Anime — entry 014 of 15
Trace Moe
Trace.moe's real search endpoint at api.trace.moe was reconfirmed live — a deliberately broken image URL returned a proper JSON error rather than a network failure, and a real image search (a Gochuumon wa Usagi Desuka 2 screenshot) returned genuine matching-scene data with Access-Control-Allow-Origin echoing the request's Origin. It's free and keyless up to a 100-search/24-hour quota per IP (confirmed live via GET /me, not the 1,000/month figure some third-party write-ups repeat); Patreon sponsorship raises both the daily quota and concurrency.
Trace.moe searches an index of over a billion anime video frames by visual similarity — give it a screenshot's URL (or upload the raw image/video bytes) and it returns the matching anime, episode, timestamp, and a similarity score, entirely free and keyless up to a modest daily quota.
GreatAPIs Score
Embed this badge
<a href="https://greatapis.com/api/trace-moe/"><img src="https://greatapis.com/badge/trace-moe.svg" alt="Scored 71 on greatapis.com"></a>Auth quickstart
- No API key required for the free tier — requests are identified by IP address; an optional `x-trace-key` header from a Patreon sponsorship raises your daily quota and concurrency.
Your key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the API — never to greatapis.
Find the anime and scene for a screenshot
GEThttps://api.trace.moe/search?url=https://images.plurk.com/32B15UXxymfSMwKGTObY5e.jpg
{
"frameCount": 1695617837,
"error": "",
"quota": 100,
"quotaUsed": 0,
"result": [
{
"anilist": 21034,
"filename": "Gochuumon wa Usagi Desuka 2 - 01 (BD 1280x720 x264 AAC).mp4",
"episode": 1,
"from": 272.1886,
"at": 279.7795,
"to": 282.6574,
"duration": 1418.0834,
"similarity": 0.9922267306084727,
"video": "https://api.trace.moe/video/4IU9u8xXei4VX1QzRndqaEX",
"image": "https://api.trace.moe/image/4IU9u8xXei4VX1QzRndqaEX"
},
{
"anilist": 21034,
"filename": "Gochuumon wa Usagi Desuka 2 - 07 (BD 1280x720 x264 AAC).mp4",
"episode": 7,
"from": 1252.0007,
"at": 1252.1676,
"to": 1255.2123,
"duration": 1418.0834,
"similarity": 0.5676066978304994,
"video": "https://api.trace.moe/video/WppJazIygTNGMBdlAi5WBV4",
"image": "https://api.trace.moe/image/WppJazIygTNGMBdlAi5WBV4"
}
]
}Developer reference
https://api.trace.moe100 requests/minute per IP at the HTTP layer (with or without an API key); separately, the free tier's own search quota is 100 searches per rolling 24 hours per IP with a concurrency of 1 simultaneous /search request (confirmed live via GET /me) — Patreon sponsor tiers raise both the daily quota and the concurrency.
Gotchas & limits
- Results are sorted most-similar-first, but a similarity below roughly 0.90 is usually a false positive rather than a real match — confirmed live: the real screenshot above scored 0.992 on its true source, while an unrelated lower-ranked entry for the same show scored only 0.568.
- The `video` and `image` preview URLs in each result expire in 300 seconds (5 minutes) — fetch or display them immediately rather than caching or persisting the raw links.
- The documented free-tier search quota is 100 searches per rolling 24 hours per IP, confirmed live via `GET /me` returning `quota: 100` — not the 1,000/month figure some third-party write-ups repeat. A separate HTTP-layer limit of 100 requests/minute per IP applies to every endpoint, key or no key.
- The free tier allows only 1 concurrent `/search` request — firing a second request before the first responds fails with HTTP 402 rather than queuing; Patreon sponsorship raises both concurrency and daily quota.