Tell HN: The Google Tenor GIF API has been shut down
26 points - 01/13/2026
No public announcement. Just quietly added to killed by google. Step 2 just fails with an error: https://developers.google.com/tenor/guides/quickstart
Hello Tenor API customer,
We're writing to inform you about the deprecation of the Tenor API offering on June 30, 2026. We are making this change to focus our resources on enhancing the main Tenor experience.
The Tenor API has been a valuable tool for many developers. We sincerely appreciate your partnership and the innovative ways you have integrated Tenor into your applications. Your contributions have helped shape the Tenor ecosystem.
What you need to know
Key Dates:
Starting January 13, 2026, New API key sign-ups and new integrations will no longer be allowed
On June 30, 2026, any API or Ads Distribution Agreements you have with Tenor will be terminated
The Tenor API will continue to work for existing integrations until June 30, 2026
Advised Action:
Plan and make any necessary changes before June 30, 2026
Potential Impact:
After June 30, 2026, failure to transition out of the API will return an error message when attempting API requests
Thanks for choosing Tenor API.
– The Google Cloud Team
Wow. Here's the free alternative free GIF API with monetization - KLIPY - https://klipy.com/developers You can migrate in few minutes with just base url swap.
You should mention you are the founder.
You're right - I'm the co-founder of KLIPY
That is a great fit for the GIF integration in Discourse.
I was able to quickly add support for it at https://github.com/discourse/discourse-gifs/pull/107
Love to see WEBP support. Do you plan on adding support for AVIF?
Also, this is used by many Discourse sites, we should talk.
For sure! Hit us up at hi@klipy.com with more details - did you request production access via Partner Panel https://partner.klipy.com ?
Re AVIF, do you need those for specific purpose?
> We are making this change to focus our resources on enhancing the main Tenor experience.
Is it really that hard to just keep the API running?
The amount of apps they support it probably costs $50-100m+/year
Ahh I didn't realize it was completely free. That's pretty crazy
>We are making this change to focus our resources on enhancing the main Tenor experience.
What main Tenor experience?
Website and Gboard integration.
"Sorry, we have a new way to sell people images that don't belong to us"
well, time to switch to giphy
Try KLIPY also - https://klipy.com/migrate we have much better GIFs, free access and monetization features. It takes 10 minutes to switch from Tenor with base URL swap.
played with your API a bit and ran some searches with contentfilter=high, response objects don’t seem to include a per-item rating / nsfw flag (like GIPHY does)
For apps that need strict SFW, is the expectation just to rely on the request-side filtering, or is there additional metadata I should be looking at that might not be documented yet?
This is really weird, honestly. Any chance you could send me url you're using so I can see what GIFs it returns? 100% of our content are in 4 different categories G, PG, PG13, R. G is super safe for everyone to use
gliphy is horrible when it comes to gifs, they are sooooooo heavily curated and its insane to find a proper gif in there.
Forgive me HN comment guidelines.
This is fucking BULLSHIT, Google.