Pinterest Image Search

Quick answer: To search Pinterest by image, tap the camera icon in the Pinterest app’s search bar and take or choose a photo. On a computer, log in at pinterest.com, click the lens icon in the search bar and upload the picture. Pinterest calls this Lens. To find where a Pin’s picture came from, copy its image address and paste it above: the buttons search it on Google Lens, TinEye and Yandex.

How to use it

1. Pick what you are searching on: a computer, an Android phone, or an iPhone or iPad. The tool picks your device for you when it can.
2. Follow Pinterest’s steps. They are Pinterest’s own, from its help article on Lens, with the date we checked them.
3. To find who pinned a picture first, paste the Pin’s link into the box. The tool shows the earliest pin of that picture we hold: who pinned it, when, and the site it links to.
4. To find who made a picture, copy the picture’s address from the Pin and paste it into the box. Then open it in Google Lens, TinEye or Yandex.

Searching Pinterest with a picture

Pinterest’s help describes Lens this way: Lens lets you discover ideas inspired by anything you point your Pinterest camera at. In the app you point the camera at something, or pick a photo from your camera roll. On a computer you upload a picture. Pinterest then shows Pins that look like it: a plant you can’t name, a chair you want to find again, a recipe from one photo of the dish.

Inside a Pin you are already looking at, you can search one part of the picture. In the app, open the Pin and tap the picture, or tap the magnifying glass with sparkles, then drag the corners to choose the part you want. Pinterest notes that this visual search does not work on ads or collage Pins.

Finding where a Pin’s picture came from

Pinterest’s own image search finds similar Pins, not the person who made the picture. For that, search the picture across the web (and if you know the person’s name, the Find Someone on Pinterest tool has Pinterest’s steps to find their profile):

• Copy the image address. On a computer, right-click the picture on the Pin and choose “Copy Image Address”. On a phone in a browser, press and hold the picture. A Pin’s picture address starts with https://i.pinimg.com/.
• Paste it above and pick a search. Each of the three searches its own index of the web, so one often finds copies another misses. TinEye can sort what it finds by date, which helps you find the first copy.
• Look for the earliest, largest copy. That is usually the maker’s: a photographer’s site, a shop or a blog. Then ask them before you use it (our image copyright checker quotes Pinterest’s own Terms on that).

Who pinned it first

Paste a Pin’s link (it starts pinterest.com/pin/) or its picture’s address, and the tool looks for the same picture in the pins PinPinterest has read. It shows the earliest of them: the account that pinned it, the date Pinterest gives that pin, and the website it links to. The same picture re-pinned by many accounts keeps one file on Pinterest, which is how the copies are matched.

It is the earliest pin we hold, not always the first ever: we only know the pins we have read, and a picture can be older than any pin of it. The site the earliest pin links to is often where the picture came from. A short pin.it link holds no Pin number, so open it first and paste the address your browser shows.

A small copy finds fewer matches, so when you paste a small Pinterest copy (such as a 236x address from the grid), the tool searches Pinterest’s larger 736x copy of the same picture instead.

FAQ