30 Birthday Wishes for Your Best Friend (Funny, Short & Emotional)

By mid-morning their phone is a wall of near-identical birthday messages, and yours is somewhere in it. The only reliable way to stand out is to be specific — mention the thing only the two of you would find funny.

Thirty below. Steal one, add your own detail, and send it before anyone else gets the chance.

Funny

• Happy birthday to the person who has seen me at my worst and told everyone about it.

  Copy

• Another year older, still no closer to being on time. Happy birthday!

  Copy

• Happy birthday! I'd write something meaningful but you'd screenshot it and use it against me.

  Copy

• Congratulations on surviving another year of your own decisions. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday to my best friend, who has a gym membership and a very theoretical relationship with it.

  Copy

• You're the reason I have both my best stories and my worst. Happy birthday!

  Copy

Short and easy to send

• Happy birthday to my favourite idiot.

  Copy

• Another year of you. The world's lucky. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday, best friend. Cake's on me.

  Copy

• Have the day you'd want. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday to the person who has never once let me sit alone.

  Copy

• Best friend, best human, happy birthday.

  Copy

Emotional

• Happy birthday to the person who has been there for every version of me and stayed for all of them.

  Copy

• You are the family I got to pick. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday. There's a whole part of my life that wouldn't have been survivable without you.

  Copy

• Thank you for showing up for the boring bits, not just the good ones. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday to the person I'd call at 3am with no explanation and no apology.

  Copy

• I don't say it enough, so today I will: you matter to me. Happy birthday.

  Copy

For a friendship that's lasted years

• Happy birthday. Twenty years and you're still the funniest person I know.

  Copy

• Happy birthday to my oldest friend — same jokes, better haircuts.

  Copy

• We've changed almost everything about our lives and never this. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday to the person who knew me before I had any idea who I was.

  Copy

• Different cities, different lives, same friendship. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday. Here's to the next twenty, and to still not growing up.

  Copy

When you can't be there

• Happy birthday! Sorry I'm not there. Sorrier for whoever has to sit next to you instead.

  Copy

• Celebrating you loudly from another city today. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday — the drinks are owed and I'm good for it.

  Copy

• Wrong postcode, right friend. Happy birthday.

  Copy

• Happy birthday. Send photos, especially the bad ones.

  Copy

• Miss you today more than usual. Happy birthday, best friend.

  Copy

Send a roast instead of a forward

The gift that gets screenshotted and sent straight back to you is a spyglass full of terrible photos of them, each one swimming into focus with a caption you wrote — ending on one line that's actually kind.

Free, five minutes, sent as a link. Look through it yourself first, or read the full Friendship Day gift ideas playbook for how to write the captions.

Browse every collection on one page, and what suits a best friend for the gift that goes with it.