Adobe Stock
Depositphotos
Envato Elements
iStock
Canva
Pond5
Shutterstock is a leading stock photo platform that boasts over 300,000 active subscribers and has served millions of customers. In 2011, Shutterstock overtook Getty, which was hugely popular in the 2000s, due to its vast collection of stock photos that currently includes 435 million royalty-free images. Additionally, Shutterstock is credited with pioneering subscription-based licensing for stock photos, which has further contributed to its widespread popularity.
After conducting extensive testing and comparisons, we have determined that Shutterstock is the best all-around stock photo site. This is due to its diverse selection of high-quality photos, a wide range of royalty-free licensing options, robust customer support, and numerous integrations. Nonetheless, it is important to note that even the top stock photo site may not suit every individual or business.
What is the best Shutterstock alternative?
- Adobe Stock is the best overall Shutterstock alternative. Adobe Stock offers subscriptions for downloading stock assets like images, videos, and audio tracks, similar to Shutterstock. It integrates with Adobe Creative Cloud but is more costly and offers only a $10,000 indemnity with its extended license, compared to Shutterstock’s $250,000.
- Depositphotos is a close second. It has more affordable small subscription plans than Shutterstock and Adobe Stock but has fewer photos and less legal coverage.
- Envato Elements is much cheaper than Shutterstock but has fewer photos and less comprehensive licensing. You can get unlimited downloads of 12+ million creative assets for $16.50/mo or $11.50/mo as a student.
How to choose the best Shutterstock alternatives
For a stock photo site to be deemed a good Shutterstock alternative, it must tick the following boxes:
High image quality and variety: The enormous Shutterstock collection of high-quality photos is impossible to replace, but there are a few sites that come close and offer similar variety and quality.
Flexible buying options: Shutterstock offers All-in-one subscriptions, which allow you to download any creative asset under one unified plan, including images (photos, vectors, and illustrations), video, and audio assets. In addition to the subscriptions, Shutterstock offers on-demand packs for images, videos, audio tracks, editorial photos, and extended licenses.
Affordable pricing: Despite being the largest stock photo site, Shutterstock is quite affordable, with the price per image starting at $0.22 and costing up to $14.50 with single downloads. Shutterstock also offers a 30-day free trial of the 10 monthly credits subscription, saving you $29 on the first month.
Broad licensing: Shutterstock is known for its best in the industry licensing, offering indemnity of up to $10,000 for the standard royalty-free licenses and $250,000 for the extended. You’re also allowed to make up to 500,000 copies (unlimited with the extended) and use the assets without restrictions online.
Integrations: Stock photo sites are not only about the images but also about what you can do with them. Shutterstock offers integrations into Adobe Creative Cloud and WordPress, API, a built-in editor Creative Flow, a content calendar, several design tools, and AI search.
Top alternatives & competitors to Shutterstock
Best Shutterstock alternative
Adobe Stock
- Images
- 335 million
- Image price
- $0.26–$9.99
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- 10, 25, or 40 images (30 days)
Overview: Adobe Stock has the second largest collection of stock images (right after Shutterstock), broad licensing terms, and amazing features that make it particularly popular among creatives. Read our full Adobe Stock review »
Why is Adobe Stock the best Shutterstock alternative: Adobe Stock’s subscription plans are almost identical yet slightly more expensive than Shutterstock’s. The standard license is the same, but the extended license provides a smaller indemnity. Adobe Stock offers better, native integration into Creative Cloud, and more flexible on-demand options.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Superb image and video quality.
- Offers templates, 3D objects, and fonts.
- More than 1 million free images.
- Creative Cloud integration.
- Works with Photoshop, Illustrator, & others.
Cons
- More costly than some alternatives.
- No promo codes or coupons.
- Expensive premium content.
More Details
- Image quality & variety: Adobe Stock gets most of its stock images from photographers using Lightroom and Photoshop, which are connected to the library. As a result, the Adobe Stock library contains photos from some of the best photographers in the world.
- Price: You can buy Adobe Stock stock images with subscriptions, which give a certain number of monthly credits that you can use to download images, videos, or audio tracks, similar to Shutterstock. Standard images cost $0.26 to $9.99 with subscriptions and $8.00 to $9.99 on-demand, while the premium images (higher quality) cost up to $119.80. The Extended license costs $72.
- Licensing: There are the Standard, Enhanced, and Extended licenses. The Standard license is included with all standard downloads, while the Enhanced license is included with the premium downloads. The difference is that the Enhanced license allows unlimited copies, while the Standard license is limited to 500K. The Extended license also grants you the use in merchandise and for other purposes where the image represents the major value of the product.
- Customer support: Adobe Stock customer support is its worst feature. The live chat always responds quickly, but the operators are almost exclusively unknowledgeable.
