Free placeholder image API — the classic hosts are dead, here's one that isn't

An uncomfortable number of the placeholder-image URLs baked into a decade of tutorials, starter templates, and Stack Overflow answers no longer work. Checked live, July 2026:

Host	Status today
`via.placeholder.com`	❌ dead — connection accepted, request hangs, no response
`placehold.it`	❌ dead for images — serves a Cloudflare human-verification challenge; an `<img>` tag can't solve one
`placekitten.com`	❌ dead — HTTP 521 (origin down)
`placeimg.com`	❌ dead — shut down, connection fails
`placehold.co`, `dummyimage.com`, `picsum.photos`, `loremflickr.com`, `dicebear`, `ui-avatars`	✅ alive and fine — see the honest comparison below

If a grey rectangle in your project stopped rendering, that's why. Here's a replacement URL that takes ten seconds — and if you're mocking an API anyway, a reason the placeholder should live next to your mock data.

The 10-second fix

<img src="https://HOST/m/demo/img/300x200">
<img src="https://HOST/m/demo/img/128?round=1&text=AL&seed=ada">   <!-- avatar -->
<img src="https://HOST/m/demo/img/640x360?text=Hero+banner&bg=1e3a8a">

No signup, no key. demo is Mockbird's shared public playground project; every Mockbird project (including ones you create anonymously with one curl) gets the same /img endpoint under its own URL. Output is a crisp SVG at any size from 1 to 2000 px, served with Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400 and CORS *.

Parameters

Param	Does	Example
`/img/WxH`	size (1–2000). `/img/300` = square shorthand	`/img/640x480`, `/img/300`
`?text=`	label, ≤64 chars (default "W×H"). Font auto-scales to fit	`?text=Product+7`
`?bg=` / `?fg=`	3- or 6-digit hex, no `#`. Custom `bg` alone auto-picks a readable text color	`?bg=1e3a8a&fg=fff`
`?seed=`	any string → deterministic palette color (same seed, same color, forever)	`?seed=ada`
`?round=1`	circle instead of rectangle — avatars	`?round=1&text=AL`

Everything is deterministic: the same URL always renders the exact same bytes. That matters for visual-regression tests — no cache-busting randomness, no flaky screenshot diffs.

The actual point: your mock data ships with images that render

Placeholder images are rarely the whole job — usually you're building a UI against an API that doesn't exist yet, and the fake product objects need fake photos and the fake users need fake avatars. Mockbird is a hosted mock REST API, and its seeded image and avatar fields point at the project's own /img endpoint automatically:

curl 'https://HOST/m/demo/products/1?select=name,image'
# {
#   "id": 1,
#   "name": "Thing City Time",
#   "image": "https://HOST/m/demo/img/640x480?seed=6534"
# }

So one curl creates a project with 30 products whose image URLs already work, and user-type resources seed circular avatars with the person's initials. Your product grid, your account dropdown, your review list — everything renders on first load, and none of it makes a request to a third-party image service that might be the next via.placeholder.com:

curl -s -X POST https://HOST/api/projects \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"preset":"ecommerce"}'
# → { "id": "abc123xyz0", ... }  — full fake store: data + images, one origin

Prefer clicking: create the same project in one click.

Why same-origin placeholders are worth caring about

One dependency instead of two. Your demo/CI/portfolio project depends on one host, not "my mock API + whichever image service still exists".
Deterministic tests. Same URL, same bytes — screenshot tests don't flake because a random kitten changed.
No surprise rate limits. Usage counts toward your project's own quota (10,000 requests/day per project; the shared demo gets 50,000) — nothing else throttles you.
Works in protected mode. If you lock a project behind mock JWT auth, /img deliberately stays open, because <img> tags can't send Authorization headers.

Honest comparison

	placehold.co	dummyimage	picsum / loremflickr	dicebear / ui-avatars	Mockbird /img
Alive (July 2026)	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Formats	SVG, PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF	PNG, GIF, JPG	JPEG/WebP real photos	SVG/PNG avatars	SVG only
Custom text / colors	✅ + custom fonts	✅	—	initials/art styles	✅ text, colors, seed palette
Avatars (initials, circle)	—	—	—	✅ (their specialty)	✅
Real photos	—	—	✅	—	—
Same origin as your mock API	—	—	—	—	✅ — seeded data pre-wired

Written by the Mockbird maker — bias disclosed. Where the survivors genuinely win: placehold.co does raster formats (PNG/JPEG/WebP/AVIF), retina variants, and custom fonts — if you need a PNG placeholder, use it, it's excellent. picsum.photos and loremflickr serve real photographs, which look far better in a read-only portfolio grid. DiceBear has genuinely charming avatar art styles; ours are plain initials-on-a-circle. Mockbird's /img is SVG-only and capped at 2000 px. Use it when the placeholder should live at the same base URL as the rest of your fake backend — which, if you're mocking an API at all, is most of the time. Dead-host statuses verified by direct request on July 28, 2026.

FAQ

Is via.placeholder.com coming back? Unknown — it has been intermittently down for long stretches and currently doesn't answer requests at all. Treat URLs pointing at it as broken and swap the host.

Do I need to create anything to use the images? No — /m/demo/img/… works bare. Create your own project (one curl, no signup) if you want your own namespace, your own quota, and seeded data around it.

SVG in an <img> tag — anything to watch for? It renders in every modern browser exactly like a PNG would. The response carries X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff and a restrictive Content-Security-Policy, and text is XML-escaped — it's an image, not an injection vector.

Full parameter reference in the docs. More guides: fake ecommerce API · mock API for React · free mock API tools compared. Create your API →