CQL search with personal space works on Data Center but fails on Cloud

[mustafa_salihi]

I'm attempting to search for pages in a personal space with date filtering using the Confluence REST API on Cloud, but I'm getting empty results with all approaches I've tried.

Note: spaceKey refers to the personal space key.

What works on Data Center:

GET /rest/api/content/search?cql=type=page AND space="~spaceKey" AND lastModified > "2026-02-01"

This works perfectly on Data Center.

What I've tried on Cloud (all fail with empty results):

1. Using cqlcontext:

/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql=type="page" AND lastModified > "2026-02-01"&cqlcontext={"spaceKey":"~spaceKey"}

2. Using /search endpoint:

/wiki/rest/api/search?cql=type=page AND space="~spaceKey" AND lastModified > "2026-01-02"

3. Using space in CQL:

/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql=space="~spaceKey" AND type="page" AND lastModified > "2026-02-01"

Could someone help me understand what I might be missing to make personal space search work on Cloud? Any guidance on the correct approach would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @mustafa_salihi 

Welcome to the community.

I am able to search against personal spaces using a more simple query -

https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql=title=test&spaces=~xxxxx

This works for me.

[mustafa_salihi]

I have tried this too. but unfortunately the response is still empty.

the response:

{

    "results": [],

    "start": 0,

    "limit": 25,

    "size": 0,

    "_links": {

        "base": "https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki",

        "context": "/wiki",

        "self": "https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?spaces=~xxxxxxxxxxx&cql=title=%xxxx%20xxxx%22"

    }

}

Note: this syntax works https://api.atlassian.com/ex/confluence/cloudid/wiki/api/v2/spaces/spaceid/pages

I can list the pages of my personal space with the syntax above. but as I mentioned earlier my issue is when I use the ~spaceKey and lastModified (filtering) all together and list the pages.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @mustafa_salihi 

Your API call is incorrect.

You should use it like:

https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql= title=%xxxx%20xxxx%22&spaces=spaces=~xxxxxxxxxxx

[mustafa_salihi]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam-

I tried the API call you suggested. This time the response was not empty, however it returned pages that are not in my personal space (so the space scoping doesn’t seem to be applied correctly).

From my side, it looks like a Confluence Cloud-specific issue. The same approach works on Data Center, so I would expect the Cloud API to behave the same way—at minimum it shouldn’t return results from other spaces when restricting to a personal space.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @mustafa_salihi 

Sorry I see an issue in the example I provided.

https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql= title=%xxxx%20xxxx%22&spaces=~xxxxxxxxxxx

[mustafa_salihi]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam-

I have tried https://xxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql= title=%xxxx%20xxxx%22&spaces=~xxxxxxxxxxx too but unfortunately still same, empty result. 

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @mustafa_salihi 

If you use it as your example, there is a space between cql= and title.

I use a similar cql as this of my personal space on a cloud Confluence free instance and this works. 

My usage (anonymised my details):

https://xxxxxxxx.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api/content/search?cql=title=xxxxxxxx&space=5ab8c34518c3bd2a73ffa78b

[mustafa_salihi]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam- 

I have noticed the space between cql= and title. I did try your last api call, however the result is still empty.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @mustafa_salihi 

I can't see what you are doing exactly, but it's working on my end and this is done on a free instance, so on a paid it should work.

What do you expect as results?