Unsure which Vimeo plan type you have? Check “Membership” in the upper left corner of your account settings.
If you turn off auto-renewal for your Starter, Standard, or Advanced plan on Vimeo, your account will downgrade to the Free plan once your subscription expires. This article discusses what will change in your account when you cancel your subscription and downgrade to Free.
In this article:
- What features do I lose when I lapse to Free?
- What happens to my team members if I lapse to Free?
- What happens to my videos when my paid plan lapses to Free?
- What happens to videos that team members uploaded to my account?
- Do I get everything back if I restore to a paid plan?
- How are privacy and embed settings impacted when my account lapses?
- What happens to my collections when my account lapses?
- Do I lose access to developer tools and the API if my account lapses?
What features do I lose when I lapse to Free?
You may not be able to add more videos to your account when you lapse to Free, depending on how much you uploaded while on a paid plan. Read more at How much video content can I store on my Vimeo account? In addition, the features you lose access to depend on which plan you were on before lapsing:
- If you lapse from the Advanced plan: You will lose all features related to streaming virtual events, including broadcast tools, webinar hosting and registration, event analytics, live Q&A, polls, and audience chat, stream health monitoring, and marketing integrations (Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Campaign Monitor, Heap). Note that all videos that are archives of live events will move into our archive storage.
- If you lapse from the Standard plan: You will lose access to stock media for video creation and editing, video and player branding options, custom call-to-actions & end cards, lead capture with custom forms, and Vimeo On Demand. Any VOD titles you have for sale or rental will no longer be available.
- If you lapse from the Starter plan: You will lose access to player customization options, automatic closed captions and transcript editing, version history & video replacement, video chaptering & SEO, shared team workspaces, video review tools, password protection and unlisted link sharing, and advanced video analytics.
What happens to my team members if I lapse to Free?
When added to a team on your account, team members are provided their own free Vimeo account.
If your account lapses to Free, team members will no longer have access to the team account. However, they will retain their own free personal accounts.
If you move back to a paid plan with multiple seats for team members, your team will regain access to the team account with data and access grants preserved.
What happens to my videos when my paid plan lapses to Free?
If you downgrade from a paid plan to Free, your storage allowance will reflect the entitlements of your new plan. If your library is larger than the Free plan's 1 GB limit, some of your videos will be restricted until you either reduce your library size or upgrade to a plan with the necessary storage allowance.
Restricted videos are not deleted — they remain in your account and will reappear as fully accessible the moment your library fits inside the cap (whether by upgrading or by deleting other videos to free up space). However, while restricted:
- The videos cannot be played, edited, or downloaded.
- Their clip pages and embeds will stop working, and any links you have shared will no longer play.
Which of my videos count toward the limit?
All videos in your library count, regardless of their privacy setting — public, unlisted, and private videos all take up space against your plan's allowance. Many customers are surprised by this: even videos that are not shared anywhere still count toward the cap.
To see your total usage, hover over the storage tracker in the bottom-left corner of your library. It reflects every video in the account.
Which of my videos get restricted first?
Videos are restricted in reverse upload order — newest first. If your library is over the cap:
- Your most recent uploads are the first to become restricted.
- Your oldest videos stay accessible for as long as the rest of your library fits within your plan's allowance.
- Restriction continues backwards through your library, one upload at a time, until what remains fits inside the cap.
If you delete videos to free up space, the next restricted video in line will be unlocked automatically as soon as there is enough room for it. This means deleting (or downloading-then-deleting) a few of your newest large uploads is usually the fastest way to bring an older video you want to keep back online — without needing to upgrade.
How do I get a restricted video back?
You have two options:
- Upgrade to a plan with more storage at vimeo.com/upgrade. If the new plan's cap covers your full library, every restricted video is immediately unlocked, including its original links and embeds.
- Reduce your library by deleting videos you no longer need. As soon as the remainder fits within the cap, the next restricted video in line is unlocked automatically.
You can check your current usage at any time in account settings, or in the lower-left corner of your library.
What happens to videos that team members uploaded to my account?
Videos your team members add are tied to the account, not the person who uploaded them. When the account lapses to the Free plan, those videos will remain with the owner’s account, either actively available or in archive storage as described above. They do not transition to the team member’s personal account.
Do I get everything back if I restore to a paid plan?
If you upgrade to a paid plan within a year of lapsing, any of your videos moved to our archive storage will be restored (please note that it may take some time for the videos to be moved from our archive storage back into your account).
How are privacy and player customization settings impacted when my account lapses?
A few settings will change when you lapse:
- Videos set to the Unlisted and Hide from Vimeo privacy settings will be switched to Private instead.
- If your account is in Private Mode and you lapse, all your videos will be set to the Private setting.
- Videos with a password will keep the password until you change your settings, but passwords cannot be added to videos once you're on a Free account.
- Any videos with player customizations will revert to the default player appearance options for Free accounts.
- If you have domain-level privacy set on your video, your embed privacy setting will be changed to “Nowhere.” You must change the setting to “Anywhere” to keep it embedded.
- Your custom settings will automatically be restored if you renew your paid membership. Any videos you haven’t modified since lapsing will return to how they were before your account lapsed to Free.
What happens to my collections when my account lapses?
You will keep and be able to edit the groups, channels, and showcases you created as a paid member, but you will not be able to create new ones beyond the limits in place for Free accounts.
Do I lose access to developer tools and the API if my account lapses?
Access to the Vimeo API, your account’s API apps, and authentication tokens will remain valid even if your membership status lapses or expires. However, you will no longer be able to use the API to access specific account features, such as retrieving direct file links or setting domain-level embed privacy.