You can do something like: var taxonomyFactory = new TaxonomyFactory(); var filter = new CompositeFilter(); // all keywords filter.DepthFiltering(DepthFilter.UnlimitedDepth, DepthFilter.FilterDown); // Creates a flat list TaxonomyFormatter formatter = new TaxonomyListFormatter(); Keyword keywords = taxonomyFactory.GetTaxonomyKeywords(categoryId, filter, formatter); IList keywordList = keywords.KeywordChildren; // list of Tridion.ContentDelivery.Taxonomies.Keyword Do note that when retrieving a flat list like this, you will lose all the information about hierarchy in the Taxonomy, which means that if you want to get the parent keyword of a keyword, you need to fetch that keyword again.