How to Delete Your LinkedIn Account Permanently

LinkedIn is one of the most widely used professional networking platforms in the world — but not everyone wants to stay on it forever. Whether you're stepping back from job searching, concerned about privacy, or simply decluttering your digital life, deleting your LinkedIn account is a straightforward process once you know where to look.

This guide walks through exactly how it works, what happens to your data, and the key decisions worth thinking through before you pull the trigger.

The Difference Between Closing and Hiding Your Account

Before diving into the deletion steps, it's worth understanding that LinkedIn gives you two distinct options: closing your account (permanent deletion) and hibernating your account (temporary deactivation).

Hibernation hides your profile from other members without deleting your data. Your connections, messages, and profile information are preserved, and you can reactivate at any time.

Closing your account is permanent. LinkedIn will begin deleting your data, and once the process is complete, you cannot recover your profile, connections, or message history.

If you're unsure whether you want to leave permanently, hibernation is a useful middle ground.

How to Delete LinkedIn on Desktop (Web Browser)

The account deletion option is buried a few layers deep in LinkedIn's settings — here's how to find it:

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account at linkedin.com
2. Click your profile photo in the top-right corner
3. Select Settings & Privacy from the dropdown menu
4. In the left-hand sidebar, click Account preferences
5. Scroll down to find Close account near the bottom of the page
6. Click Close account and follow the prompts

LinkedIn will ask you to select a reason for leaving — this is optional feedback for their team. You'll then be asked to confirm your password before the deletion is processed.

After confirmation, LinkedIn schedules your account for deletion. Your profile becomes invisible to other users immediately, but LinkedIn states that full data deletion can take up to 20 days for most data, with some backup copies persisting longer under their data retention policy.

How to Delete LinkedIn on Mobile (iOS and Android) 📱

The mobile app does not offer a direct account deletion path — LinkedIn routes this action through the mobile browser instead.

1. Open a browser on your phone (not the LinkedIn app)
2. Go to linkedin.com and log in
3. Tap the Me icon or your profile photo
4. Navigate to Settings & Privacy → Account preferences → Close account
5. Follow the same confirmation steps as the desktop flow

Attempting to delete through the LinkedIn mobile app itself will typically redirect you to the web version anyway, so going straight to the browser saves a step.

What Happens to Your Data After Deletion

This is where many users have questions — and the answer involves a few moving parts.

⚠️ Important: If you have an active LinkedIn Premium subscription, closing your account does not automatically cancel your billing. You need to cancel your Premium subscription separately before or after closing your account, otherwise charges may continue. Premium is billed through LinkedIn directly or through the App Store/Google Play depending on how you subscribed — the cancellation path differs depending on which applies to you.

Downloading Your Data Before You Leave

LinkedIn allows you to export a copy of your data before deletion, which many users find useful — especially if you want to keep a record of your connections, messages, or profile content.

To download your data:

1. Go to Settings & Privacy
2. Click Data privacy
3. Select Get a copy of your data
4. Choose what to include (connections, messages, profile, etc.)
5. Request the archive — LinkedIn will email you a download link, typically within 10 minutes to 24 hours depending on how much data is included

Downloading first is especially worth doing if you've built up a large connections list you might want to reference later, or if you've published long-form articles on the platform you'd like to preserve.

Factors That Affect Your Decision

Whether deleting LinkedIn makes sense depends on variables specific to your situation:

• Career stage — LinkedIn's value shifts significantly depending on whether you're actively job searching, freelancing, building a business, or settled in a long-term role
• Industry norms — In some sectors, a LinkedIn presence is a baseline professional expectation; in others, it's largely irrelevant
• Account age and connection depth — A heavily built-out profile with hundreds of meaningful connections represents a different asset than a sparse, rarely used account
• Premium subscription status — Active subscribers have a billing step to manage that free users don't
• Privacy concerns — Users in regions covered by GDPR (European Union) or CCPA (California) can also submit formal data deletion requests to LinkedIn beyond the standard account closure, which triggers more comprehensive data removal obligations

Some users also discover mid-process that what they actually want is to limit LinkedIn's email notifications or adjust their profile visibility settings rather than delete entirely — both of which are configurable without closing the account.

Your reasons for leaving, your career situation, and how you originally signed up (directly or via a third-party Premium billing method) all shape what the right path looks like for your specific case.