Get thumbnail image of Vimeo video WITHOUT making a request to the Vimeo API

Question

Looking for a way to obtain a thumbnail image of a Vimeo video WITHOUT (I repeat, WITHOUT) having to do a REST request to the Vimeo API?

(Unfortunately, the following "answer" is over 10 years old and does NOT answer this question: Get img thumbnails from Vimeo?)

Nearly all video providers allow you to obtain a thumbnail image of a video by simply supplying the video ID within a specific URL path (i.e.: YouTube, Matterport, iGuide, etc.)

To be clear - I am NOT looking for a "solution" that uses Javascript or requires a request to be made to the Vimeo API - just a specific URL that can return a thumbnail given a Vimeo video ID.

Irrefragable

Answer 1

I also emailed Vimeo API support, and below is the "official" response I received from their support group:

Hi there,

Thanks for your interest in the Vimeo API! Full documentation of the Vimeo API can be found on our Developer Site:

https://developer.vimeo.com/api/guides/start

Sorry, but it's not possible to get a video's thumbnail links without first making a request to one of our APIs (oEmbed or our full-fledged REST API). You can learn about these APIs here:

https://developer.vimeo.com/api/oembed/videos

https://developer.vimeo.com/api/guides/start

So - no way to get a thumbnail of a Vimeo video without making a REST request. Too bad.

Update: 2-Oct-2021 See @Parthiban post - Vimeo has updated their service / documentation: https://developer.vimeo.com/api/oembed/videos

Irrefragable

Answer 2

You can use the Vimeo oEmbed method, which gives a JSON response with the video's basic meta-information including thumbnails. Which doesn't require an authentication method like Vimeo API.

More details in the official documentation here: https://developer.vimeo.com/api/oembed/videos

Tannate

Answer 3

Check out https://vumbnail.com/

You can simply pass in the id of the video in the url and it will respond with the thumbnail image.

https://vumbnail.com/358629078.jpg

You can also request certain sizes as per the documentation. This appears to be made by a third party so I can't say whether it is well supported and reliable but it appears to do what it claims to do as of the time that I'm writing this answer. Best of luck.

Stickybeak