What is Imgur?
Last updated: 7 October 2026
Imgur is an American image hosting service and online community, founded in 2009 by Alan Schaaf while he was a computer science student at Ohio University. It was built specifically to solve a problem Reddit had at the time: images posted there had no reliable place to live. That origin explains almost everything about how the service is used today.
The short version
- What it does: stores images and videos and gives you a URL for them.
- Founded: 2009, launched on 23 February 2009.
- Owned by: MediaLab AI, Inc., which acquired Imgur in September 2021. Founder Alan Schaaf left the company in January 2022.
- Two very different products: a private file host, and a public community gallery with voting and comments. Most people only ever use the first one.
- Registration: optional in principle, but the site has moved steadily toward requiring an account for anything beyond a one-off upload.
Why it became the default for forums
For roughly a decade, "upload it to imgur" was simply what you did when you needed to show someone a
picture on a forum, a bug tracker or Reddit. The reason was the direct link — an
i.imgur.com/xxxxx.png URL that points straight at the image file, so it renders inline
instead of appearing as a link to a viewer page. Most hosts made you share a page containing the image;
Imgur handed you the image itself.
That distinction still trips people up today. If you paste the wrong kind of Imgur URL into a forum you get a thumbnail or a broken box, and it is not obvious why. We cover it properly in direct link vs gallery link.
What has changed
Imgur is no longer the frictionless utility it was, and several changes matter if you depend on it:
1. It removed a large amount of old content
In April 2023 Imgur changed its terms of service, effective 15 May 2023, to delete inactive content that was not tied to an account, along with sexually explicit content. The change drew wide criticism because of the link rot it caused across old forum posts and documentation. See how long imgur images last.
2. New API applications stopped being accepted
Developers can no longer register a new API application, which is why apps and scripts that used to upload automatically have stopped working. The full story is in imgur alternative.
3. It is no longer available everywhere
On 30 September 2025 Imgur blocked users in the United Kingdom in response to a potential regulatory fine. Imgur's own summary of where the service is available now excludes several countries. If you are in one of them, or you are publishing for an audience there, that is a practical problem with no workaround from Imgur's side.
4. Reddit no longer needs it
Reddit added native image hosting in 2016, and Imgur submissions there dropped noticeably afterwards. If your only use for Imgur was posting pictures on Reddit, that is worth knowing before you optimise a workflow around it.
How Imgur handles files
Two behaviours surprise people:
- Animated GIFs are re-encoded. Since October 2014 Imgur converts uploaded animated GIFs into WebM and MP4 video, which are much smaller but use lossy compression. A GIF you upload is not always the GIF that comes back.
- Paid Pro accounts historically removed upload limits and offered unlimited storage, which tells you the free tier has limits by design.
Do you actually need Imgur?
Ask what you need the link to do. If you need a picture to render inline in a blog post, a support ticket, a marketplace listing or a forum thread, then you need a direct link, and the domain in it is irrelevant. That is the case for almost everyone. You can get one with a free imgur upload here in seconds, with no account.
You specifically need an Imgur account if you want to post to the Imgur community gallery, or if a
particular community insists on an i.imgur.com address. If neither applies, the brand
loyalty is not buying you anything.