What happens after you press Export
Exports run on our servers, not in your browser. The five statuses, what each one means, and why you can close the tab.
An export is a job on our servers, not something your browser does. You can close the tab, shut the laptop, or go home. Come back when the file is ready.
The five statuses
| Status | Means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
queued | Accepted, credits reserved, waiting for a worker | Nothing. Usually seconds. |
running | Rows are being written. A progress figure shows done / total. | Nothing. Close the tab if you like. |
complete | Every row written, credits settled | Download it. |
incomplete | Some rows written, the job stopped early | Press Resume — details here |
failed | No usable file was produced | Nothing was billed. Try again, then tell us. |
Incomplete is not an error
It is a normal outcome for very large jobs and it is designed to be resumable. Partial rows are already written and already yours; Resume continues from where it stopped and bills only the rows it newly writes.
What happens to your credits along the way
- On enqueue credits are reserved for the estimated row count. Your available balance drops immediately, so a second export cannot spend the same credits.
- On completion they are settled against rows actually written. Fewer rows than estimated means the difference comes straight back.
- On failure the whole reservation is released.
- On resume only newly written rows are billed. Rows written in the first attempt are not billed twice.
More in how lead credits work.
How long it takes
Nothing is scraped while you wait — the businesses already sit in our index, so an export is a read, a de-duplication pass and a file write. A city-sized export of a few thousand rows is usually done in well under a minute. A country-wide export of several hundred thousand rows is a genuine background job; you will get an email when it lands.
Where the file goes
Account → Exports, listed newest first with name, rows, status, credits used and the date, twenty-five to a page. Downloading serves the same stored files every time — every format your plan writes — at no further cost: re-downloading a past export.
How long a file is kept does vary by plan: 30 days on Starter, 90 on Growth, twelve months on Scale, from 24 months on Enterprise. When a file is eventually deleted the export's row stays in the list as a record of what was billed, so the history of what you paid for outlives the files themselves.
Over the API
POST /api/v1/exports returns 202 with an id,
status: "queued", estimated_rows and credits_reserved.
Poll GET /api/v1/exports/:id for progress { done, total }, then
GET /api/v1/exports/:id/download. Full detail in
creating and downloading exports over the API.
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