This article explains what happens when your paid plan lapses to the Free plan.
Unsure which Vimeo plan type you have? Check “Membership” in the upper left corner of your account settings.
If your paid Vimeo plan lapses, your account is not deleted and neither are your videos. It moves to the Free plan.
Your plan lapses if you turn off auto-renewal, cancel your subscription, leave a failed payment unresolved, or let your subscription expire.
What do I keep on the Free plan?
- 3 GB of Managed storage (5 GB if your account was on Basic), plus unlimited public videos with embedding turned off
- 1 TB of bandwidth per month for managed videos, unlimited for public videos
- One seat, for the account owner
- Five showcases, one channel and one group
- Viewer analytics, video editing tools, one review link per video and native publishing
What do I lose?
Everything included in the Free plan keeps working. Everything else stops. In practice, you lose:
- Team: seats for other members, team members and admin roles.
- Privacy: password protection, unlisted links, embed-only and domain-level embed privacy. Videos on those settings switch to Private.
- Player: custom player appearance, brand kit, fonts, end cards, calls-to-action and third-party player support.
- Storage: more than 3 GB of Managed storage, and more than 1 TB of monthly bandwidth for managed videos.
- Analytics: advanced and team-level analytics.
- Creation: stock footage, text-based editing and teleprompter scripts.
- Reviewing and organising: unlimited review links and unlimited showcases, channels and groups.
- Business: lead capture with custom forms, marketing integrations such as Mailchimp and HubSpot, and Vimeo On Demand.
- Live: virtual events and webinars, event analytics and live Q&A.
- Support: priority support.
What counts toward my storage limit?
Only Managed storage counts toward your allowance. Managed storage covers private videos, unlisted videos, password-protected videos, and public videos that can be embedded.
Public videos with embedding turned off do not count toward the Free plan allowance, and you can keep any number of them.
What happens to my videos if I go over the limit?
Locked videos are not deleted. If your library is larger than your plan allowance, some videos become locked. They stay in your account and become fully accessible again as soon as your library fits inside the allowance.
A locked video is read-only. You cannot play it, edit it or download it. Its clip page and its embeds stop working, and any link you shared stops playing.
Locking starts with your newest uploads. Videos are locked in reverse upload order, one upload at a time, until what remains fits inside the allowance. Your oldest videos stay accessible for as long as the rest of your library fits.
While you are over the limit, you can still upload new videos, but you cannot embed them or change their privacy to anything other than Public until you free up Managed storage or upgrade. Public videos with embedding turned off can still be uploaded.
To restore access, upgrade to a plan whose allowance covers your library, or delete videos to free up space.
Deleting a locked video is permanent. It does not go to Recently deleted and cannot be recovered, and because you cannot download it you cannot save a copy first.
To check your usage, open the storage tracker in the bottom-left corner of your library, or check your account settings.
What happens to my team?
Team members keep their own account. A team member is given their own free Vimeo account when they accept a team invitation. If your account lapses, they lose access to the team account but keep their free personal account.
You get the team back when you return to a paid plan. If you return to a paid plan with multiple seats, the team regains access to the team account, with the data and the access grants preserved.
Videos your team uploaded stay with the account. Videos your team members add are tied to the account, not to the person who uploaded them. When the account lapses, those videos stay with the owner's account, available or in archive storage, and do not move to the team member's personal account.
What happens to my source files?
Storing source files is costly, so we only store them for paying members. If your account lapses to a free plan, any source files stored on Vimeo are deleted after 60 days and cannot be recovered. The HD and SD versions of your videos remain available.
How are privacy and embed settings impacted?
- Password, Unlisted and Embed only: videos set to any of these are switched to Private.
- New passwords: you cannot set a password on videos while on a free plan. You can set password protection again after upgrading.
- Existing passwords: videos that already have a password keep it until you change the setting, but no new passwords can be added.
- Private Mode: if your account is in Private Mode when it lapses, all your videos are set to Private.
- Player customizations: these revert to the default player appearance for free accounts.
- Domain-level privacy: if you have domain-level privacy set on a video, its embed privacy becomes Nowhere. Change it to Anywhere to keep the video embedded.
- Renewing: your settings are restored automatically if you renew your paid membership. Any video you have not modified since lapsing returns to how it was before.
What happens to my collections?
You keep and can edit the groups, channels and showcases you created as a paid member, but you cannot create new ones beyond the limits of your free plan: one channel, one group and five showcases.
Do I lose access to developer tools and the API?
Access to the Vimeo API remains valid, along with your account API apps and your authentication tokens, after your membership lapses or expires. You can no longer use the API to access some account features, such as retrieving direct file links or setting domain-level embed privacy.
Do I get everything back if I restore to a paid plan?
Locked videos unlock as soon as your new plan covers your library, with their original links and embeds. If you upgrade within a year of lapsing, any videos moved to archive storage are restored. Moving them back can take some time.