What happened on August 5
Google Ads API v21 reached its sunset date on August 5, 2026. From that day, requests against v21 endpoints stop returning data and start returning deprecation errors. Any integration with the version hardcoded in its request paths fails on every single call — reporting, keyword management, budget reads, all of it.
This was not a surprise announcement. Google publishes sunset dates months ahead. It still catches production systems, because the version string usually sits in a place nobody looks at until it breaks.
Who is affected
Three groups: anyone with /v21/ hardcoded in REST request URLs, anyone on an old client library pinned to v21, and anyone using a third-party tool whose vendor has not migrated. If your Google Ads reporting went dark in early August and your other connectors kept working, this is the first thing to check.
The failure signature is consistent: requests that worked on August 4 return version-not-found or deprecation errors on August 5, across every endpoint at once. One account failing is an auth problem. Every account failing simultaneously is a version problem.
How it looked from inside a live product
We run Google Ads access for every 1ClickReport customer through one integration. Our client had /v21/ hardcoded on six endpoints. On sunset day that meant every Google Ads call in the product was beginning to fail — for free users and paying customers alike, on our most-used connector.
We migrated both the REST paths and the SDK to v25 the same day and live-verified against production accounts before closing the incident. Total exposure was hours, not days — but only because the failure was caught the morning it started. A team that checks its error feed weekly would have eaten five days of a dead connector.
The v25 migration checklist
The migration itself is usually small. The discipline is in doing all five steps, not the first two.
- 1. Inventory every version reference. Grep your codebase for
/v21/and for the client-library version. Check request builders, base-URL constants, and any raw fetch calls that bypass your SDK. - 2. Read the release notes between your version and the target. Field renames and removed resources are rare between adjacent versions but real across three or four. Jumping v21 to v25 crosses several releases — check every resource you actually query.
- 3. Replace scattered version strings with one constant. The root cause of sunset breakage is the version living in six places. After this migration it should live in exactly one.
- 4. Update the client library, not just the URLs. REST paths and SDK versions drift apart silently. Migrate both or your next bug is worse to diagnose.
- 5. Live-verify with a real read call per endpoint. A compile is not a test. Run one metrics query, one entity read, one keyword pull against a production account and check the shape of what returns.
Why this keeps happening
Google ships roughly three Google Ads API versions a year and supports each for about a year, which means a version reaches sunset roughly every four months. This is not a one-time event you survived. It is a treadmill, and the next sunset is already scheduled.
The teams that never get hurt by it do two things: the single version constant from step three, and a calendar entry the week each sunset lands, created the day Google announces it.
Catch it in hours, not days
The reason our exposure was short is boring: the error feed is watched daily, and a spike of identical failures across every account reads as infrastructure, not user error. If you manage ad accounts for clients, that habit is worth more than any dashboard. If you would rather have software do the watching, 1ClickReport monitors connector health across Google Ads, Meta, GA4 and Search Console for every connected account — a version-wide failure shows up as a pattern within the hour, not as a client email three days later. You can try it free.
Related reading: audit a Google Ads account in five prompts and Google Ads reporting tools compared.
Frequently asked questions
When did Google Ads API v21 stop working?
Google Ads API v21 reached sunset on August 5, 2026. From that date, calls against v21 endpoints return deprecation errors instead of data.
How do I know if my integration is affected?
If every Google Ads request began failing at the same time in early August 2026 with version or deprecation errors, while authentication and other APIs still work, you are calling a sunset version. Search your code for /v21/ and check your client library version.
What version should I migrate to?
Migrate to the newest generally available version rather than the next one up — in August 2026 that is v25. Jumping to the newest resets the sunset clock and avoids doing this again in four months.
How often does Google sunset Ads API versions?
Google releases roughly three versions per year and supports each for about twelve months, so a version reaches sunset approximately every four months.