Quick answer
Open LinkedIn on desktop, go to Settings & Privacy, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data, choose the larger archive that includes connections, and request it. LinkedIn emails a download link within 24 to 48 hours, good for 72 hours, with a Connections.csv file of your first-degree connections only.
How do you export your LinkedIn connections?
I build LinkedIn and cold email lists for B2B clients every week, and the first export I ask a new client to run is usually their own LinkedIn connections, not a purchased list. It's free, it's already warm, and most people have never pulled it.
LinkedIn doesn't put an export button on the connections page itself. The file comes out of your privacy settings instead. Go to Settings & Privacy, then Data privacy, then Get a copy of your data, then pick the option for the larger archive that includes connections, and request it. LinkedIn emails a link to a zip file, and a Connections.csv sits inside it, exactly as described on LinkedIn's own export-connections help page.
Step by step: LinkedIn's own data export tool
The whole process runs through one settings screen. No extension, no login to a third-party tool, no browser plugin.
- Click your profile photo (the Me icon) in the top navigation bar.
- Select Settings & Privacy from the dropdown.
- Click Data privacy in the left-hand pane.
- Under "How LinkedIn uses your data," click Get a copy of your data.
- Choose "Download larger data archive, including connections, verifications, contacts, account history, and information we infer about you based on your profile and activity."
- Click Request archive and confirm with your password.
- Wait for the email, open the zip it links to, and pull out Connections.csv.
This is the same request path LinkedIn documents directly, and it's the one I point clients to rather than any paid tool, because for your own first-degree connections it's the cleanest source there is.
Tip. Request the archive before you actually need the list, not the day before a deadline. The email can take up to two days to arrive and the download link expires 72 hours after that, so plan the request with a few days of slack.
What's actually in the Connections.csv file
LinkedIn's own account-data page describes the connections category as containing "the first and last name, public profile URL, email address, company, position, and connection date for all 1st degree connections," per its download-your-data help page. That's seven usable columns: First Name, Last Name, URL, Email Address, Company, Position, and Connected On. No phone number column, no headline, no location. If you need more than that, you're building an enrichment step on top of this file, not replacing it.
Why are some email addresses missing from my export?
Because the export only ever shows what a connection chose to make visible. LinkedIn states this plainly on the same help page: "You will only see email addresses for connections who have allowed their connections to see or download their email address." Most people never touch that setting, so in practice a large share of rows come back with an empty email column, sometimes most of them.
When that happens on a client's file, I don't try to fill the gap by guessing a pattern. I run it through a paid data tool built for exactly this, and I've compared the two I use most often for that kind of lookup in RocketReach vs Apollo for cold email contacts, including the real cost per verified email at the volume a typical connections export produces. If a name still comes back empty after that, the manual route I fall back on is in how to find someone's email from their LinkedIn profile.
The 1st-degree limit: what you can't get this way
LinkedIn is explicit about the boundary: "You currently can't export a list of your contacts that aren't 1st-degree connections." Second and third-degree connections, group members, people who've engaged with your posts: none of that comes out of this tool. It's a list of people who already accepted your invitation or whose invitation you accepted, nothing wider.
There's a smaller limitation worth flagging too. The same help page notes that CSV and vCard "don't support all characters," so names in languages with extended character sets, Chinese, Japanese, or Hebrew among them, aren't supported in the export. If a meaningful share of your network is in one of those markets, expect some rows to come through broken or blank on the name field.
How long it takes, and how long the link lasts
LinkedIn's download-your-data page says the larger archive, the one that includes connections, "you'll receive an email within 24 hours." The same page separately lists Connections among the data categories available within 48 hours rather than the faster tier, so the honest range to plan around is up to two days, not a guaranteed same-day turnaround. Once the email lands, the download link stays active for 72 hours before you'd need to request a fresh one.
Why I don't recommend scraper extensions for this
For your own connections, there's no reason to reach for a browser extension that scrapes the page instead. LinkedIn's User Agreement bans using "software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (such as crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape or copy the Services," and separately bans "bots or other unauthorized automated methods to access the Services, add or download contacts." Those clauses exist specifically to catch tools that do what a scraper extension does.
