Guide
Imgur not working on your FiveM server: why, and what to use instead.
Uploads that fail with an error, phone photos that load for some players and not others, old images replaced by a placeholder. Imgur was never designed as a backend for game servers, and several of its rules now get in the way. Here is how to tell which one you hit and how to move on.
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Why so many FiveM scripts used Imgur
Imgur offered a free upload API with nothing more than a Client-ID, and it returned a direct i.imgur.com link. That made it the default example in many older FiveM resources: phone cameras, screenshot tools and report menus shipped with an Imgur upload function and a Client-ID field in the config. It worked well enough for a small server, which is why it is still in a lot of configs today.
Cause 1: rate limits on the upload API
The Imgur API limits how many requests an application and an IP address can make. Every player on your server who takes a photo uploads through the same Client-ID, often from the same server IP, so a busy evening reaches the limit long before a personal project would. The symptom is an upload that fails with an HTTP 429 response, or a script that logs an empty URL. Creating a new Client-ID buys time; it does not change the arithmetic.
Cause 2: images that load for some players and not others
Imgur restricts access from some regions; in 2025 it stopped serving users in the United Kingdom, for example. On a FiveM server that shows up as a phone gallery, an inventory or a loading screen that works for most players and stays blank for a few, with nothing in your server console to explain it. The image is fine; the player’s connection to Imgur is not allowed.
Cause 3: old images removed
Imgur changed its terms in 2023 to remove old content that is not tied to an account, along with explicit content. Images uploaded anonymously through an API Client-ID years ago are exactly that kind of content. When they go, every place that stored the link — a phone database, an MDT, an evidence locker — shows a placeholder, and there is no way to get the file back.
The fix: point the script at a host made for game servers
The script itself does not need replacing. Most FiveM resources that can upload to Imgur can also upload to a custom URL, and BasiX answers the upload formats those scripts already use. LB Phone has a Custom upload method; screenshot-basic and ScreenCapture can post to the upload endpoint directly; anything else can send a multipart POST with the key as a header or, where the script cannot send headers, as a query parameter. The response carries the URL both at the top level and under data, so whichever field your script reads, it finds one.
What you get in exchange: one direct CDN address per file, no expiry unless you set a retention policy, originals stored byte for byte with ?w= thumbnails on demand, and a free tier with no card. Uploads are limited per key rather than per shared application, and bandwidth is never billed.
curl — test the upload before changing your config
curl -X POST https://upload.basix.media/api/v3/file \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_BASIX_KEY" \
-F "[email protected]"Questions
Usually rate limits: every upload from your server shares one Client-ID and often one IP, so a busy server hits the Imgur API limit and gets HTTP 429.
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Updated Oct 26, 2026