What is the Conversions API? It is a way to send conversion events to an advertising platform from a server instead of from the visitor’s browser. If you have been reading about server-side tracking, this is the destination that most of it is pointing at.
The name comes from Meta, and it spread. What it means in practice is the same everywhere: an HTTP endpoint that accepts the events your site already measures, sent by a machine you control rather than by a browser you do not.
What is the Conversions API on each platform called?
| Platform | What it is called |
|---|---|
| Meta | Conversions API |
| Conversions API | |
| Conversions API | |
| Snapchat | Conversions API |
| TikTok | Events API |
| Google Ads, GA4 | No single endpoint by that name |
That last row is worth pausing on. Google does not have one thing called a Conversions API; the same job is spread across other mechanisms. It still ends up in the same place — a server sending events instead of a browser — which is why Google Ads server-side tracking and GA4 server-side tracking are their own questions.
Why platforms started asking for one
The browser stopped being a reliable place to send from. Content blockers recognise requests to known tracker domains. Tracking prevention shortens or discards the cookies those scripts set. And a visitor who closes the tab takes the unsent request with them.
None of that stops a request made by a server. That is the whole argument, and it is a narrow one: the server route does not see more, it just gets through more often.
They want both, not one
This is the part that trips people up. A Conversions API is not a replacement for the pixel or tag in the browser. Every platform that offers one expects both, and deduplicates between them using an event ID you send with each event.
The reason is that the two routes fail in different places. The browser sees things the server does not — what was on the page, what the visitor clicked. The server gets through when the browser does not. Together they lose less than either alone.
Send both without an event ID and you will count conversions twice. The fix is the ID, not switching a route off. Conversions API vs the Meta pixel goes through that pairing in detail.
Two ways to send
Call the endpoint from your own backend. Full control, and you now own an integration per platform that breaks when a schema changes.
Run a server-side tag manager. Your site sends one event to a container you control, and the container forwards it to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok as configuration rather than code. One event, several destinations, one thing to maintain.
The second is what server-side tracking means for most people in practice. If Meta is the platform you are here for, the Meta Conversions API post is the specific one.
What it does not do
It does not remove the need for consent. It does not improve data you never collected. And it does not fix a measurement plan that fires the wrong event — it will now fire the wrong event more reliably, from a server.