Quick start
Open any poster page, hit Share → Embed image, and paste the snippet into your HTML. That’s it — your domain is registered automatically on the free tier the first time a visitor loads the image.
<a href="https://movieposterdb.com/the-matrix-tt0133093/p/…"> <img src="https://posters.movieposterdb.com/…/l_….jpg" alt="The Matrix poster" loading="lazy"> </a>
Always copy image URLs from the site (the share dialog, or right-click → copy image address). Poster paths contain internal identifiers and can’t be constructed by hand — made-up paths return 400 invalid poster path.
How the free tier works
We identify embedding sites by the Referer header your visitors’ browsers send. The first request from your domain auto-registers it — no account needed. Each registered domain gets a monthly bandwidth and request allowance (see the table below).
When a domain exceeds its allowance, we never break your layout: instead of the poster you get a placeholder image with an upgrade note, until the period resets at the start of the next calendar month. The same placeholder appears if you embed an XL image on a tier that doesn’t include XL.
Image sizes
Each poster exists in fixed derivative sizes, encoded as a filename prefix. Swap the prefix in a URL you copied to get another size of the same poster.
| Prefix | Width | Host | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| m_ | ~100 px | posters.movieposterdb.com | free |
| t_ | ~200 px | posters.movieposterdb.com | free |
| s_ | ~300 px | posters.movieposterdb.com | free |
| l_ | ~600 px | posters.movieposterdb.com | free |
| xl_ | ~1200 px | xl.movieposterdb.com | paid tiers |
Original scans (o_) are never served through the embed CDN — they’re available to signed-in members as paid downloads.
Plans & quotas
| Tier | Bandwidth / month | Requests / month | Max size | Domains | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| free | 1 GB | 10k | Large (600 px) | 1 | free |
| small | 25 GB | 250k | XL (1200 px) | 1 | €9 / month |
| medium | 250 GB | 2.5 M | XL (1200 px) | 5 | €49 / month |
| large | 1 TB | 10 M | XL (1200 px) | 10 | €99 / month |
| XLarge | 3 TB | 30 M | XL (1200 px) | 25 | €199 / month |
Quotas are per calendar month (UTC) and count per domain (or per API key). Every paid tier is also available with annual billing at 10 % off. Upgrades apply to your existing embeds — no URL changes needed. Manage plans in the embed console.
Claiming your domain
Auto-registered domains work without an account, but claiming your domain in the embed console gets you usage stats and lets you attach a paid tier. Verification takes a minute: add a DNS TXT record or a <meta> tag to your homepage — the console walks you through both.
API keys
If your embeds load without a browser Referer — server-side rendering into emails, native mobile apps, RSS readers — identify yourself with an API key instead: create a key and append ?k=mpdb_pk_… to the image URL. Keys take priority over the Referer when both are present. Treat keys as secrets: anyone holding the key spends your quota. Revoke and re-issue from the console at any time.
Ground rules
- Use the URLs the site gives you — don’t guess or rewrite poster paths.
- Keep the link back to the poster page where practical; the archive grows through attribution.
- Don’t proxy or re-host the images to dodge quotas — spike-detection flags this and the domain gets suspended.
- Original scans stay off-limits for embedding, on every tier.