# Cloudinary API

> Cloudinary stores, resizes and delivers a company's images and video, with an Admin API and MCP servers for agents. Free with 25 credits a month; paid from $89.

Cloudinary is a media platform. A company uploads its images, video and other files to its own product environment, and Cloudinary resizes, crops and converts them through the delivery URL. The Admin API manages and searches the assets, and official MCP servers let agents manage assets, metadata and media workflows. Its DAM, called Assets, is sold separately from the Image and Video API plans. Cloudinary describes itself as "the media layer for AI agents".

It suits products that deliver a company's images at many sizes and formats, and teams whose agents manage media.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Job | [File management (DAM)](https://brandapis.com/guides/which-brand-api#file-management-dam) |
| Logos | Partly |
| Colours | No |
| Fonts | No |
| Guidance | No |
| Files | Yes |
| You send | An asset ID, in the customer's product environment |
| Authentication | API key and secret; OAuth for MCP |
| Free tier | 25 credits a month |
| Paid from | $89 a month, billed yearly (Plus) |
| MCP server | Yes |
| Checked | 2026-11-10 |

## What does Cloudinary return?

- **Logos:** No logo-specific type; logos are stored as images, alongside videos and raw files.
- **Colours:** No endpoint for brand colours; asset details can include an image's predominant colours and a histogram of 32 leading colours, which describe that file.
- **Fonts:** No endpoint for brand fonts.
- **Guidance:** No endpoint for brand guidelines; the Admin API manages assets, folders, metadata and product environment settings.
- **Files:** Images, videos and raw files in the product environment, with search, tags, folders and derived assets.

## How is it billed?

Image and Video API plans are billed in credits: 1 credit is 1,000 transformations, 1 GB of managed storage or 1 GB of image bandwidth.

## What are the limits?

The Admin API allows 500 requests an hour on the free plan and from 2,000 an hour on paid plans; the Upload API is not rate-limited.

## What do the terms require?

The service is licensed for your business purposes on websites and mobile apps you own or operate, not for resale or further commercialization.

## Who keeps it current?

The customer's team, which uploads and manages media in its own product environment; webhook notifications tell other systems when assets change.

## How do you call it?

```
curl https://<API_KEY>:<API_SECRET>@api.cloudinary.com/v1_1/<CLOUD_NAME>/resources/image
```

## When should you use something else?

- **For brand colours, fonts or guidelines**, Cloudinary has no endpoint. The colours in an asset's details describe that one file, not the brand.
- **For agents making new work in a brand**, see [agentic brand work](https://brandapis.com/guides/which-brand-api#agentic-brand-work).
- **For the DAM itself**, check which product you need: a paid Image and Video API plan doesn't raise the Assets (DAM) limits, and Assets Enterprise doesn't raise the API limits.

## Sources

- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/admin_api_overview> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/cloudinary_llm_mcp> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/admin_api_resources_get_details_of_a_single_resource_by_public_id> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/admin_api> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/pricing> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/pricing> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/tou> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/notifications> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/dam_ai_agents> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/documentation/claimable_cloud_provisioning> (checked 2026-11-10)
- <https://cloudinary.com/llms.txt> (checked 2026-11-10)

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Source: https://brandapis.com/directory/cloudinary
Last updated: 2026-11-10
Published by The Brand API Register. The Brand API Register is run by Rainbrand, which makes one of the APIs listed. Its entry follows the same rules as the others.
