How to delete your WordPress.com account
WordPress.com is Automattic's hosted version of WordPress, running millions of blogs, newsletters, portfolios and online stores. Your account holds far more than a blog: every post, page, comment, and media file on every site you own, your username and email, your public Gravatar profile (avatar, display name, bio and linked web address that appears anywhere on the web you comment), registered domain names and their registrant contact details, billing and payment records, subscriber lists and site statistics. The same login is also the single sign-on for Gravatar.com, Akismet, Jetpack, WooCommerce.com, Crowdsignal.com and IntenseDebate.com, so closing it takes all of those with it.
Delete your WordPress.com account, step by step
- 1Sign in to WordPress.com on a desktop browser — the official help doc states support staff cannot close an account for you
- 2Cancel every active subscription first. Go to https://my.wordpress.com/me/billing/purchases and cancel everything under "Active Upgrades" — plans, domains, Professional Email, premium themes and plugins. WordPress.com will not let you close the account while a purchase is active
- 3Back up your content: open your site's dashboard, go to "Tools → Export", choose "All content", and click "Download Export File". Repeat for each site you own
- 4Hover over your name at the top right corner of any screen while logged into WordPress.com
- 5Select the "My WordPress.com account" button
- 6Scroll to the bottom of the Account Settings screen and click the "Delete your account permanently" option
- 7Follow the on-screen confirmation prompts (you may be asked to type your username or site address to confirm)
- 8Check your inbox for the email with the subject "Your account [username] has been deleted" and keep it for 30 days — it contains the only "Restore account" link
- 9Wait 30 days. Once the window closes, all data associated with the account is purged from Automattic's servers and the deletion cannot be reversed
What actually happens when you delete
Gets removed
- ✓Every site you own on WordPress.com, including all posts, pages, comments, media library files and the site addresses themselves
- ✓Your account username, real name, email address and other personal details
- ✓Your public Gravatar profile and avatar, which is removed from every site across the web that displays it
- ✓Your Akismet account (and its API key) is closed along with the WordPress.com login
- ✓Login access to all other Automattic services that use the account — WooCommerce.com, Crowdsignal.com, IntenseDebate.com and Gravatar.com
- ✓Jetpack connections for any self-hosted WordPress sites are severed; data Jetpack synced to Automattic is then handled under Automattic's privacy policy. Download any Jetpack Backup archives before you close the account, because you lose access to them
Stays behind
- ✗Comments you left on other WordPress.com sites are NOT deleted — they stay visible unless the site owner removes them, so you must contact each site owner directly
- ✗Your username is retired forever and can never be re-registered, by you or anyone else — the help doc says it is "unavailable forever to prevent impersonation"
- ✗Your email address is blocked from being used for a new WordPress.com account for 30 days after deletion
- ✗Your site address (yoursite.wordpress.com) can never be reused, by you or anyone else, even on a new account
- ✗Deleted content can persist in Automattic's backups and caches until they are purged; web server logs containing your IP address and browser details are kept for approximately 30 days
- ✗Billing, payment and invoice records Automattic is legally required to retain for tax and accounting purposes
- ✗Copies of your published posts already captured by the Wayback Machine, search engine indexes, RSS readers, or distributed through Automattic's public "Firehose" stream of public posts and comments
- ✗Self-hosted WordPress.org sites and your separate WordPress.org / WordCamp / bbPress forum account, which are entirely unaffected
Before you delete
Three real gotchas. First, there is a hard prerequisite chain: you cannot close the account until every active subscription is cancelled, and cancelling a domain is not the same as transferring it — move any domain you want to keep to another registrar first. Second, deletion is broader than most users expect: this is an Automattic-wide identity, so your Gravatar avatar vanishes from comment threads all over the web and you lose WooCommerce.com access and any Jetpack Backup archives at the same time. Third, the 30-day undo depends entirely on one email — the "Your account [username] has been deleted" message is the only place the "Restore account" link exists, so do not delete it, and restoring the account does not restore your sites (each must be restored separately from the Hosting Dashboard). Also note that your email address is locked out of new-account signup for 30 days, and comments you left on other people's WordPress.com blogs survive your closure and must be chased down with each site owner. WordPress.com has been migrating its logged-in dashboard to my.wordpress.com; wordpress.com/me/... links generally still land in the right place.
Download your data from WordPress.com first
Most platforms only honor a data-export request while the account is still active. Do this before you delete.
