How to Migrate from Raindrop.io to LinkVault (Step-by-Step Guide)
Written by LinkVault Team
Quick Answer: To migrate from Raindrop.io to LinkVault, export your bookmarks from Raindrop as an HTML file (Settings > Export), then import the HTML file into LinkVault. Your collections become categories and your tags are preserved. Reorganize and add notes after import for better searchability.
Raindrop.io has been a popular bookmark manager for years, and many users have built up large libraries of saved links organized into collections and tags. But as your library grows, the limitations of Raindrop become harder to ignore. Full-text search is locked behind the premium plan, offline access is limited on the free tier, and exporting your data in a structured format that preserves all your metadata is harder than it should be. If you are hitting those walls, migrating from Raindrop to LinkVault gives you full-text search on the free tier, true offline access, and structured export that keeps your tags and notes intact.
The good news is that Raindrop can export your bookmarks to a standard HTML file, and LinkVault imports that file in seconds. Your collections come through as folders, your bookmark titles and URLs transfer automatically, and once the import is done you can reorganize everything with LinkVault tags and categories. Whether you have two hundred bookmarks or twenty thousand, the process is the same and takes under ten minutes.
This guide walks you through exporting your bookmarks from Raindrop.io, importing them into LinkVault, reorganizing after the migration, and handling the few things that do not transfer automatically. By the end you will have every bookmark you saved in Raindrop available in LinkVault — fully searchable, synced to every device, and no longer locked behind a premium paywall.
Why Switch from Raindrop to LinkVault
Raindrop.io is a capable bookmark manager, but there are honest reasons users move to LinkVault. The biggest one is search. Raindrop gates full-text search behind its premium plan — on the free tier you can only search by title and URL, which means finding a link by something you remember reading in the article is impossible. LinkVault offers full-text search on the free tier, indexing titles, notes, tags, and domains so you find links by what you remember about them, not just by what you named them.
Offline access is the second factor. Raindrop limits offline access on the free tier, so if you are on a plane or in a meeting with no signal, your bookmarks are effectively unreachable. LinkVault caches your library locally so you can browse, search, and open saved links even with no internet connection.
The third reason is structured export. Raindrop exports to HTML, which is fine for moving bookmarks between tools, but it does not cleanly preserve tags, notes, or collection metadata in a structured format. LinkVault exports to both JSON and CSV, with tags, notes, categories, and timestamps intact, so you always have a portable, machine-readable copy of your entire library. That matters when you want to back up your data, move to another tool in the future, or just know that your bookmarks are truly yours.
What Exports from Raindrop
Raindrop.io offers a few export options, and understanding what each one includes is important before you migrate. The primary export format is an HTML bookmark file, which is the same universal format that browsers use. This file contains your bookmark titles, URLs, and collection (folder) structure. It is the format LinkVault reads during import.
Raindrop can also export to CSV, which includes more metadata — titles, URLs, tags, creation dates, and collection names. This is useful as a backup, but LinkVault imports directly from the HTML file because it preserves the folder hierarchy that makes reorganization easier after migration.
The key limitation to understand is what the HTML export does not include. Raindrop highlights — the text passages you selected and saved — do not export in the HTML file. AI-suggested tags that Raindrop generated automatically are exported as regular tags, but they may not match the tagging vocabulary you want in LinkVault. Permalink versions of bookmarks (Raindrop generates permanent links for some saved pages) are not preserved as distinct entries. Knowing this in advance helps you plan your reorganization step so nothing important gets lost.
Step 1: Export from Raindrop.io
The first step is to export your bookmarks from Raindrop as an HTML file. This file contains every bookmark and every collection, and it is the format LinkVault reads during import. Follow these five steps in Raindrop on your computer.
- Open Raindrop.io in your browser and sign in to your account, then click the gear icon or your profile menu in the top-right corner to open Settings.
- In Settings, locate the Export section — it is usually under a Data or Import/Export tab depending on the current version of the Raindrop interface.
- Select HTML as the export format. Raindrop may also offer CSV, but for migration to LinkVault choose HTML because it preserves your collection folder structure.
- Click Export or Download and Raindrop generates a file containing all your bookmarks and collections. Depending on the size of your library, this may take a few seconds to a minute.
- Save the file to a location you will remember — your Desktop or Downloads folder works well — and note the filename, which is typically something like raindrop-bookmarks.html or raindrop-export.html.
Step 2: Import into LinkVault
Now that you have your Raindrop HTML export file, import it into LinkVault. LinkVault reads the standard HTML bookmark format, so every collection, title, and URL transfers automatically. Sign in to your LinkVault account and follow these four steps.
- Sign in to LinkVault in your browser and navigate to Settings > Import, where you will find the bookmark import tool.
- Click the upload area or drag your Raindrop HTML export file into it, then select the file from your computer.
