What Is the Best GIPHY Alternative for iPhone? Picks by What You Use GIPHY For (2026)

What Does GIPHY Do Well, and Where Does It Fall Short?

GIPHY is a search engine for a public library of GIFs, clips and stickers, which it calls the world's largest. The free iPhone app comes with an iMessage app and a keyboard extension, and you can heart a GIF to keep it in your favorites. For "something that says congratulations" it is hard to beat. Its App Store listing (checked November 2026) shows three things that send people looking elsewhere:

• Ads. The listing says the app contains advertising, and there is no paid tier listed that removes it.
• Favorites hold only GIPHY's GIFs. The reaction a friend sent you, the clip you screen-recorded, or the meme you saved from Reddit cannot go in them.
• The library is not yours. A GIF can be taken down, and your favorite goes with it. Public GIF libraries change outside your control: this year Google shut the Tenor API to outside apps, and GIF search moved in apps across the App Store.

So the first question is which of those is your problem. If you only want to search a public library with fewer ads, you want a different search tool. If you want to keep the GIFs and memes you send most, you want a library, and no search engine will be one.

How to Take Your GIPHY Favorites With You

GIPHY has no export button, so moving your favorites is by hand. It is worth doing for the reactions you actually use; skip the rest.

1. Open the GIPHY app and go to your favorites.
2. Open a GIF and use its share options to save it to your camera roll.
3. Open Photos and find it under Media Types, then Animated, where saved GIFs land.
4. Repeat for each GIF worth keeping. Twenty reactions take a few minutes.
5. Import them into the app you are moving to, or leave them in Photos and send them from the plus button in Messages.

That last step is where most people stop, and where the problem comes back: your GIFs now sit in the same library as thousands of photos, with nothing to search them by. Our guide to separating memes from photos on iPhone covers how to keep that pile apart from your camera roll.

The Best GIPHY Alternatives for iPhone, by Use Case

App	Best for	Cost	Holds your own GIFs?
#images in Messages	A quick public GIF, no app	Free, built in	No
GIF Keyboard by Tenor	GIF search in any app	Free	Favorites and packs from Tenor
GIFwrapped	A synced library of GIFs	Free; optional Premium	Yes, GIFs
MeMemes	A searchable meme library in iMessage	Free for 12 memes; Pro $1.99/mo, $14.99/yr or $29.99 once	Yes, GIFs, video, images, audio
GIPHY (for reference)	The biggest public library	Free with ads	Only GIFs on GIPHY

Best for a quick public GIF with no app: #images in Messages

If you mostly used GIPHY inside iMessage to grab a generic reaction, you may not need an app at all. In a conversation, tap the plus button next to the text field, choose More, then #images. Search, tap a GIF, and send. It is free, built into iOS, and shows no ads. Not for you if: you send GIFs in other apps, or you want to keep anything; #images saves nothing, and it only works in Messages. Our guide to sending memes in iMessage walks through it and the other built-in methods.

Best for GIF search in any app: GIF Keyboard by Tenor

Tenor's GIF Keyboard is the closest thing to GIPHY's keyboard: a free keyboard you switch to in any app, plus an iMessage app, with Tenor's library behind it and favorites and packs to keep what you like. Tenor belongs to Google, and when Google shut the Tenor API to outside developers on June 30, 2026, its own apps kept working. One caution: the App Store listing shows its last update in September 2024 (checked November 2026), so it is getting no new features and may lag new iOS versions. Not for you if: you want to keep GIFs that are not on Tenor.

Best for a synced library of GIFs: GIFwrapped

GIFwrapped is a long-running independent app built around a library of your own GIFs. You import from Photos, bookmark searches, and keep the collection in step across devices with iCloud or Dropbox, and its Messages app sends from that library. Its search runs on Klipy by default, with GIPHY as an option, and it was updated in October 2026. It is free, with an optional Premium subscription listed at $9.99 a year. Not for you if: your favorites are screenshots, image memes and clips as much as GIFs, or you want search by what is in each one.

Best for a searchable library of your own memes and GIFs: MeMemes

This one is ours, so weigh it accordingly. MeMemes is built for the reactions you send most, wherever they came from. It takes GIFs, MP4s, PNGs, JPEGs, WebP, HEIC and audio from Photos, Files, Safari or any share sheet. As each one comes in, on-device AI reads the text in it, recognizes faces and classifies objects, so you can find a meme by the words in it rather than the day you saved it, and nothing leaves your phone to do it. Smart Packing sorts the library into Reactions, Animals, Text Memes, People, Food & Drink, Nature and Screenshots, and you can make your own packs and tags.

The part that replaces GIPHY's iMessage app is the iMessage extension: your packs, favorites and search open inside Messages, and you can peel and place a meme on a message bubble as a sticker. For the "something that says congratulations" moments, a Trending feed of GIFs, clips, stickers and emojis is powered by Klipy, the same library GIFwrapped searches. The library syncs between iPhone and iPad over iCloud.

Pricing: free for 12 saved memes and 4 packs, with ads. Pro is $1.99 a month or $14.99 a year (with a 3-day free trial) or $29.99 once, and adds unlimited memes and packs, custom pack covers, clips, stickers and emojis, and ad-free sharing. Not for you if: you need a keyboard for every app (MeMemes sends from iMessage and shares to other apps from its share button), you are on Android, or your iPhone runs anything older than iOS 18. It is not a GIF maker either; GIPHY's camera is better for that.

Which One Should You Use?

If you want GIPHY minus the app, try #images in Messages first; it costs nothing. If you send GIFs in WhatsApp, Slack or anywhere else from a keyboard, Tenor's GIF Keyboard. If your collection is GIFs and you want it on every device, GIFwrapped. If the reactions you send most are a mix of GIFs, screenshots and memes from all over, and you live in iMessage, MeMemes. Most people end up with two: a public search for one-off reactions and a library for the ones they send every week. For more on where saved GIFs should live, see the best way to save GIFs on iPhone, and for stickers, the best sticker app for iMessage.

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