The Discord API is a REST API that allows you to interact with Discord data from your own applications. It’s the primary way to interact with Discord from your own code.
Some API and Gateway versions are now non-functioning, and are labeled as discontinued in the table below for posterity. Trying to use these versions will fail and return 400 Bad Request.
Discord exposes different versions of our API. You should specify which version to use by including it in the request path like https://discord.com/api/v{version_number}. Omitting the version number from the route will route requests to the current default version (marked below). You can find the change log for the newest API version here.API Versions
Starting in API v8, we’ve improved error formatting in form error responses. The response will tell you which JSON key contains the error, the error code, and a human readable error message. We will be frequently adding new error messages, so a complete list of errors is not feasible and would be almost instantly out of date. Here are some examples instead:Array Error
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{ "code": 50035, "errors": { "activities": { "0": { "platform": { "_errors": [ { "code": "BASE_TYPE_CHOICES", "message": "Value must be one of ('desktop', 'android', 'ios')." } ] }, "type": { "_errors": [ { "code": "BASE_TYPE_CHOICES", "message": "Value must be one of (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)." } ] } } } }, "message": "Invalid Form Body"}
Object Error
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{ "code": 50035, "errors": { "access_token": { "_errors": [ { "code": "BASE_TYPE_REQUIRED", "message": "This field is required" } ] } }, "message": "Invalid Form Body"}
Authenticating with the Discord API can be done in one of two ways:
Using a bot token found on the Bot page within your app’s settings. For more information on bots see bots vs user accounts.
Using an OAuth2 bearer token gained through the OAuth2 API.
For all authentication types, authentication is performed with the Authorization HTTP header in the format Authorization: TOKEN_TYPE TOKEN.Example Bot Token Authorization Header
Discord utilizes Twitter’s snowflake format for uniquely identifiable descriptors (IDs). These IDs are guaranteed to be unique across all of Discord, except in some unique scenarios in which child objects share their parent’s ID. Because Snowflake IDs are up to 64 bits in size (e.g. a uint64), they are always returned as strings in the HTTP API to prevent integer overflows in some languages. See Gateway ETF/JSON for more information regarding Gateway encoding.Snowflake ID Broken Down in Binary
We typically use snowflake IDs in many of our API routes for pagination. The standardized pagination paradigm we utilize is one in which you can specify IDs before and after in combination with limit to retrieve a desired page of results. You will want to refer to the specific endpoint documentation for details.It is useful to note that snowflake IDs are just numbers with a timestamp, so when dealing with pagination where you want results from the beginning of time (in Discord Epoch, but 0 works here too) or before/after a specific time you can generate a snowflake ID for that time.Generating a snowflake ID from a Timestamp Example
There are some cases in which our API and Gateway may return IDs in an unexpected format. Internally, Discord stores IDs as integer snowflakes. When we serialize IDs to JSON, we transform bigints into strings. Given that all Discord IDs are snowflakes, you should always expect a string.However, there are cases in which passing something to our API will instead return IDs serialized as an integer; this is the case when you send our API or Gateway a value in an id field that is not bigint size. For example, when requesting GUILD_MEMBERS_CHUNK from our gateway:
You can see in this case that the sent user_id is not a bigint; therefore, when it is serialized back to JSON by Discord, it is not transformed into a string. This will never happen with IDs that come from Discord. But, this can happen if you send malformed data in your requests.
Discord utilizes the ISO8601 format for most Date/Times returned in our models. This format is referred to as type ISO8601 within tables in this documentation.
Resource fields that may contain a null value have types that are prefixed with a question mark. Resource fields that are optional have names that are suffixed with a question mark.Example Nullable and Optional Fields
Discord operates at a scale where true consistency is impossible. Because of this, lots of operations in our API and in-between our services are eventually consistent. Due to this, client actions can never be serialized and may be executed in any order (if executed at all). Along with these constraints, events in Discord may:
Never be sent to a client
Be sent exactly one time to the client
Be sent up to N times per client
Clients should operate on events and results from the API in as much of an idempotent behavior as possible.
Clients using the HTTP API must provide a valid User Agent which specifies information about the client library and version in the following format:User Agent Example
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User-Agent: DiscordBot ($url, $versionNumber)
Clients may append more information and metadata to the end of this string as they wish.
Client requests that do not have a valid User Agent specified may be blocked and return a Cloudflare error.
Clients using the HTTP API must provide a valid Content-Type header, either application/json, application/x-www-form-urlencoded, or multipart/form-data, except where specified. Failing to do so will result in a 50035 “Invalid form body” error.
The HTTP API implements a process for limiting and preventing excessive requests in accordance with RFC 6585. API users that regularly hit and ignore rate limits will have their API keys revoked, and be blocked from the platform. For more information on rate limiting of requests, please see the Rate Limits section.
Certain endpoints in the API are documented to accept booleans for their query string parameters. While there is no standard system for boolean representation in query string parameters, Discord represents such cases using True, true, or 1 for true and False, false or 0 for false.
Discord’s Gateway API is used for maintaining persistent, stateful websocket connections between your client and our servers. These connections are used for sending and receiving real-time events your client can use to track and update local state. The Gateway API uses secure websocket connections as specified in RFC 6455. For information on opening Gateway connections, please see the Gateway API section.