- Click Import and LinkVault parses every bookmark and collection in the file, extracting titles, URLs, and folder structure from your Raindrop export.
- Wait a few seconds for the import to finish — large libraries may take a minute or more. Once complete, every Raindrop bookmark appears in your LinkVault library with its collection structure intact, ready to organize.
Step 3: Reorganize After Migration
After the import, your Raindrop bookmarks are in LinkVault but they are still organized the way Raindrop structured them. To get the most out of LinkVault, spend a few minutes re-tagging and re-categorizing so you can find links by topic rather than by which Raindrop collection they happened to live in. These five steps cover the core reorganization workflow.
- Review the imported collections and assign each one to a LinkVault category — for example, map a Raindrop collection called Design Inspiration to a LinkVault category called Design, and a collection called Reading List to a category called Learning.
- Audit the tags that came over from Raindrop and consolidate them — Raindrop exports AI-suggested tags alongside your manual ones, so merge near-duplicates like design and design-inspiration into a single consistent tag.
- Add descriptive tags to bookmarks that cross multiple topics — a single link about design tools might get tags like design, tools, and productivity so it surfaces under any of those filters.
- Add short notes to bookmarks where the title alone does not provide enough context — a one-line note about why you saved a link turns a forgettable URL into something you can find later with full-text search.
- Delete bookmarks that are dead links, duplicates, or things you no longer need — a lean, curated library is far more useful than a bloated one you have to wade through, and this is the best moment to clean house.
What Does NOT Transfer and How to Handle It
A few things from Raindrop do not come through cleanly in the HTML export. Knowing what is missing lets you handle it during reorganization so nothing important is lost. These five items cover the most common gaps.
- Highlights — the specific text passages you highlighted within articles in Raindrop do not export in the HTML file. If you rely on highlights, copy them into LinkVault notes for each affected bookmark before you close your Raindrop account.
- AI tags — Raindrop generates automatic tag suggestions using AI, and these export as regular tags. They may not match your intended vocabulary, so review and replace generic AI tags like article or web with meaningful ones during reorganization.
- Permalinks — Raindrop creates permanent cached copies of some pages, but the HTML export contains the original URLs, not the Raindrop permalink versions. This is usually fine since LinkVault saves the original URL, but if you depended on a cached permalink for a page that has since gone offline, save that permalink URL as a separate bookmark.
- View modes — Raindrop lets you set per-collection view modes like grid, list, or moodboard, but these display preferences do not export. LinkVault has its own view options, so set them up fresh in LinkVault after import.
- Sharing settings — collection-level sharing permissions in Raindrop do not transfer. If you had shared collections, recreate them in LinkVault by using the share feature on the corresponding category after migration.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I export my bookmarks from Raindrop.io?
Sign in to Raindrop.io, open Settings, find the Export section, select HTML as the format, and click Export or Download. Raindrop generates an HTML file containing all your bookmarks and collections. Save the file to your computer — this is the file you upload to LinkVault during import.
Will my Raindrop collections be preserved when I import into LinkVault?
Yes. When you import a Raindrop HTML export into LinkVault, your collection structure comes through as folders. Every collection and subcollection is preserved with the bookmarks inside it. After import you can turn those folders into LinkVault categories and add tags for cross-cutting topics that collections alone could not handle.
Do my Raindrop tags transfer to LinkVault?
Tags that you manually assigned in Raindrop come through in the export and can be reapplied during reorganization. However, AI-suggested tags from Raindrop also export and may not match your intended vocabulary. Plan to audit and consolidate your tags after import to build a consistent tagging system in LinkVault.
Can I migrate from Raindrop to LinkVault on my phone?
The export step is best done on a computer, because Raindrop's export option is easiest to find in the full web interface. Export your bookmarks from Raindrop on your desktop, save the HTML file, then sign in to LinkVault on any device — including your phone — and upload the file through Settings > Import. Once imported, the bookmarks sync to every device instantly.
Does migrating from Raindrop to LinkVault delete my Raindrop bookmarks?
No. Exporting and importing is a copy operation. Your bookmarks remain in Raindrop exactly as they were, and a copy is added to your LinkVault library. You can keep using Raindrop as a backup, delete your Raindrop account after confirming the import worked, or maintain both during a transition period until you are confident everything transferred correctly.
Key Takeaways
- Highlights — the specific text passages you highlighted within articles in Raindrop do not export in the HTML file. If you rely on highlights, copy them into LinkVault notes for each affected bookmark before you close your Raindrop account.
- AI tags — Raindrop generates automatic tag suggestions using AI, and these export as regular tags. They may not match your intended vocabulary, so review and replace generic AI tags like article or web with meaningful ones during reorganization.
About the Author
LinkVault Team builds LinkVault, a free bookmark manager used across multiple countries for saving and organizing links, notes, and ideas. The team focuses on practical information retrieval, productivity tools, and making the web's best content permanently findable. Learn more about LinkVault.