Gravatar

Gravatar (an abbreviation of Globally Recognized Avatar) is a free online service that allows users to create an image and profile associated with an email address, which can be displayed automatically on Gravatar-enabled websites. These sites include WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress installations, Slack, Github, Zapier, and other platforms that integrate with Gravatar’s API.

The service was created in 2004 by Tom Preston-Werner, who later stopped working on Gravatar to co-found GitHub. In 2007, it was acquired by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, as the company’s first-ever acquisition. Before Gravatar integration, WordPress lacked built-in support for image cropping and resizing, and shared hosting environments often struggled to handle avatars in comments. Incorporating Gravatar into WordPress resolved these technical challenges by offloading avatar hosting and processing to Gravatar’s infrastructure, enabling consistent and scalable avatar support across the platform.

Each Gravatar profile is linked to one or more email addresses. When a user interacts on a participating site, the service matches the email address to a stored profile and displays the associated avatar and optional public information. Profiles can include biographical text, websites, and verified social media accounts. Users can control the visibility of their information and create multiple profiles tied to different email addresses.

In 2024, Gravatar expanded its service to include Profile-as-a-Service, allowing developers to retrieve not only avatars but also detailed profile data — such as display names, job titles, verified accounts, and location — through a redesigned REST API. This enables application developers to pre-fill user profiles during onboarding, reducing sign-up friction and ensuring consistent identity across platforms.

As of 2025, Gravatar reported approximately 200 million registered profiles. The service remains free for both end-users and developers.