Flickr
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.
Solid contracts, transparent operations, and an easy start — typically complete on four or five facets with one clear soft spot.
API Evangelist profiles Flickr the way a machine reads it — 243 machine-readable artifacts across 32 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Flickr scores 64.4/100 (strong), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Flickr
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Flickr. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 32
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Flickr Activity API
Recent activity on the calling user's photos and contacts
Flickr Auth API
OAuth 1.0a token exchange
Flickr Blogs API
Configured blogs and posting to them
Flickr Cameras API
Camera brand and model metadata
Flickr Collections API
Hierarchical collections of photosets
Flickr Commons API
Flickr Commons institutions
Flickr Contacts API
Calling user's contacts and recent contact activity
Flickr Favorites API
Photos a user has marked as favorites
Flickr Galleries API
Curated, themed galleries of photos
Flickr Groups API
Group metadata, membership, and pool management
Flickr Groups Discuss API
Group discussion topics and replies
Flickr Interestingness API
The day's most interesting photos
Flickr Machine Tags API
Namespace, predicate, and value lookups for machine tags
Flickr Panda API
The Flickr Panda firehose of "interesting" photos
Flickr People API
People (users), their info, public photos, and groups
Flickr Photos API
Core photo metadata, search, comments, and lifecycle
Flickr Photos Geo API
Geotagging photos with latitude/longitude
Flickr Photos Licenses API
License catalog and per-photo license assignment
Flickr Photos Notes API
Notes drawn on photos
Flickr Photos Transform API
Rotate photos server-side
Flickr Photos Upload API
Asynchronous upload status polling
Flickr Photosets API
Photo albums (photosets)
Flickr Places API
Place IDs, hierarchies, and resolution
Flickr Prefs API
Calling user's posting preferences
Flickr Profile API
User profile fields
Flickr Public API
The Public API from Flickr — 25 operation(s) for public.
Flickr Push API
PubSubHubbub push subscriptions
Flickr Reflection API
Programmatic discovery of available API methods
Flickr Stats API
View counts and referrers for photos/photosets/collections
Flickr Tags API
Tag clusters, hot lists, and tag-based lookups
Flickr Test API
Echo, login, and null test methods
Flickr URLs API
Look up Flickr URLs by user, group, gallery
Scroll within the panel for all 32 ·
Open Collections 1
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
Flickr API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Flickr Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Flickr Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Flickr Finops
FINOPSFeatures 10
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Method-Dispatched REST API
Single endpoint with `method=flickr.{namespace}.{method}` selector covering 250+ methods across 30 namespaces.
Photo Search
Rich text/tag/geo/license/date/content-filter search across the public photo corpus.
OAuth 1.0a Authentication
HMAC-SHA1 three-legged OAuth flow for accessing user-owned content.
Sync + Async Photo Upload
Multipart upload endpoint with synchronous or ticket-based asynchronous status polling.
PubSubHubbub Push
Push subscriptions for change-driven workloads instead of polling.
Reflection
flickr.reflection.getMethods and getMethodInfo for programmatic API discovery.
Flickr Commons
Institutional partner program (museums, libraries, archives) with no-known-copyright photos.
Geotagging
Lat/lon attachment plus Places (WOEID) resolution.
Machine Tags
Structured namespace.predicate=value tagging for machine-readable taxonomies.
Stats
Per-day view/comment/favorite counts for owned content.
