The GuardaFoto API

One endpoint. You send a link, it answers with the public photo that link points to and every real size it exists in. Free, no key, no sign-up.

The endpoint

GET https://guardafoto.com/api/resolve?url=<LINK>

Send the link URL-encoded in the url parameter (the name u works too). It answers JSON, with CORS open (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *), so you can call it straight from a browser, a script or a WordPress plugin — ours does.

What it accepts

• YouTube channel — youtube.com/@handle, /channel/UC…, /c/name or /user/name. Returns the avatar (up to 1600×1600) and the banner (up to 2560 px wide).
• YouTube video — watch?v=…, youtu.be/… or /shorts/…. Returns the thumbnails that really exist; the grey fake “maxres” placeholder some videos get is filtered out.
• Spotify — artist, album, track or playlist links. Returns the photo or cover in every size Spotify publishes.
• Deezer — artist, album or track links, art up to 1000×1000.
• Apple Music — album links, covers verified by actually reading the file, up to 3000×3000 when Apple publishes them.

Instagram, TikTok, X and Twitch are not in the API: they lock anonymous reads and there is no honest way in without an account key. If that ever changes, they will appear here.

An answer looks like this

{
  "ok": true,
  "platform": "youtube",
  "type": "channel",
  "name": "Justin Bieber",
  "source_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@justinbieber",
  "images": [
    {"kind": "avatar", "label": "1600x1600", "width": 1600, "height": 1600,
     "url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/…=s1600-c-k-…"},
    {"kind": "banner", "label": "2560x424", "width": 2560, "height": 424,
     "url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/…"}
  ],
  "cached": true
}

Every size listed was checked against the real file before answering — a size in the answer is a size that exists. images comes sorted biggest first.

Errors

• 400 missing_url — no link was sent.
• 400 unsupported_platform — the link is not from a supported platform.
• 404 not_found — the link exists on paper but the platform has nothing at that ID.
• 429 rate_limited — fair use is 120 requests a minute per IP. Answers are cached for an hour, so normal use never gets near it.

Fair use

The API is free because it is cheap to run: most answers come from cache and from what the platforms publish openly. Use it in your tools and sites; a link back to guardafoto.com is appreciated but not required. Bulk scraping of the endpoint itself (asking for thousands of unrelated IDs to build a mirror) will get rate-limited — that is what the limit is for. The photos belong to their owners; the API changes nothing about their rights.

Questions or a platform you need: the contact page.