Abstract We prove a Zariski–Nagata purity theorem for the motivic ramification filtration of a reciprocity sheaf. An important tool in the proof is a generalization of the Kato-Saito reciprocity map from geometric global class field theory to all reciprocity sheaves. As a corollary we obtain cut-by-curves and cut-by-surfaces criteria for various ramification filtrations. In some cases this reproves known theorems, in some cases we obtain new results.