Google kills the Tenor GIF API, forcing changes on X, Discord, and more

Google is famous for killing content so it’s all there a real grave you can search. Google’s latest stoppage now has its own gem. Starting today, Google has abandoned the Tenor API, which you may not be familiar with by name. You’ve probably used it, though. Tenor is a searchable GIF database, which uses video clips for sites like X/Twitter, Discord, and more. Now, it only serves Google—maybe the headstone isn’t too late.

Like many Google products, Tenor started as an independent company. Google came in and bought Tenor in 2018, and has continued to run it consistently over the years. Tenor was integrated into Google products such as Gboard and Google Messages, but the API also provided other platforms a way to help users find, share, and save GIFs. It’s similar to services like Giphy and Klipy.

In the month of January, Google announced that it will start to download API access. It stopped accepting new integrations at that time, and the deadline has arrived: As of June 30, the Tenor API is no longer available. Google, a company that has about 200,000 employees and more than $130 billion in 2025 profits, says that it decided to stop supporting the image API so that it can better focus on its resources. The real problem was probably that Tenor was free, and Google didn’t see a way to monetize the GIF API.