- Additional features: Integration into the Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro makes Adobe Stock the go-to stock photo website for creatives. It allows you to browse all Adobe Stock assets from within the apps, thus significantly speeding up your workflow.
- Free trial: Adobe Stock free trial is one of the most generous among stock photo sites, allowing you to download 10, 25, or even 40 free royalty-free images, based on the plan you pick.
- Discounts: 20% discount when you buy a yearly subscription instead of the monthly one. Up to 97% discount on the price per image when you pick a larger subscription (i.e., 750 monthly downloads) compared to the smallest ($0.26/image vs. $9.99/image). Up to 20% discount on large credit packs (150 credits; $8/credit) compared to the smallest credit pack (5 credits; $9.99/credit).
Best budget Shutterstock alternative
Depositphotos
- Images
- 224 million
- Image price
- $0.22–$14.00
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- 10 images (7 days)
Overview: Depositphotos’ stock images are almost as good as Shutterstock’s and Adobe Stock, but at lower prices and with lower indemnity. Read our full Depositphotos review »
Why is Depositphotos the best budget Shutterstock alternative: Depositphotos subscription prices start as low as $1.44 per image, even with the smallest subscriptions, compared to $4.90 at Shutterstock. But Depositphotos offers only a $5,000 indemnity with licenses.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- 224+ million images
- Good image quality
- No daily limit
- Reverse image search
- Great customer support (phone, live chat, and email)
- A collection of free images
Cons
- No custom packs (only available for enterprises).
- Limited flexibility of on-demand options.
More Details
- Image quality & variety: Depositphotos image quality and variety are mostly good, but it’s lacking compared to Adobe Stock and Shutterstock, especially for trending/new topics.
- Price: Depositphotos subscription prices start at $24.92 per month for 30 images and up to $166.58 for 750 images, costing $1.44 to $0.22 per image. On-demand options are more expensive, available in sizes of 3, 11, 25, or 100 images, costing $2.99 to $14.00 per image. Extended licenses are much more expensive, costing $63.96–$89.00/image. You can also get Unlimited downloads subscriptions ($4.99/month) with access to 1.3 million files.
- Licensing: Depositphotos offers Standard and Extended royalty-free licenses, almost identical to Shutterstock’s. The only difference is that Depositphotos offers much lower indemnity—only $5,000 for both.
- Customer support: The customer is one of the best stock photo sites. The live chat is knowledgeable and replies very fast, while the response from email takes one to three business days.
- Additional features: Depositphotos’ stock library is integrated into the VistaCreate editor. The site also has a free background remover from images and videos, an image upscaler, and an API.
- Free trial: The free trial last only 7 days, but you can get 10 royalty-free images with the 25 images/mo plan.
- Discounts: 16% discount on yearly subscriptions compared to monthly. 73.5% discount when picking the largest subscription plan of 750 monthly downloads compared to the smallest one. Up to 78.6% discount on bulk purchases with on-demand packs (11, 25, or 100 images) compared to the smallest (3 images). 28.1% discount by buying Extended License in bulk (25 images). On average, a 30% discount for buying videos in bulk (25 videos) and a 33% discount for buying Extended licenses for videos in bulk.
Best stock photo subscription with unlimited downloads
Envato Elements
- Images
- 7 million
- Image price
- $11.50–$39.00/mo
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- Unlimited downloads (7 days)
Overview: Envato Elements is a popular marketplace that offers a range of creative assets, including stock photos, video, fonts, audio tracks, templates, and more, with unlimited downloads. Envato Elements is a good choice for creatives that need a variety of creative assets while on a budget. Read our full Envato Elements review »
Why is Envato Elements the best Shutterstock alternative with unlimited downloads: Envato Elements has just 7 million photos, but you can get much cheaper for $16.50 per month and with unlimited downloads. There’s also no extended license. Envato Elements has a wide selection of creative assets that you can’t find on Shutterstock.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Unlimited downloads with no daily limits.
- 7-day free trial with full access to all creative assets.
- Assets can be used commercially.
- Simple licensing.
- Plans for individuals, teams, and enterprises.
Cons
- One of the lowest indemnities in the industry.
- You can’t use creative assets for new projects after unsubscribing.
- A small collection of photos and videos compared to other stock agencies.
- No refunds.
More Details
- Image quality & variety: At over 7 million images, which is considerably less than at other stock photo sites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock, Envato Elements offers a surprisingly good variety. However, the quality of photos is lower than elsewhere, yet good enough for most projects.
- Price: Envato Elements’ pricing involves only one subscription plan with two commitments and one discount—all give you unlimited downloads of all creative assets. The monthly plan costs $39 per month, and the annual plan costs $16.50 per month. Students get a 30% discount, which reduces the price for the annual plan to just $11.50 per month.
