Image and photo
Image and photo related services
Image APIs give you free photos and artworks, avatars, QR codes, placeholder images and website screenshots, or let you upload and share images. Check each service's licence and attribution rules before you show its images on your site.
Art Institute of Chicago API
The Art Institute of Chicago API gives access to its collection of more than 100,000 artworks: search and browse artworks, artists, places and exhibitions, with titles, dates, descriptions and images through a IIIF image server. ...
Cloudinary
Cloudinary stores, transforms and delivers images and videos: resize, crop, convert, trim and add overlays by changing the delivery URL, and stream video with adaptive bitrate, for example to serve the right size of every upload. ...
DiceBear avatars
DiceBear generates avatar images from any text, such as a user name or ID, so every user gets a unique and consistent picture without uploading one. More than 30 styles are available, from initials and pixel art to illustrated ...
Flickr API
The Flickr API gives access to public Flickr data such as photos, videos, tags, profiles, groups, galleries and places, and lets users upload and manage their own photos through your app. Search photos by text, tags, location or ...
goQR.me QR code API
The goQR.me API creates QR code images from any text or URL with a single request, for example api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?data=hello. Choose the size, colours, margin, error correction and output format (PNG, GIF, JPEG, ...
GrabzIt
This service is optimized for speed, with most screenshots generated in a few seconds. While our screen scraper uses our special web caching system to scrape websites as fast as possible without impacting performance. Extracting ...
Gravatar API
A Gravatar is a globally recognised avatar linked to an e-mail address, used on WordPress, GitHub and many other sites. Show it next to names on your own site with a simple image URL built from a hash of the e-mail address, with ...
Imgur API
The Imgur API lets your application upload images and videos, create and manage albums, browse the gallery and comments, and manage a user's account (with OAuth). Responses are JSON. Free for non-commercial use with a free client ...
Lorem Picsum
Lorem Picsum gives you placeholder photos for mock-ups and prototypes: request picsum.photos/300/200 and you get a random photo of exactly that size. You can ask for a specific image, a seeded image that stays the same, a ...
Microlink
Microlink turns any URL into structured data and media. Get link preview data (title, description, image, logo, author, date), take a screenshot or PDF of the page, extract the colour palette or detect the technologies a site ...
Pexels API
The Pexels API lets you search the Pexels library of free stock photos and videos by keyword, orientation, size and colour, and get curated and popular collections, for example to add background images to a website or app. Each ...
Pixabay API
The Pixabay API lets you search millions of royalty-free images, illustrations, vector graphics and videos from Pixabay by keyword, category, colour, orientation and more. Each result comes with links to several sizes and details ...
Rijksmuseum API
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam offers its collection as open data: a Search API to find objects by title, creator, type and more, a resolver for full object metadata, OAI-PMH and LDES for harvesting, and IIIF for high-resolution ...
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API
The Met Collection API gives data about hundreds of thousands of objects in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: search objects, filter by department, and get titles, artists, dates, materials and images. Objects in the Met's Open ...
Unsplash API
The Unsplash API gives access to millions of free, high-quality photos from the Unsplash community. Search photos by keyword, colour and orientation, get random photos, browse collections and topics, and show photos in several ...
Wikimedia Commons API
Wikimedia Commons holds more than 100 million freely licensed images, sounds and videos, used by Wikipedia and many other sites. The MediaWiki API lets you search files, get their URLs in any size, and read their licence, author ...
Compare the image and photo APIs
| Service | API key | Formats | Free use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art Institute of Chicago API | Not needed | JSON | Free, no key needed. |
| Cloudinary | Needed, free | JSON | Free plan with 25 credits a month, without a payment card. |
| DiceBear avatars | Not needed | XML | Free and open source, no key needed. |
| Flickr API | Needed, free | JSON, XML | Free for non-commercial use with a free API key; commercial use needs permission. |
| goQR.me QR code API | Not needed | – | Free, no key needed. |
| GrabzIt | Needed, free | – | Free to try. |
| Gravatar API | Not needed | JSON, XML | Free; avatars need no key, the profile API uses a free API key. |
| Imgur API | Needed, free | JSON | Free for non-commercial use with a free client ID; commercial use needs an agreement with Imgur. |
| Lorem Picsum | Not needed | – | Free, no key needed. |
| Microlink | Not needed | JSON | The free plan allows 50 requests per day without a key; paid plans offer more. |
| Pexels API | Needed, free | JSON | Free with an API key, limited to 200 requests per hour and 20,000 per month, and apps must show a link to Pexels and credit photographers where possible. |
| Pixabay API | Needed, free | JSON | Free with a free API key; results must be cached and hotlinking full images is not allowed. |
| Rijksmuseum API | Not needed | JSON | Free, no key needed; most images are in the public domain. |
| The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API | Not needed | JSON | Free, no key needed. |
| Unsplash API | Needed, free | JSON | Free; a new app starts in demo mode with 50 requests per hour and can apply for a higher limit. |
| Wikimedia Commons API | Not needed | JSON | Free, no key needed; check the licence of each file before you use it. |
Questions
Which free image and photo APIs work without an API key?
Art Institute of Chicago API, DiceBear avatars, goQR.me QR code API, Gravatar API, Lorem Picsum, Microlink, Rijksmuseum API, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API and Wikimedia Commons API work without a key, according to their documentation. Most keyless services ask you to keep the number of requests reasonable, and some ask for a User-Agent that names your app.
Are these image and photo APIs really free?
The services here can be used without paying, at least on a free plan or free tier, often with limits such as a number of requests per day or non-commercial use only. The table above quotes what each service says about its free use; check the provider's own terms before you rely on it.
How up to date is this list?
The address of every service is checked about once a week, and services that stop working or stop being free are removed. This list last changed on November 8th, 2026.