The most common method of cracking rare earth ores and concentrates is acid baking, in which concentrated sulphuric acid is mixed with the feed material, held at an elevated temperature to ensure sulphation of the rare earth elements (REEs), followed by water leaching the rare earths from the calcine. Impurity elements are often also sulphated, solubilized during water leaching, and typically removed from solution by hydrolysis augmented by ion exchange depending on the impurities. The result is a purified pregnant leach solution (PLS) typically containing 20 to 30 g/L total rare earth elements (TREE) with very low impurity levels. The solution can often be saturated in CaSO4 along with high Mg content (both leached from the ore/concentrate and from dissolution of the MgO or MgCO3 added to neutralize acidity and precipitate impurities) and with SO4 as the counter-ion. This purified solution must be processed to produce either a mixed REE precipitate or separated REE products for shipment to a downstream processing operation. The options for recovering REE from the purified PLS are discussed in this paper: important factors include the specification for the REE product, the desired overall water balance for the proposed operation, and reagent availability and costs.