Gravatar Checker

About Gravatar Checker

Gravatar stores one profile picture per email address and lets thousands of sites display it. Enter an address here to find out whether a Gravatar exists, see the avatar, and get the MD5 hash and profile link that Gravatar uses to identify it. Developers use it when debugging avatar display in their own apps.

How to use it

1. Type the address into the Email Address field.
2. Select Check Gravatar. The address is sent to our server, which asks Gravatar about it.
3. Read the status: Gravatar found or No Gravatar found.
4. If found, view the round avatar preview and copy the MD5 Hash or Profile URL.
5. Use the hash to build avatar URLs in your own application.

How the hash is formed

user@example.com

MD5 Hash: b58996c504c5638798eb6b511e6f49af. Avatar and profile addresses on gravatar.com are built from that hash. Whether an image exists depends on whether the owner registered it.

When to use it

• Working out why a comment section shows a generic placeholder instead of a contributor's photo.
• Generating the MD5 hash of an address the way Gravatar expects it, trimmed and lowercased.
• Checking a test address while building a sign-up form that pulls in avatars.
• Confirming that a recently uploaded Gravatar image has started to resolve.

Questions about Gravatar Checker

What exactly is sent to your server and to Gravatar?

The email address goes to our server, which trims it, lowercases it and computes the MD5 hash. Only that hash, not the address itself, is included in the request our server makes to Gravatar.

How does the tool decide that a Gravatar exists?

It requests the avatar with the option that returns a not-found response when no image is registered. A success response means an image exists, and a 404 means none does.

Why does capitalization not matter?

Gravatar hashes the lowercased address, so Person@Example.com and person@example.com map to the same profile. The tool applies that normalization before hashing.

Why did I get an error instead of a result?

The input must look like a valid email address. Requests to Gravatar also time out after eight seconds, and lookups are rate limited, so heavy repeated use returns an error message.

Can this tell me whether the mailbox is real?

No. A missing Gravatar only means the owner never registered one. Plenty of active addresses have no Gravatar, and a found result proves nothing about deliverability.

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