Discord utilizes a subset of markdown for rendering message content on its clients, while also adding some custom functionality to enable things like mentioning users and channels. This functionality uses the following formats:Formats
Type
Structure
Example
User
<@USER_ID>
<@80351110224678912>
User *
<@!USER_ID>
<@!80351110224678912>
Channel
<#CHANNEL_ID>
<#103735883630395392>
Role
<@&ROLE_ID>
<@&165511591545143296>
Slash Command **
</NAME:COMMAND_ID>
</airhorn:816437322781949972>
Standard Emoji
Unicode Characters
🦶
Custom Emoji
<:NAME:ID>
<:mmLol:216154654256398347>
Custom Emoji (Animated)
<a:NAME:ID>
<a:b1nzy:392938283556143104>
Unix Timestamp
<t:TIMESTAMP>
<t:1618953630>
Unix Timestamp (Styled)
<t:TIMESTAMP:STYLE>
<t:1618953630:d>
Guild Navigation
<id:TYPE>
<id:customize>
Using the markdown for either users, roles, or channels will usually mention the target(s) accordingly, but this can be suppressed using the allowed_mentions parameter when creating a message. Standard emoji are currently rendered using Twemoji for Desktop/Android and Apple’s native emoji on iOS.Timestamps are expressed in seconds and display the given timestamp in the user’s timezone and locale.* User mentions with an exclamation mark are deprecated and should be handled like any other user mention.** Subcommands and subcommand groups can also be mentioned by using respectively </NAME SUBCOMMAND:ID> and </NAME SUBCOMMAND_GROUP SUBCOMMAND:ID>.Timestamp Styles
Style
Example Output
Description
t
16:20
Short Time
T
16:20:30
Long Time
d
20/04/2021
Short Date
D
20 April 2021
Long Date
f *
20 April 2021 16:20
Short Date/Time
F
Tuesday, 20 April 2021 16:20
Long Date/Time
R
2 months ago
Relative Time
*defaultGuild Navigation TypesGuild navigation types link to the corresponding resource in the current server.
Discord uses ids and hashes to render images in the client. These hashes can be retrieved through various API requests, like Get User. Below are the formats, size limitations, and CDN endpoints for images in Discord. The returned format can be changed by changing the extension name at the end of the URL. The returned size can be changed by appending a querystring of ?size=desired_size to the URL. Image size can be any power of two between 16 and 4096.Image Formats
* In the case of endpoints that support GIFs, the hash will begin with a_ if it is available in GIF format. (example: a_1269e74af4df7417b13759eae50c83dc)** In the case of the Default User Avatar endpoint, the value for index depends on whether the user is migrated to the new username system. For users on the new username system, index will be (user_id >> 22) % 6. For users on the legacy username system, index will be discriminator % 5.*** In the case of the Default User Avatar and Sticker endpoints, the size of images returned is constant with the “size” querystring parameter being ignored.**** In the case of the Sticker endpoint, the sticker will be available as PNG if its format_type is PNG or APNG, GIF if its format_type is GIF, and as Lottie if its format_type is LOTTIE.***** For Custom Emoji, we highly recommend requesting emojis as WebP for maximum performance and compatibility. Emojis can be uploaded as JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, and AVIF formats. WebP and AVIF formats must be requested as WebP since they don’t convert well to other formats. The Discord client uses WebP for all emojis displayed in-app. See the Emoji Resource page for more details.
Sticker GIFs do not use the CDN base url, and can be accessed at https://media.discordapp.net/stickers/<sticker_id>.gif.
Attachments uploaded to Discord’s CDN (like user and bot-uploaded images) have signed URLs with a preset expiry time. Discord automatically refreshes attachment CDN URLs that appear within the client, so when your app receives a payload with a signed URL (like when you fetch a message), it will be valid.When passing CDN URLs into API fields, like url in an embed image object and avatar_url for webhooks, your app can pass the CDN URL without any parameters as the value and Discord will automatically render and refresh the URL.The standard CDN endpoints listed above are not signed, so they will not expire.
The file upload size limit applies to each file in a request. The default limit is 10 MiB for all users, but may be higher for users depending on their Nitro status or by the server’s Boost Tier. The attachment_size_limit value provided when working with interactions is calculated as the maximum of these values.
Some endpoints support file attachments, indicated by the files[n] parameter. To add file(s), the standard application/json body must be replaced by a multipart/form-data body. The JSON message body can optionally be provided using the payload_json parameter.All files[n] parameters must include a valid Content-Disposition subpart header with a filename and unique name parameter. Each file parameter must be uniquely named in the format files[n] such as files[0], files[1], or files[42]. The suffixed index n is the snowflake placeholder that can be used in the attachments field, which can be passed to the payload_json parameter (or Callback Data Payloads).Images can also be referenced in embeds using the attachment://filename URL. The filename for these URLs must be ASCII alphanumeric with underscores, dashes, or dots. An example payload is provided below.
The attachments JSON parameter includes all files that will be appended to the message, including new files and their respective snowflake placeholders (referenced above). When making a PATCH request, only files listed in the attachments parameter will be appended to the message. Any previously-added files that aren’t included will be removed.Example Request Bodies (multipart/form-data)Note that these examples are small sections of an HTTP request to demonstrate behavior of this endpoint - client libraries will set their own form boundaries (boundary is just an example). For more information, refer to the multipart/form-data spec.This example demonstrates usage of the endpoint without payload_json.
Using Attachments within EmbedsYou can upload attachments when creating a message and use those attachments within your embed. To do this, you will want to upload files as part of your multipart/form-data body. Make sure that you’re uploading files which contain a filename, as you will need to reference it in your payload.
Only .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, and .gif may be used at this time. Other file types are not supported.
Within an embed object, you can set an image to use an attachment as its URL with the attachment scheme syntax: attachment://filename.pngFor example:
