How do I export my Webflow site code?

Download the ZIP from a paid Workspace

Code export packages the site as files you can store, hand to someone else, or host on your own server. It is not the same as publishing. Publishing updates the site Webflow hosts. Export gives you a ZIP of the code.

Webflow's export article says Site plans do not include code export. If the menu item is missing, check the Workspace plan, not the Site plan.

Open the site. Click the Webflow logo in the upper-left corner and choose Code export, or press Shift + E. Click Prepare ZIP, then download the file.

If you want smaller HTML, open that same window and press Command + O on Mac or Control + O on Windows. Check Minify HTML, then Prepare ZIP again. Minify removes whitespace and comments. It does not add the features the export leaves out.

Example: you want a copy of the marketing site to give to a developer on Friday. Export from the Workspace that owns the site, after the latest layout is saved. Do not treat the ZIP as a full backup of the blog. The pages are in the file. The Collection items are not.

See what the folders contain

The ZIP holds the pages, the styles, the scripts, and the images from the Assets panel.

• A CSS folder with three stylesheets: one named for your site that holds your classes, webflow.css for shared layout and for elements such as navbars, sliders, and tabs, and normalize.css so browsers start from a closer baseline
• A JS folder with the scripts those elements use. Forms, navbars, sliders, tabs, and interactions depend on these files. If you delete them, the page can still look right and then fail when someone uses it.
• An images folder with the files uploaded in Assets
• An HTML file for each page, including Collection template pages, which export without the item content bound to those templates

Webflow prefixes some component classes with w- so they do not collide with other code. You will see those names in the CSS. The export window does not let you rename that prefix, and it does not let you export a single page. Every exportable part of the site is included every time.

Know what the ZIP leaves behind

Webflow's export article lists the features that are not in the file and will not behave as they do on Webflow hosting:

• CMS content and behavior, including Collection items and Collection lists. Lists show the empty state. Collection pages do not show field content.
• User Accounts, including users and access groups
• Ecommerce content, including products and checkout
• Password protection on the site or on a page. A page that was protected is no longer protected in the export.
• Form submission handling, file upload, and reCAPTCHA. Existing form submissions are not in the ZIP. You can export those submissions separately.
• Site search
• Localized pages, elements, and content. Only the primary locale is included.
• Code components

Those features need Webflow hosting. Site search and forms are omitted so the export can comply with GDPR. To collect form submissions on the exported site, you need a third-party form tool or an embedded form. Webflow will not process them.

The same article says you can export CMS Collections, including localized Collection content, plus Ecommerce Collections and User Accounts, as CSV. That CSV is a separate save of the items, products, or accounts. It is not inside the code ZIP, and it does not make the empty Collection lists fill themselves.

Host the files without expecting the Designer features

You can edit the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript after export. Manual edits can break Webflow components, so change a copy and keep the original ZIP. After export, you do not have to credit Webflow, and you do not have to keep a Webflow plan for that exported copy to run on your own server. The site Webflow still hosts is a separate copy. Exporting does not cancel that hosting.

Lottie JSON files do not load from a local file system, for security reasons. If you open an exported HTML file from your computer, a Lottie animation stays blank. Serve the folder through a web server before you decide the animation is missing from the ZIP.

Check a real page before you hand the ZIP over

Unzip the file and open a simple page through a web server. Click a navbar link, move a slider if the page has one, and submit a form. The link and the slider depend on the JS folder. The form will not send to Webflow. That is expected, and it does not mean Prepare ZIP skipped the HTML.

Open a Collection template and a Collection list. Expect the empty state, not your latest CMS items. If the developer needs the posts, save the Collection as CSV from Webflow and send that file beside the ZIP.

Open a Lottie page only after the files are on a server. Open a page that was password protected and confirm it is now public in this copy. If a control does nothing, confirm the JS folder is still next to the pages, then export once more from Shift + E.