- Licensing: Because you get unlimited downloads, the Envato Elements licensing is not as impressive. While it’s still royalty-free, you may not use the assets for merchandise or other purposes where the asset would represent the majority of the value.
- Customer support: Envato Elements customer support is available through email or a help page.
- Additional features: The best-known Envato feature is Placeit, the mockup and logo tool. There are also tuts+ for learning, mixkit, and reshot.
- Free trial: 7-day free trial, during which you get full access to all features, including unlimited downloads and the commercial royalty-free license.
- Discounts: Subscriptions for individuals are available with 57% cheaper yearly ($16.50/month) and monthly ($39.00/month) commitments. Students get a 30% discount on subscriptions, thus paying only $11.00/month. Each additional team member is 30% cheaper. Read more about Envato Elements discounts »
Best premium image Shutterstock alternative
iStock
- Images
- 150 million
- Image price
- $0.22–$9.90
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- 10 images (30 days)
Overview: At 150 million images, iStock’s collection isn’t the largest, but you can get premium images and videos with subscriptions. Read our full iStock review »
Why is iStock the best premium image Shutterstock alternative: iStock is the only stock photo site that offers premium images (called Signature) with subscriptions, costing as little as $0.44 per download, compared to Shutterstock’s offset, that cost at least $211.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- 150 million images.
- The Signature collection is of superb quality.
- Competitive prices.
- 10 images with the free trial.
Cons
- Signature images are a lot more expensive.
- Very expensive extended license.
- Very poor customer support.
More Details
- Image quality & variety: iStock divides images into two collections: Standard (Essentials) and Premium (Signature). The Signature collection is composed of technically better images that look more professional. It’s like buying Getty Images with subscriptions, while the Essentials are good for everyday use.
- Price: Essential images cost $0.22–$4.00 with subscriptions, while Premium images cost $0.44–$9.90. You can also get images on-demand with credits, costing $8 to $12 per credit, where Essentials cost 1 credit and Signatures 3 credits.
- Licensing: iStock licensing is virtually the same as Shutterstock’s licensing: The Standard License grants you up to 500,000 copies and $10,000 indemnity, while the Extended License grants you unlimited copies and up to $250,000 indemnity.
- Customer support: It is very rare even to get a response from the iStock customer support team.
- Additional features: Search Trends lets you browse the current visual trends by region, industry, and over time.
- Free trial: The free trial last 30 days, and you can get 10 royalty-free images.
- Discounts: 16.5% discount when you buy annual subscriptions instead of monthly (valid for Basic and Premium subscriptions. This discount is increased to 24% for Premium + Video subscriptions. 92% discount when you buy the largest Basic subscription plan instead of the smallest, 94% for the Premium subscriptions, and 53% discount for the Premium + Video subscriptions.
Best Shutterstock alternative for amateur designers
Canva
- Images
- 110 million
- Image price
- $9.99–$12.99/mo
- Licensing
- Royalty-free, CC0
- Free trial
- 30 days
Overview: Canva is an online platform for amateur graphic design, leveraging professional templates, which enable anyone to create beautiful designs. Read our full Canva review »
Why is Canva the best Shutterstock alternative for amateur designers: Starting at just $9.99 per month, Canva is the cheapest option to get unlimited downloads of stock photos and access to an easy-to-use graphic design editor much more powerful than all Shutterstock’s tools. These make Canva the best option for amateur designers and solopreneurs on a budget.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- 30-day free trial
- Inexpensive subscription
- Intuitive and super easy-to-use
- Huge built-in stock photo library
- Prompts team-work
Cons
- Bad at photo editing
- No one-time purchase option
- Can’t use it offline
- Lacks advanced design options
More Details
- Image quality & variety: A large portion of Canva’s image comes from free stock image sites, like Unsplash and Pixabay.
- Price: Canva is available with a free forever plan, which comes with a limited number of assets and functionality. Canva Pro costs $9.99 to $12.99 monthly and grants you full access to all features.
- Licensing: Canva offers two types of content: Free and Pro. The Free and Pro Content licenses cover all the content available on Canva’s platform, including photos, icons, illustrations, videos, audio, fonts, and templates. Free users can use Free content at no cost, and Pro content can be used by paying a fee or having a valid Canva subscription.
- Customer support: The customer is quite fast, and it usually takes around 2 business days to get a response through email.
- Additional features: The stock image collection is integrated into a super-intuitive editor, best suited for simple graphic designs, logo designs, and social media graphics.
- Free trial: 30 days free trial of Canva Pro.
- Discounts: 24% discount on the annual plan compared to the monthly. 3% discount for each additional team member.