I cover the broader pattern of what actually trips an account restriction in LinkedIn daily limits: what gets an account restricted, and automated scraping sits near the top of that list. For a list LinkedIn already hands you for free through an official settings screen, taking on that risk doesn't buy you anything.
Native export vs. the alternatives
People land on a scraper or a CRM "sync your LinkedIn" button mostly because they don't know the native export exists. Here's how the real options compare for pulling your own connections.
| Method | What you get | Time | Account risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn's own data export | Name, profile URL, email (if shared), company, position, connection date; 1st-degree only | Up to 48 hours, link active 72h | None, built into LinkedIn's own terms |
| Browser scraper extension | Similar or richer fields, sometimes beyond your own connections | Minutes | Violates the User Agreement's anti-scraping and bot clauses |
| CRM "sync your LinkedIn contacts" | Whatever that vendor's own integration pulls | Minutes to a few hours | Depends on whether the vendor uses LinkedIn's own export under the hood or its own scraper, worth asking before you connect your account |
| Manual copy-paste | Whatever's visible on each profile you open | Slow, doesn't scale past a few dozen | None, just impractical |
What to do with the file once you have it
A raw connections export is a list, not a sequence. Before I let a client run anything against it, I check three things: how stale the company and title fields are against each person's current profile, how many email cells are actually filled in versus blank, and whether the list is large enough to segment by role or industry rather than blasting it as one group.
Email and LinkedIn run as one sequence for the B2B clients I work with, so a connections list like this often starts on the LinkedIn side rather than opening cold on email. These are people who already said yes to connecting with you once, so the first message can reference that instead of introducing yourself from zero.
Why this feature exists: GDPR's right to data portability
LinkedIn didn't build this export out of generosity. Article 20 of the GDPR gives individuals the right to receive personal data they've provided to a service "in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format" and to transfer it elsewhere. LinkedIn built one global export flow to satisfy that EU requirement rather than a separate EU-only version, which is why every user, not just those in Europe, gets the same Settings & Privacy path. It's worth knowing this is a legal right, not a product favor, if an export request is ever delayed past the stated window.
If you need prospects who aren't your connections yet
Everything above only works for people you're already connected to. If the list you actually need is Sales Navigator leads or saved searches of people you haven't connected with, that's a different problem with no equivalent one-click export, and I've covered the real workarounds and their risk level in how to export Sales Navigator leads to a spreadsheet. Don't try to force the connections-export path to do that job. It only ever returns 1st-degree connections, by LinkedIn's own account.
Key takeaways
- LinkedIn's own export tool is free, built into Settings & Privacy, and needs no browser extension for your own 1st-degree connections.
- The file only includes an email address for connections who chose to share theirs, so expect gaps, sometimes most of the list.
- You can't export 2nd or 3rd-degree connections this way, only people you're already connected to.
- Plan for up to 48 hours to receive the archive and a 72-hour window to download it once it arrives.
- Scraper extensions violate LinkedIn's User Agreement for a convenience you don't need on your own connections.
- For prospects who aren't connections yet, Sales Navigator's own export workarounds are a separate problem entirely.
FAQ
Can I export my 2nd and 3rd-degree LinkedIn connections?
No. LinkedIn's own export-connections help page states directly that "you currently can't export a list of your contacts that aren't 1st-degree connections." The file only ever covers people you're already connected to.
Does the LinkedIn connections export include phone numbers?
No. LinkedIn's own description of the file lists seven fields: first and last name, public profile URL, email address, company, position, and connection date. There's no phone number column.
How long does LinkedIn take to send my connections export?
LinkedIn's download-your-data page says the larger archive typically arrives within 24 hours, though it separately lists Connections among the categories available within 48 hours. Budget up to two days, and download it within 72 hours of the email arriving before the link expires.
Is it against LinkedIn's rules to scrape connections with a browser extension?
Yes. LinkedIn's User Agreement bans using scripts, crawlers, or browser plugins to scrape or copy the service, and separately bans bots or unauthorized automated methods to access the service or download contacts.
Can I export my Sales Navigator leads the same way?
No. The native data-export tool covers your personal connections only. Sales Navigator's saved leads and lists have no built-in CSV export at all, which is a separate workaround covered in the linked guide above.