# avatarapi blog

- [DiceBear vs UI Avatars vs Boring Avatars: generated avatar APIs compared](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/avatar-placeholder-generators.md) (2026-10-19): Generated avatars never fail, but they're never the real person. A comparison of DiceBear, UI Avatars, Boring Avatars, and Vercel's avatar service, and how to pair them with a real lookup.
- [Showing customer avatars in a CRM or support inbox](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/avatars-in-crm-support-inbox.md) (2026-10-19): Turn a list of email addresses into faces and company logos: what to look up, how to handle privacy, and how to keep it fast.
- [Bluesky avatar API: getting a profile picture from a handle](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/bluesky-avatar-api.md) (2026-10-19): Bluesky's public AppView API returns avatars without authentication. Here's how to call it, and when a plain image URL is simpler.
- [Clearbit Logo API alternatives after the shutdown](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/clearbit-logo-api-alternative.md) (2026-10-19): The free Clearbit Logo API (logo.clearbit.com) shut down in December 2025. Here are the replacements for getting a company logo from a domain, and how they compare.
- [Company logo from an email domain: BIMI explained](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/company-logo-from-email-domain-bimi.md) (2026-10-19): BIMI lets a company publish its official logo in DNS. Here's how the record works, how to read it, and how to use it to show a logo for any work email.
- [Favicon APIs: Google, DuckDuckGo, and what to use in production](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/favicon-api.md) (2026-10-19): How google.com/s2/favicons and icons.duckduckgo.com work, why they're risky in a product, and how to get a higher-quality logo for any domain.
- [How to get an X (Twitter) profile picture by username](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/get-x-twitter-profile-picture.md) (2026-10-19): Three ways to show someone's X profile picture from their @handle: the official API, scraping pbs.twimg.com, or a one-line image URL.
- [GitHub avatar URL: every way to get a user's profile picture](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/github-avatar-url.md) (2026-10-19): github.com/username.png, avatars.githubusercontent.com, the REST API, and what each does when the user doesn't exist.
- [Gravatar alternatives in 2026](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/gravatar-alternatives.md) (2026-10-19): Gravatar only knows people who signed up for it. Here are the alternatives for getting a profile picture from an email address, and when each one fits.
- [How to get an Instagram profile picture by username](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/instagram-profile-picture-by-username.md) (2026-10-19): Instagram's Basic Display API is gone, the Graph API only covers business accounts, and scraping from cloud IPs gets rate-limited. Here's what actually works in 2026.
- [A React and Next.js avatar component with a real fallback](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/react-nextjs-avatar-component.md) (2026-10-19): Build an <Avatar> that shows a user's real picture from a username, email, or domain, and falls back to initials when there isn't one.
- [avatarapi vs unavatar: comparing avatar-by-username APIs](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/unavatar-alternative.md) (2026-10-19): A side-by-side look at avatarapi and unavatar.io, the two APIs that return a profile picture from a username, email, or domain in one URL.
- [How to get a YouTube channel avatar from a handle](https://avatarsapi.com/blog/youtube-channel-avatar.md) (2026-10-19): Two ways to show a YouTube channel's profile picture from its @handle: the YouTube Data API's channels.list, or a single image URL.