Quick Start

1. Create an account

Sign up at instantog.com/login. The free plan includes 1,000 credits per month — more than enough to get started.

2. Register your site

Go to Dashboard → Sites and add your domain (e.g. yoursite.com). You'll get a site ID like site_b6bc4c3f. This lets you use Instant OG directly from a meta tag — no API key exposed in your HTML.

3. Add the OG meta tag

Point your og:image meta tag at the Instant OG API, passing your site ID, a template, and the URL of the current page:

<meta
  property="og:image"
  content="https://instantog.com/api/og?site=site_b6bc4c3f&template=generic/standard&url=https://yoursite.com/page"
/>

When a social platform or crawler requests this URL, Instant OG extracts your page's metadata, renders it into the chosen template, and returns a 1200×630 PNG image. The image is cached, so subsequent requests are served instantly.

You can customize the output with query parameters:

<meta
  property="og:image"
  content="https://instantog.com/api/og?site=site_b6bc4c3f&template=generic/standard&url=https://yoursite.com/page&theme=dark&accentColor=%2316a34a&gradientBg=true"
/>

How site verification works

When a request comes in with a site parameter, Instant OG checks that the url domain matches your registered site and that the page actually contains an og:image tag pointing back to the API. This prevents unauthorized usage of your credits. Verification results are cached for 24 hours.

4. Alternative: API key auth

For programmatic use (build scripts, CI/CD, server-side generation), you can use an API key instead. Create one in Dashboard → API Keys, then call the API with a Bearer token:

curl "https://instantog.com/api/og?template=generic/standard&url=https://yoursite.com/blog/post" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  --output og-image.png

Keep your API key secret — never expose it in client-side code or HTML. Use the site ID approach for meta tags.

5. Verify your image

Paste your og:image URL into your browser to see the generated image. You can also use the Dashboard Preview to test different URLs and templates before deploying.

Next steps

Now that you have the basics working, explore the API Reference for the full list of query parameters, templates, and options. Check out the JSON-LD guide to learn how structured data can make your OG images even richer.