Scroll within the panel for all 10 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Flickr Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Flickr API Rules
SPECTRALFlickr API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 58
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
ActivityItem
JSON SCHEMAActivityList
JSON SCHEMABlogList
JSON SCHEMABlog
JSON SCHEMABrandList
JSON SCHEMABrand
JSON SCHEMACameraList
JSON SCHEMACamera
JSON SCHEMACollection
JSON SCHEMACollectionTree
JSON SCHEMAContactList
JSON SCHEMAContact
JSON SCHEMAEchoResponse
JSON SCHEMAExifList
JSON SCHEMAExif
JSON SCHEMAGalleryList
JSON SCHEMAGallery
JSON SCHEMAGroupList
JSON SCHEMAGroup
JSON SCHEMAInstitutionList
JSON SCHEMAInstitution
JSON SCHEMALicenseList
JSON SCHEMALicense
JSON SCHEMALoginInfo
JSON SCHEMAMachineTagNamespaceList
JSON SCHEMAMachineTagNamespace
JSON SCHEMAMethodInfo
JSON SCHEMAMethodList
JSON SCHEMANote
JSON SCHEMAOAuthCredentials
JSON SCHEMAPandaList
JSON SCHEMAPanda
JSON SCHEMAPerson
JSON SCHEMAPhotoList
JSON SCHEMAPhoto
JSON SCHEMAPhotosetList
JSON SCHEMAPhotoset
JSON SCHEMAPlaceList
JSON SCHEMAPlace
JSON SCHEMAPrivacyPreference
JSON SCHEMAProfile
JSON SCHEMAPushTopicList
JSON SCHEMAPushTopic
JSON SCHEMASizeList
JSON SCHEMASize
JSON SCHEMAStatList
JSON SCHEMAStat
JSON SCHEMATagClusterList
JSON SCHEMATagList
JSON SCHEMATag
JSON SCHEMATicketList
JSON SCHEMATicket
JSON SCHEMATopicList
JSON SCHEMATopicReplyList
JSON SCHEMATopicReply
JSON SCHEMATopic
JSON SCHEMAUploadResponse
JSON SCHEMAUserUrlLookup
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 58 ·
JSON Structure 58
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Flickr Activity Item Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Activity List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Blog List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Blog Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Brand List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Brand Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Camera List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Camera Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Collection Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Collection Tree Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Contact List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Contact Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Echo Response Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Exif List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Exif Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Gallery List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Gallery Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Group List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Group Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Institution List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Institution Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr License List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr License Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Login Info Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Machine Tag Namespace List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Machine Tag Namespace Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Method Info Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Method List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Note Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Oauth Credentials Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Panda List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Panda Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Person Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Photo List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Photo Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Photoset List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Photoset Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Place List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Place Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Privacy Preference Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Profile Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Push Topic List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Push Topic Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Size List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Size Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Stat List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Stat Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Tag Cluster List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Tag List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Tag Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Ticket List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Ticket Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Topic List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Topic Reply List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Topic Reply Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Topic Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr Upload Response Structure
JSON STRUCTUREFlickr User Url Lookup Structure
JSON STRUCTUREScroll within the panel for all 58 ·
Examples 58
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Flickr Activity Item Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Activity List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Blog Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Blog List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Brand Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Brand List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Camera Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Camera List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Collection Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Contact Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Contact List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Echo Response Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Exif Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Exif List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Gallery Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Gallery List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Group Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Group List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Institution Example
EXAMPLEFlickr License Example
EXAMPLEFlickr License List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Login Info Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Method Info Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Method List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Note Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Panda Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Panda List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Person Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Photo Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Photo List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Photoset Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Photoset List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Place Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Place List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Profile Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Push Topic Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Size Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Size List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Stat Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Stat List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Tag Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Tag List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Ticket Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Ticket List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Topic Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Topic List Example
EXAMPLEFlickr Topic Reply Example
EXAMPLEScroll within the panel for all 58 ·
Security Posture 3
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Scopes 1
OAuth scopes are the vocabulary of least-privilege access. Profiling them shows exactly what an integration — or an agent acting on a user's behalf — is allowed to do.
OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Use Cases 7
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Photo-Powered App
Build a third-party app that searches, displays, or remixes the public Flickr photo corpus.
Photo Backup / Sync
Bulk-upload pipeline pushing a user's photos into Flickr (or pulling them out).
Curator Tooling
Editorial workflows that build galleries, photosets, and collections programmatically.
Community Bot
Group moderation, topic listing, and reply harvesting for community managers.
Cultural Heritage Research
Access Flickr Commons institutional collections for research or aggregation.
Geo-Photo Analytics
Map-based analytics over the geotagged photo corpus by place / WOEID.
Discovery / Recommendation
Interestingness and Panda feeds plus tag clusters for content-discovery surfaces.
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Integrations 5
Pre-built integrations with other platforms tell you where this provider already fits in a stack.
Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.
PubSubHubbub
Push subscription protocol used by `flickr.push.*` topics.
OAuth 1.0a
Industry-standard delegated-authorization protocol used for all user-context calls.
Blogger / WordPress
Configured blog services available through `flickr.blogs.*` for cross-posting from Flickr.
SmugMug
Parent company; account ecosystem and import/export flows.
Yahoo Login (legacy)
Historic Yahoo-account login path now superseded by direct Flickr accounts.
Solutions 3
Packaged solutions the provider offers on top of the raw API surface.
Packaged solutions this provider offers.
Non-Commercial API Key
Free API key for personal/non-commercial apps; standard online sign-up.
Commercial API Key
Permission-only commercial API key reviewed individually by Flickr.
Flickr Pro (consumer)
Consumer-side paid Flickr account (out of scope for API pricing).
Resources
Every other property we hold for Flickr — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 3
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 2
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 4
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 5
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 5
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 2
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
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