How to find and export your Zendesk data.

Zendesk does not show a storage figure, so count tickets instead. An Explore Editor or Admin on Professional plans and above can build a count of tickets report, and any agent can pull an approximate total from the ticket count API. Report the ticket total as records.

At a glance

Report in: records
Category: Customer support
Checked: September 2026

Check your data

Where Zendesk shows how much you have.

Sign in with the Editor or Admin role in Zendesk Explore.
Open the Explore reports library and click New report.
Choose Support > Support - Tickets as the dataset and click Start report.
In Metrics, click Add, choose Tickets > Tickets and click Apply. The report shows COUNT(Tickets) for the account.
If you add a date filter, make sure it covers the full life of the account so older tickets are counted.
Without Explore, an agent can call GET /api/v2/tickets/count. It returns an approximate count, and above 100,000 tickets the number refreshes every 24 hours.

Plan and role. The Explore report needs the Professional, Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan and the Editor or Admin role in Explore. The ticket count API is open to agents.

What to report on the Polyshares intake.

Report Zendesk in records. The intake also asks how many years the company has used it and how many seats it has.

Put the ticket total on the Polyshares intake as records. Each ticket carries its own comment thread, so the ticket count is the right measure of volume rather than individual comments.

For years in use, add the ticket created year as a row in the same Explore report and take the earliest year that has tickets. The date your Zendesk account was opened is a good backstop.

Seats are your paid agent seats on the Zendesk subscription. End users who submit tickets are customers, not seats.

Export the full history.

Confirm your plan. The account data export is on all Suite plans (Growth, Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus) and on Support Professional and Enterprise. Team plans do not include it.
If you do not see the export option, the account owner must contact Zendesk Customer Support and ask them to enable account data exports.
Sign in as an admin and open Admin Center > Account > Tools > Reports, then go to the Export tab.
Choose the JSON ticket export and select the full date range. Zendesk writes it as NDJSON, and it is the recommended format for accounts with more than 200,000 tickets.
Wait for the email with the download link. Large exports can take a day or more, and the link stays valid for at least three days.

CSV exports leave out deleted tickets, comments, ticket descriptions and multi-line or multi-select fields. XML exports stop at 500MB, roughly 200,000 tickets, and are not offered to accounts above that size. JSON is the native format that keeps ticket comments.

A single ticket with more than 1MB of data is exported without its comments, and Zendesk lists those tickets in a separate file. Accounts with more than 1 million tickets receive the JSON export in 31 day increments. Tickets handled by AI agents are excluded.

Attachments are not included as files. The JSON export holds links to each attachment, which have to be downloaded through the API. On accounts created after December 5, 2024, or using messaging, private attachment links expire quickly and need authentication, so download them right away.

The incremental export API is the alternative for admins. It returns up to 1,000 records per page at about 10 requests per minute, and the ticket events export can include full comment data.

The intake only needs the size, so you do not have to run an export to fill it in. You also do not need to clean or scrub an export. Polyshares handles anonymization before anything moves.

Why Zendesk data has value for AI training.

A Zendesk ticket holds a customer's problem in their own words, every agent reply, private notes between agents and the final status. That full path from question to resolution shows how real support problems get solved.

Tickets also carry structure: tags, custom fields, priority, groups and timestamps. Those fields let a dataset be sorted by product, issue type or outcome without reading every conversation.

What stays private.

You choose which brands, groups or ticket forms are in scope, so tickets from sensitive queues such as HR or legal can stay out entirely.

We anonymize identifying details before anything moves. Polyshares does that work, so your team does not have to scrub records first.

Your company keeps ownership of its data. The license is bounded to defined material and a defined use.

Polyshares is the buyer and pays your company directly. There is no fee or commission, and Polyshares reviews the record before it makes any offer.

Common questions about Zendesk data.

Why can't I find the data export option in Zendesk?

Exports are off by default. The account owner has to ask Zendesk Customer Support to turn them on, and the feature is only on Suite plans and Support Professional or Enterprise. After that, admins and custom roles with export permission can use it.

Does the Zendesk export include attachments?

No. The JSON export includes links to attachments, not the files. The files have to be downloaded through the Zendesk API.

Which Zendesk export format should I use?

Use JSON. CSV drops comments and descriptions, and XML caps out at 500MB, about 200,000 tickets.

How long does a full Zendesk export take?

Anywhere from a few minutes to a day or more, depending on ticket volume and the date range. Zendesk emails a download link that stays valid for at least three days.

Source: Exporting ticket, user, or organization data from your account, How can I download all attachments in a ticket?, Explore recipe: Count of tickets for a custom ticket field value, Incremental Exports API. Checked September 2026.

Put your numbers on the intake.

List your systems, their sizes and your headcount in one intake. Polyshares reviews the record and prices it. There is no fee or commission to your company.