Finding and exporting your GitLab data

What it holds

Projects join Git repositories with issue threads, merge requests, wikis and release records. CI outputs, registries and operational configuration form additional data sets that project exports do not fully preserve.

Where GitLab shows the size

1. Open the top-level group as Owner, or a project as Maintainer or Owner.
2. Choose Search or go to, locate the group or project, then open Settings > Usage quotas > Storage.
3. Record repository and LFS usage in GB, allowing for a refresh delay of up to 90 minutes. Avoid adding group totals to their constituent project totals.

Plan and admin role. Group quota visibility requires Owner. Project quota access and project exports require Maintainer or Owner.

Exporting the full history

1. Run git clone --mirror REPOSITORY_URL for each code repository.
2. In each project open Settings > General > Advanced > Export project.
3. Download the prepared archive from the same area promptly; export files are cleaned up every 24 hours. Repeat for all projects.

Project exports include wiki repositories, issue comments, merge-request diffs/comments, labels, milestones, snippets, releases, LFS, archived pipelines and design-management files.

They omit CI/CD variables, job logs and artifacts, package/container registries, webhooks, triggers and secure files.

GitLab.com limits export files to 5 GB; Self-Managed administrators configure the limit, with no limit by default. Rates are six project exports per minute and one download per project per minute.

Group direct transfer produces no downloadable archive. It requires source-group Owner, an api-scoped token, a destination instance and supported instance versions (16.8 or later is required).

You don't need to run an export to talk to us, and there's no need to clean it first — removing personal data is part of our work.