How to Export Tumblr Comments (Free and Paid Options)

Learning how to export Tumblr comments is one of those jobs that sounds simple until you try it. Tumblr shows you the comments on a post, but it gives you no button to download them as a spreadsheet. If you are running a giveaway, collecting feedback, or keeping a record of who entered, you need those comments in a file you can sort, search, and draw from — and that means finding another way to get them out.

This guide covers five ways to do it, from free to paid, starting with the simplest. The right method depends on how many comments you have and what you need the file for. A post with twelve comments needs a different answer from a giveaway post with two thousand.

TBLR Picker is the Tumblr Comment Picker: Pick Random Giveaway Winners. It picks a random winner from the comments on your Tumblr post, with filters for required words, excluded words, duplicate removal, tag-a-friend entries, minimum comment length, and replies. You can pick multiple winners, export comments and winners to CSV, and start with a free account — no card required, with 3 free draws in total. Creator is $5/month and Growth is $50/year.

Why Export Tumblr Comments in the First Place?

Most people export comments for one of four reasons, and the reason decides the method.

Giveaways. This is the most common one. A giveaway post collects entries as comments, and you need a clean list of entrants before you can draw a winner fairly. A spreadsheet lets you remove duplicates, check that each entrant used the required word, and keep a record of the draw. If you are running a giveaway, read how to do a giveaway on Tumblr first — it covers the prize, the rules, and the announcement in order, so your export is the last step, not the first thing you think about.

Feedback and research. Comments are the most honest feedback a blog gets. Exporting them lets you search for the same question coming up again and again, count how many people asked for the same thing, and keep quotes for a later post. Artists use this to see which prints people keep asking for; writers use it to see which characters readers mention most.

Records and proof. If you promised a draw, a refund, a commission slot, or a prize, the comments are your record of who said what and when. A saved file settles arguments that a screenshot cannot, because it has every entry in one place instead of a handful of cropped images.

Moving or backing up. If you are leaving Tumblr, changing blogs, or just keeping a backup of your best posts, the comments are part of the post. A post without its comments loses the conversation that made it worth keeping.

Whatever your reason, one rule applies to all of them: only export comments you can already see. Public comments on a public post are fair game for your own records. Private blogs, hidden posts, and comments you cannot see on Tumblr cannot be exported by any honest tool, and any tool that promises otherwise is one to avoid.

Method 1: Copy Comments by Hand

For a small post, the free method is also the fastest: copy the comments yourself.

Open the post on the web, scroll through the replies, and paste each one into a spreadsheet — one row per comment, with columns for the username, the comment text, and the date if it matters. For ten or twenty comments, this takes a few minutes and costs nothing. It also forces you to actually read the entries, which is useful if you need to check them against a rule, like a required word or a tag-a-friend entry.

It stops working at about fifty comments. After that, copying by hand is slow, boring, and error-prone: you will miss one, paste the same one twice, or lose track of where you stopped. It also breaks down when comments keep arriving while you copy, because the list you are copying from keeps changing.

Use this method when the post has fewer than fifty comments, when you need the file today and cannot wait for anything else, or when you only need a handful of specific comments rather than the whole thread. For anything bigger, use one of the methods below.

Method 2: How to Export Tumblr Comments to CSV With TBLR Picker

If the comments are entries in a giveaway, the cleanest export is the one built for that job. A comment picker reads the public comments on your post, applies your entry rules, and gives you the result as a CSV file — the same file you use to draw the winner.

Here is how it works with TBLR Picker. Paste the link to your giveaway post, set your filters — a required word, an excluded word, duplicate removal, a minimum comment length, tag-a-friend, and whether replies count — and run the draw. The tool only reads public comments, and it never posts, votes, or comments on your behalf. You can pick multiple winners in one draw, and you can export the comments and winners to CSV, so the entrant list and the result live in the same file.

This is the method to use when the export is part of a giveaway, because it does two jobs at once: it gives you a clean, filtered entrant list, and it gives you a draw you can show your followers. A random draw from the comments, shown openly, is the method people trust most for a luck-based giveaway, and it is also the method that leaves you with a record. For the draw itself, see how to pick a giveaway winner fairly — it covers the three methods and how to show your followers the draw was fair.

It is not the right tool for every export. It is built for comments on one post, for a giveaway, not for backing up your whole blog. If you need every comment you have ever received, use Method 3 or Method 4 instead.

Method 3: Tumblr's Own Export (Best for Backups, Not for Giveaways)

Tumblr does have a built-in export, and it is free. It is also the wrong tool for a single post's comments, so it is worth knowing exactly what it does before you request one.

On the web, go to Settings, select the blog you want to export, scroll to the Export section, and click Export. Tumblr compiles a backup of that blog and emails you when it is ready — for a large blog this can take hours, and sometimes a day or more. When it is ready, you download a ZIP file containing your posts, messages, and settings as HTML and XML files.

That archive is a backup, not a spreadsheet. Your posts are individual HTML files, not rows in a CSV, and pulling the comments on one post out of it means opening files and searching through them by hand. It is the right choice if you are leaving Tumblr or keeping a full backup of a blog, and the wrong choice if you need a clean list of entrants for a draw this week.

One more limit: the export is web-only, there is no export option in the Tumblr apps, and you can only export one blog at a time. If you run several blogs, you repeat the process for each one.