- 1Keep the site set to public visibility, because the destination site fetches your images directly from it during import
- 2Visit your site's dashboard
- 3Navigate to "Tools → Export"
- 4Choose "All content" to export everything, or select specific content types
- 5Click the "Download Export File" button and wait 1-2 minutes for the file to generate and download
- 6You receive an XML (WXR) file containing posts, pages, comments, categories and tags — plus links to your images, not the image files themselves. Themes, customizations and plugins are not included. Sites with roughly 1,000+ posts/pages get a .zip of multiple XML files, each imported individually
- 7Because media is only referenced, keep the original site public and online until the new site has finished copying images across — the official guide warns this can take several hours for image-heavy sites
- 8If the export fails on a large site, export in smaller portions by filtering to specific dates, authors or categories rather than exporting everything at once
Want to take a break instead? Deactivate
Deactivation hides your profile without permanently destroying it. Logging back in restores everything.
- 1WordPress.com has no account-level "deactivate" state, but you can take a site fully offline without deleting anything:
- 2Visit your site's dashboard
- 3Navigate to "Settings → Reading"
- 4Scroll to the "Site Visibility" section
- 5Choose "Private" (visible only to you and users you approve) or "Coming Soon" (hidden from visitors while you work on it)
- 6Click "Save Changes"
- 7To stop all billing without closing the account, cancel your purchases at https://my.wordpress.com/me/billing/purchases — the site reverts to a free WordPress.com site rather than being deleted.
If deletion fails — or you live in the EU, UK, or California
You have a legal right to request erasure of your personal data under GDPR (EU/UK) and CCPA (California). Use these official channels if the self-service flow doesn't work.
WordPress.com deletion FAQs
Why won't WordPress.com let me delete my account?+
Almost always because you still have an active purchase — the official close-account guide requires you to cancel any active subscriptions before the account can be closed. That includes paid plans, registered domains, Professional Email, and premium themes or plugins. Go to https://my.wordpress.com/me/billing/purchases, cancel everything under "Active Upgrades", then retry. If you own a domain you want to keep, transfer it to another registrar first — cancelling a domain registration is a separate process from transferring it, and WordPress.com documents the two under different guides.
Can I get my WordPress.com account back after I delete it?+
Yes, but only within 30 days and only via the deletion email. Find the message with the subject "Your account [username] has been deleted", click the "Restore account" button, then click the "I made a mistake! Restore my account" link on the confirmation screen and log back in. Your sites are not restored automatically — after restoring the account, restore each deleted site separately from your Hosting Dashboard. If you have lost access to that email, contact WordPress.com support within the window; they can help with restoration. After 30 days all data is purged from Automattic's servers and cannot be reversed. Note that your email address also cannot be used for a new account for those 30 days.
Can I reuse my username or my sitename.wordpress.com address later?+
No to both. The help doc states your account username "will be unavailable forever to prevent impersonation", so nobody — including you — can ever register it again. A deleted site's WordPress.com address is likewise permanently gone and cannot be reclaimed, even by you on a new account. If you only dislike your username, change it in Account Settings instead of closing the account.
Does deleting my WordPress.com account delete my self-hosted WordPress site?+
No. WordPress.com (Automattic's hosted service) and WordPress.org (the free open-source software you install on your own host) are separate things with separate accounts. Closing your WordPress.com account only disconnects Jetpack from your self-hosted site — the site itself, and your host's copy of it, stay online. To erase a WordPress.org profile, use the separate data erasure request form at https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/data-erasure-request/; that form warns it "will not erase your support forum activity" — topics and replies remain, associated with an anonymized account.
What happens to my Gravatar, Akismet and WooCommerce accounts?+
They go too, because they share the same login. The close-account guide states that your Gravatar profile images are removed from all sites, your Akismet account is closed, and you lose access to WooCommerce.com, Crowdsignal, IntenseDebate and Gravatar. It explicitly advises reviewing your WooCommerce dashboard for purchases you want to keep, and downloading any Jetpack backups, before you close the account.
How do I delete just one blog and keep my account?+
Go to your Hosting Dashboard at my.wordpress.com, select the site, click "Settings" in the left sidebar, scroll to "Delete site" and click "Delete", remove any active paid plans or domains if prompted, type the full site address to confirm, and click "Delete Site". You have 30 days to restore it — filter your Hosting Dashboard to show deleted sites and choose restore. Softer options the same guide lists: make the site private, cancel purchases to revert to a free site, change the site address, reset the site, or transfer it to another account.
Can I ask support to delete my account for me?+
No — the official guide says outright that "our support team cannot delete your account on your behalf." You must do it from Account Settings while logged in. If you are locked out, work through https://wordpress.com/support/account-recovery/ first; its Account Recovery form does not require you to log in. Separately, if you are in the EU, UK or a US state with a privacy law, you can exercise deletion rights through the web form Automattic's privacy policy points to at https://wordpress.com/help/contact/, by emailing [email protected] from the address on the account, or by phone at 1-877-273-3049. Automattic may deny a request where it is legally required to keep the data; denials come in writing, appeals are reviewed by an internal expert not involved in the original decision, and in some US states a denied appeal can be escalated to your state attorney general.
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