🔗 direct-img.link
Live images in markdown, powered by search.
Give your AI a system instruction to embed images using direct-img.link and they just work — no uploads, no APIs, no tokens.
Usage
That's it. The image is searched, cached, and served.
URL Format
Use + to separate words, like Google:
https://direct-img.link/orange+cat
https://direct-img.link/new+york+city
| Query | URL |
|---|
| orange cat | /orange+cat |
| spider-man | /spider-man |
| u.s. president | /u.s.+president |
| 90's fashion | /90%27s+fashion |
Picking a Result
Add ?i= to serve a later search result instead of the first, e.g. when the first image isn't the one you want:
https://direct-img.link/orange+cat?i=2
i is 1–40, default 1. Higher values serve max-i.webp, which lists each site's range, and other invalid values serve bad.webp- Leading zeros are ignored (
?i=02 = ?i=2)
- Only images that download count, so broken links and deleted photos are skipped and every
i is a different image. ?i=2 is the 2nd working image
- Higher
i values take a little longer the first time, since the working images before it are downloaded to count them
- If there aren't
i working images, an AI image is served instead (except on free., which serves bad.webp)
- Each query is searched on either Brave (100 results) or Firecrawl (10 results), always the same one. On a Firecrawl query,
i above 10 serves an AI image without searching
- Each
i is cached separately. A search's results are kept for 1 hour, so other i values of the same query within that hour don't search again and don't count toward the limit. One that was already counted downloads only its own image
Query Normalization
All queries are normalized before caching and searching:
| Rule | Example | Result |
|---|
+ and %20 are treated as spaces | orange+cat, orange%20cat | orange cat |
| Lowercased | Orange+Cat | orange cat |
| Trimmed | +orange+cat+ | orange cat |
| Multiple spaces collapsed | orange++cat | orange cat |
| Trailing slashes stripped | orange+cat/ | orange cat |
| Control characters removed | orange\x00cat | orangecat |
| Slashes & Dots rejected | info.php, wp-admin/ | bad.webp served |
| Max length: 200 characters | — | 400 error if exceeded |
Characters that work fine
- Letters, numbers, spaces — standard queries
- Hyphens (
spider-man), apostrophes (90's) — passed through
- Unicode (
café, 日本) — supported via URL encoding
Slashes and Dots must be encoded
Literal slashes (/) and dots (.) in the URL path are rejected to prevent bot abuse (e.g. info.php or wp-admin/ probes). If your query genuinely contains these characters, you must encode them:
| Query | URL |
|---|
| AC/DC | /AC%2FDC ✅ |
| node.js | /node%2Ejs ✅ |
| info.php | /info.php ❌ (rejected) |
| AC/DC | /AC/DC ❌ (rejected) |
Things to know
- Query parameters (
?...) other than i (and src on free.) serve bad.webp — /orange+cat?size=large ❌
- Fragments (
#...) are never sent to the server by browsers
- Double-encoded values are decoded once —
%2520 becomes %20 (literal), not a space
- Two queries that normalize to the same string share the same cached image
- Nothing found? If neither Brave nor Firecrawl finds anything,
bad.webp is served (remembered for 24h). If a search finds fewer than i working images, an AI image of the query is served for the missing ones, and cached like any other image. bad.webp is served if the AI image fails too, or on free.
- Out of searches? Each query is searched on Brave or Firecrawl, and on the other if that one refuses (e.g. it's out of credits) or finds nothing. If both refuse,
donate.webp is served and nothing is cached, so the query works again once either is back
Free Images
Need images you can publish? free.direct-img.link only serves images marked free of restrictions (public domain or CC0), so no credit is needed. Same URL format, plus an optional src:
| Param | Values | Default |
|---|
src | openverse, wikimedia (case-insensitive) | Openverse's results, then Wikimedia's |
i | 1–20 — works the same as on the main site | 1 |
- Both are optional and can be used alone or together, in any order (
?i=2&src=wikimedia = ?src=wikimedia&i=2)
i above 20 serves max-i.webp, which lists each site's range. Other invalid values serve bad.webp- Only free images are served: if there's no image (or fewer than
i working ones), bad.webp is served (remembered for 24h) instead of an AI image. With a src, only that source's images are searched
- If a source fails or doesn't answer within 16s (e.g. Openverse is down or rate limited), the other source's results are used. If none of them finds anything,
bad.webp is served but not cached, so the next request searches again
- Each
src + i + query combination is cached separately. Like the main site, other i values within an hour of a search reuse its results and don't count as searches
- Search engines may crawl
free. (its robots.txt allows everything), so free images embedded in your pages can show up in image search and link previews. The main site and ai. allow only the homepage
Sources:
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