Does Reddit's data download include your DMs? What is missing
People request their Reddit data expecting a full backup and are shocked by what shows up in the ZIP. The big question is whether Reddit's data download includes your DMs — and the honest answer is: partly, and not the parts most people care about. Here is what you actually get, what is missing, and how to capture the rest.
What Reddit's official data download actually contains
When you request your data under Reddit privacy settings, you get a ZIP of CSV files covering your posts, comments, votes, saved items, subscriptions, and some account metadata. It is genuinely useful for a record of your public activity. But it is a spreadsheet-style export, not a readable archive of your conversations, and it was never designed to be a media backup.
Does it include your DMs and chat?
This is where people get burned. The export includes legacy private messages (the old inbox-style messages) as a CSV, but it does not include modern Reddit Chat — the real-time messaging most people use today. So your day-to-day chat threads, group chats, and everything shared inside them are effectively absent from the official download.
The media problem: no videos, voice notes, or images
Even where messages are included, the export gives you text and links, not the files. Videos, voice messages, and images shared in chat are not bundled in — and many of those links expire or 404 later. If the person deletes their account, that media is gone regardless of what your CSV says. For anyone trying to preserve a conversation, this is the biggest gap.
How to capture what Reddit leaves out
To actually keep your chats and their media, you need to export from the chat itself. Redkit archives full Reddit Chat threads — text, timestamps, voice notes, and videos — into readable HTML, JSON, Markdown, or plain text you own. Pair Reddit official download (for your public history) with a Redkit chat export (for your conversations and media) and you finally have a complete backup instead of half of one.