Method 4: Tumblr Scraper and Exporter Tools

The third-party tools that show up when you search for "tumblr scraper" or "tumblr comment scraper" are mostly browser extensions. They work by reading the posts Tumblr already shows in your browser and saving what they see as a CSV, Excel, or JSON file. Some cover posts, likes, and reblogs as well as replies; some are free for a small number of items and charge for larger exports.

They can be useful, especially for a large thread that is not a giveaway, but they come with three warnings worth taking seriously.

Only use tools for public content you can already see. If you cannot see a post on Tumblr, a scraper cannot export it either. Private blogs, deleted posts, and hidden content stay out of reach, and a tool that claims otherwise is not being honest with you.

Check what the tool asks for before you install it. A scraper that reads the page in your browser is normal. A tool that asks for your Tumblr password, or asks you to log in through a page that is not Tumblr's own, is not. Read the reviews, check how many users it has, and prefer tools that process the data on your own computer rather than sending it to a server you know nothing about.

Expect limits. Free tiers usually cap how many items you can export, and a scraper can only capture what Tumblr has loaded on the page — for a long thread, that often means scrolling through the whole thing first so the comments are actually loaded before you export. The result still needs a check: open the file, count the rows, and compare the total with the note count on the post before you trust it.

Do not pay for a scraper before you have tried the free route for your job. If the post is a giveaway, Method 2 gives you a filtered CSV and a draw in one step. If it is a backup, Method 3 is free and official. A paid scraper earns its price only when you need regular exports of large threads that are neither.

Method 5: The Tumblr API (For Developers Only)

If you can write a script, Tumblr's public API is the fifth option. It lets a program request the posts and notes on a public blog and save the result in whatever format you choose, including CSV. It is free to use for reasonable volumes, and it is the only method here that can be automated — run the same script every week and get a fresh file each time.

It is also the only method that needs real setup: an API key, a script, and time spent handling the way Tumblr pages its results and limits how much you can request at once. For most bloggers that is more work than the export is worth, and for a one-off giveaway it is far slower than Method 2. Use it if you export comments regularly, if you need the data in a specific format no other tool offers, or if you are already comfortable working with APIs. Everyone else should skip it.

How to Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets

Whichever method you used, the file you get is usually a CSV — comma-separated values, a plain-text format that every spreadsheet app can open. Opening it is the easy part; doing it without mangling the text is the part worth getting right.

In Excel: open Excel, go to File, then Open, and choose the CSV file. If the comments contain commas, quotes, or emoji, use the Text Import Wizard and set the file origin to UTF-8, so non-English characters and emoji come through correctly. Once it is open, save it as an .xlsx file so your formatting and filters are kept.

In Google Sheets: go to File, then Import, then Upload, and choose the CSV. Pick "Replace current sheet" and make sure the separator is set to comma. Sheets handles UTF-8 by default, so emoji and non-English text usually survive without any extra steps.

Once the file is open, do three things before you use it. First, freeze the top row, so the column headings stay visible while you scroll. Second, turn on filters, so you can sort by username or search for a word. Third, check for duplicates: sort by username and scan for the same name twice, or use the remove-duplicates feature in Excel or Sheets. A clean file is the whole point of exporting, so spend two minutes making sure it actually is clean.

Choosing the Right Method

If you are still unsure, start with the giveaway question. Is there a prize and a draw? Then Method 2. Is there no draw, just a record you want to keep? Then copy by hand if it is small, or Tumblr's own export if it is your whole blog. The method follows the job, not the other way round.

Privacy: What Not to Export, and What to Do With the File

Comments are other people's words, and a CSV makes them easy to copy, share, and keep forever. That is the point of exporting them — and the reason to handle the file with care.

Only export comments from public posts, and only for a reason you could explain to the people who wrote them: a giveaway draw, a feedback review, or your own backup. Do not export comments to contact people for marketing, do not publish a file full of other people's usernames and words without their permission, and do not keep an export longer than you need it. Once the draw is done and the winner has been announced, delete the file or keep only the winner's row.

Also remember what a comment export is not. It is not a list of your followers, it is not a mailing list, and it does not include anything private. TBLR Picker only reads public comments, and it does not read reblogs, notes, or polls — so if someone entered your giveaway by reblogging instead of commenting, their entry is not in the file. Say so in your giveaway rules, and make commenting the entry method, so nobody is left out by a method they could not see. If you need prize ideas for that giveaway, the Tumblr giveaway ideas post has twelve of them, sorted by audience.

Final Word

There is no single best way to export Tumblr comments, because Tumblr never built one button for it. There is a best way for your post, and it is usually obvious once you know how many comments you have and what the file is for: copy a small thread by hand, use a comment picker export for a giveaway, request Tumblr's own backup for a whole blog, and reach for a scraper or the API only when the job is big enough to justify it.

Export the comments, check the file, run the draw or the review, and then delete the file when you are done. And if the post that produced all those comments was a giveaway, close the loop the way good giveaways do — announce the winner publicly, show the draw, and keep the record. That is what turns a spreadsheet into trust, and trust into entries next time. For the engagement side of that loop, how to get more engagement on Tumblr covers the habits — tags, posting rhythm, reblogs, and giveaways — that bring new people in.