How long does a large board take?

Reading the board is the fast half: 50,000 pins in 99.4 seconds in the project's own soak test. Writing the files is the slower half, and it depends on your connection and on the size of the media rather than on the number of pins.

Why is my file count lower than the pin count?

Because the same photograph is pinned many times over. On the live board tour, 41,367 pins produced 18,744 files, and every merged row was a copy of an image already in the set. Nothing was skipped and nothing was lost.

What happens to the files if I close the tab halfway?

They stay. Files are written to your machine as they finish, so stopping a run early ends it, it does not undo it.

Scale

Pinterest bulk downloader: what a whole board run counts

Downloading one pin is a single request. Downloading a whole board is a different kind of task, and most of the difference is invisible from the outside. This is what happens between pressing start and getting a folder, including the arithmetic that makes the file count smaller than the pin count.

Updated August 19, 20264 min read4 sections

A board is not a list, it is a stream

Pinterest does not hand a page the whole board at once. It sends a screenful, then another when you scroll, and keeps going for as long as you keep going. Nothing on the page ever holds the complete set, which is why no amount of selecting on screen can select a board.

A bulk run walks that same stream the way a person would, without stopping. That is why the count climbs steadily instead of appearing all at once, and why the first pass over a board you have never scrolled takes longer than a second pass over one you have.

The board sets the pace, not the tool: a run can only take what the next screenful contains.
Two sections of one board can hold the same pin, and both copies arrive in the stream.
Some rows point at media that is no longer there, and those arrive as well.

What a run counts, and what it merges

Two numbers describe the same board and they are rarely equal. One is how many pins the board lists. The other is how many distinct files those pins point at. The second is smaller, often much smaller, and that difference is the most misunderstood part of a bulk download.

The reason is repinning. A photograph that has travelled through Pinterest for years exists as hundreds of pins, each with its own identity, all pointing at one image on Pinterest's own network. Saving each of them separately would fill a folder with the same picture under different names, so a copy of an image already in the set is merged while the board is being read.

One live board, walked end to end

What was counted	Result
Pins the board listed	41,367
Copies of an image already in the set	22,621
Rows whose pin and media did not agree	2
Files written	18,744

Pins the board listed

Result: 41,367

Copies of an image already in the set

Result: 22,621

Rows whose pin and media did not agree

Result: 2

Files written

Result: 18,744

Reconciled row by row: the merged copies and the files add back up to the pins, with nothing unaccounted for. The same board read again a week later listed 41,368 pins, one more than the first pass.

Where the ceiling actually is

There are two ceilings and they have nothing to do with each other. One belongs to your plan. The other belongs to the machine, and it is the one people mean when they ask whether something can handle a big board.

The free plan covers 50 files in any rolling 24 hours. The window moves with each export rather than resetting at midnight, and a file counts once it has landed. Lifetime removes the daily cap under the acceptable-use policy.

Measured, not promised

Measurement	Result
Pins read in a soak test	50,000
Time that read took	99.4 seconds
Peak memory during it	28.4 MB
Files written into one folder	15,000
Filename collisions among them	0

Pins read in a soak test

Result: 50,000

Time that read took

Result: 99.4 seconds

Peak memory during it

Result: 28.4 MB

Files written into one folder

Result: 15,000

Filename collisions among them

Result: 0

The soak test runs against a stand-in for Pinterest so it can be repeated on demand. The board above was the real thing. Both describe those runs, and neither is a promise about yours.

When a run stops early

Tabs get closed, sessions expire, laptops go to sleep. None of that costs you the files you already have, because each file is written as it completes rather than assembled at the end.

A run that stops halfway leaves a half-finished folder rather than an empty one, and starting again picks up on a board your browser has now partly loaded.

Files already written stay written.
Stopping ends a run, it does not undo it.
Only files that landed count against the daily allowance.

Common questions

How long does a large board take?: Reading the board is the fast half: 50,000 pins in 99.4 seconds in the project's own soak test. Writing the files is the slower half, and it depends on your connection and on the size of the media rather than on the number of pins.
Why is my file count lower than the pin count?: Because the same photograph is pinned many times over. On the live board tour, 41,367 pins produced 18,744 files, and every merged row was a copy of an image already in the set. Nothing was skipped and nothing was lost.
What happens to the files if I close the tab halfway?: They stay. Files are written to your machine as they finish, so stopping a run early ends it, it does not undo it.

What a run can reach.

Boards, profiles and search results, the ways files come out, and which of them the free plan covers.

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