Flickr

aid: flickr
name: Flickr
description: >-
  Flickr is the long-running photo, group, people, place, tag, gallery, photoset, and Commons platform now owned by
  SmugMug. Its REST-like API dispatches every operation through a single endpoint
  (https://api.flickr.com/services/rest?method=flickr.{namespace}.{method}), spanning ~250 methods across 30 namespaces
  — covering activity, auth, blogs, cameras, collections, commons, contacts, favorites, galleries, groups, group
  discussions, interestingness, machine tags, panda, people, photos (plus photos.geo / photos.licenses / photos.notes /
  photos.transform / photos.upload), photosets, places, prefs, profile, push, reflection, stats, tags, test, and URLs.
  Authentication is API key + OAuth 1.0a (HMAC-SHA1). Commercial use requires a permission-granted commercial key.
url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/
image: https://combine.swagger.io/flickr.png
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-05-28'
modified: '2026-05-30'
x-source: public-apis/public-apis
x-category: Photography
x-tier: 3
x-tier-reason: bulk-registered-from-public-apis
tags:
  - Photography
  - Photos
  - Social Media
  - Public APIs
apis:
  - name: Flickr API
    description: >-
      The full Flickr REST API. Method-dispatched single-endpoint API: every call is `GET/POST
      https://api.flickr.com/services/rest?method=flickr.{namespace}.{method}`. Uploads use a separate
      `https://up.flickr.com/services/upload` endpoint. Coverage profiled here: ~30 most-important methods across all 30
      method namespaces (activity, auth, blogs, cameras, collections, commons, contacts, favorites, galleries, groups,
      groupsDiscuss, interestingness, machinetags, panda, people, photos, photos.geo, photos.licenses, photos.notes,
      photos.transform, photos.upload, photosets, places, prefs, profile, push, reflection, stats, tags, test, urls).
    humanURL: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/
    baseURL: https://api.flickr.com/services
    tags:
      - Photography
      - Photos
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/
      - type: APIReference
        url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: openapi/flickr-openapi.yml
      - type: Authentication
        url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/auth.oauth.html
      - type: Quickstart
        url: https://www.flickr.com/services/developer/
      - type: SDK
        title: Node.js SDK
        url: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flickr-sdk
      - type: SDK
        title: Node.js SDK source
        url: https://github.com/flickr/flickr-sdk
      - type: SDK
        title: Python SDK (python-flickr-api)
        url: https://pypi.org/project/flickr-api/
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.flickr.com/
  - type: Portal
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/developer/
  - type: SignUp
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/tos/
  - type: PrivacyPolicy
    url: https://www.flickr.com/help/privacy
  - type: Pricing
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.api_keys.html
  - type: Blog
    url: https://blog.flickr.net/
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://www.flickr.com/services/developer/changelog/
  - type: FAQ
    url: https://flickrhelp.com/
  - type: Support
    url: https://flickrhelp.com/
  - type: StatusPage
    url: https://www.flickr.com/
  - type: GitHubOrganization
    url: https://github.com/flickr
  - type: GitHubRepository
    title: Flickr API Swagger
    url: https://github.com/flickr/flickr-api-swagger
  - type: PublicAPIsListing
    url: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
  - type: SpectralRules
    url: rules/flickr-rules.yml
  - type: Vocabulary
    url: vocabulary/flickr-vocabulary.yml
  - type: JSON-LD
    url: json-ld/flickr-context.jsonld
  - type: Plans
    url: plans/flickr-plans-pricing.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/flickr-rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: finops/flickr-finops.yml
  - type: Features
    data:
      - name: Method-Dispatched REST API
        description: Single endpoint with `method=flickr.{namespace}.{method}` selector covering 250+ methods across 30 namespaces.
      - name: Photo Search
        description: Rich text/tag/geo/license/date/content-filter search across the public photo corpus.
      - name: OAuth 1.0a Authentication
        description: HMAC-SHA1 three-legged OAuth flow for accessing user-owned content.
      - name: Sync + Async Photo Upload
        description: Multipart upload endpoint with synchronous or ticket-based asynchronous status polling.
      - name: PubSubHubbub Push
        description: Push subscriptions for change-driven workloads instead of polling.
      - name: Reflection
        description: flickr.reflection.getMethods and getMethodInfo for programmatic API discovery.
      - name: Flickr Commons
        description: Institutional partner program (museums, libraries, archives) with no-known-copyright photos.
      - name: Geotagging
        description: Lat/lon attachment plus Places (WOEID) resolution.
      - name: Machine Tags
        description: Structured namespace.predicate=value tagging for machine-readable taxonomies.
      - name: Stats
        description: Per-day view/comment/favorite counts for owned content.
  - type: UseCases
    data:
      - name: Photo-Powered App
        description: Build a third-party app that searches, displays, or remixes the public Flickr photo corpus.
      - name: Photo Backup / Sync
        description: Bulk-upload pipeline pushing a user's photos into Flickr (or pulling them out).
      - name: Curator Tooling
        description: Editorial workflows that build galleries, photosets, and collections programmatically.
      - name: Community Bot
        description: Group moderation, topic listing, and reply harvesting for community managers.
      - name: Cultural Heritage Research
        description: Access Flickr Commons institutional collections for research or aggregation.
      - name: Geo-Photo Analytics
        description: Map-based analytics over the geotagged photo corpus by place / WOEID.
      - name: Discovery / Recommendation
        description: Interestingness and Panda feeds plus tag clusters for content-discovery surfaces.
  - type: Integrations
    data:
      - name: PubSubHubbub
        description: Push subscription protocol used by `flickr.push.*` topics.
      - name: OAuth 1.0a
        description: Industry-standard delegated-authorization protocol used for all user-context calls.
      - name: Blogger / WordPress
        description: Configured blog services available through `flickr.blogs.*` for cross-posting from Flickr.
      - name: SmugMug
        description: Parent company; account ecosystem and import/export flows.
      - name: Yahoo Login (legacy)
        description: Historic Yahoo-account login path now superseded by direct Flickr accounts.
  - type: Solutions
    data:
      - name: Non-Commercial API Key
        description: Free API key for personal/non-commercial apps; standard online sign-up.
      - name: Commercial API Key
        description: Permission-only commercial API key reviewed individually by Flickr.
      - name: Flickr Pro (consumer)
        description: Consumer-side paid Flickr account (out of scope for API pricing).
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com