Best Shutterstock alternative for stock footage
Pond5
- Videos
- 34 million
- Image price
- $8.32–$25/video
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- –
Overview: Pond5 is a specialized stock footage collection with over 33 million stock videos that you can buy with subscriptions and on-demand. Read our full Pond5 review »
Why is Pond5 the best Shutterstock alternative for footage: Pond5 has more videos than Shutterstock and a lower price per video. Pond5 also offers more comprehensive extended licenses for footage, making it ideal for large businesses.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- 33 million videos.
- Bonus credits with credit packs.
- Price matching.
- Excellent quality.
- Affordable with subscriptions.
Cons
- Subscriptions give access to a small portion of content.
- Some videos are very, very expensive.
- One-size subscriptions only.
More Details
- Image quality & variety: Pond5 has the largest collection of royalty-free stock footage, even larger than Shutterstock. All videos are heavily vetted, ensuring you won’t find low-quality videos.
- Price: Pond5 is on the higher end of video costs, where single downloads cost from $25 up to several thousands of dollars. You can also get subscriptions that cost $8.32 per video download, which grants you access to only about 10% of the collection.
- Licensing: Licenses are very broad, allowing you to do practically anything within reason with videos. Extended licenses cost $149 and $299 and grant you up to $1M in legal coverage.
- Customer support: Getting a response from the customer support team takes several days.
- Additional features: Pond5 has an API and a couple of thousands of free stock videos.
- Free trial: /
- Discounts: Save up to 58% when you pick yearly subscriptions instead of monthly.
Best free Shutterstock alternative
Unsplash
- Photos
- 4 million
- Image price
- Free or $4/mo
- Licensing
- Royalty-free
- Free trial
- –
Overview: Unsplash is the best known free stock photo sites with over 4 million Creative Commons 0 photos. There’s also the Unsplash+ plan for $4/mo. Read our Unsplash review »
Why is Unsplash the best free Shutterstock alternative: Unsplash has the largest collection of free stock photos available with the CC0 license. You can use all photos even commercially without attribution.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- 4 million professional stock photos
- Free for commercial and personal use
Cons
- Free photos are mixed with Unsplash+ photos
- Much smaller collection than Shutterstock
- No indemnity with licenses
More Details
- Image quality & variety: Very good quality and variety of stock photos for a free stock photo site.
- Price: Most Unsplash photos are completely free to use, but you can get the Unsplash+ subscription for $4/mo to get unlimited downloads of all premium Unsplash photos.
- Licensing: The free photos come with the Creative Commons 0 license.
- Customer support: Getting a response from the customer support team takes several days.
- Additional features: API.
- Free trial: /
- Discounts: /
Why choose a Shutterstock alternative?
Shutterstock is one of the best stock photo sites according to our in-depth research. However, it’s not the best fit for every customer. As we pointed out, Shutterstock’s on-demand options lack flexibility and we’re also not too fond of the mixed subscription.
By analyzing hundreds of Shutterstock reviews, we identified 4 reasons why one would choose a Shutterstock alternative.
1. Too expensive.
While Shutterstock is not a costly stock photo site, small businesses or individuals can not afford it. For those on a limited budget, we recommend Canva.
It’s an all-in-one tool, meaning you get a powerful graphic editor and unlimited downloads of stock photos. And all that costs only $9.99/month, which is affordable for anyone.
2. Inflexible on-demand plans.
Shutterstock offers image and video packs separately. Moreover, the Standard and Extended licenses are sold separately. By counting also the music plans, you have 5 separate on-demand plans.
In comparison, Adobe Stock and iStock have only one: you buy credits and use them for any content.
3. Lacking features.
Shutterstock is a feature-rich stock photo site, but most of them are basic and not useful for advanced users. You can use the Shutterstock Editor and various converters, to name a few.
Customers who edit the images they download prefer more integrations. For that reason, they choose Adobe Stock with the integration into Creative Cloud of Canva’s suite of tools.
Note: Don’t forget that Shutterstock offers a free plugin for Creative Cloud integration.
4. Need an additional source of photos.
Not everyone who seeks Shutterstock alternatives is dissatisfied with it. Some publishers, especially those with high demand for stock photos, use multiple sources.
According to our research, the most popular combination of stock photo sites includes Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Stock, Getty Images, Depositphotos, and Dreamstime. These are, unsurprisingly, the biggest stock photo agencies.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a better alternative to Shutterstock?
Adobe Stock is the best alternative to Shutterstock if you use Creative Cloud tools or if you need more flexible on-demand stock images. Also, choose Adobe Stock over Shutterstock if you need a larger free trial with 40 instead of 10 free stock images.
What is a free alternative to Shutterstock?
The best free Shutterstock alternative is Unsplash with almost 4 million excellent stock photos. Other excellent free Shutterstock alternatives include Pixabay, Pexels, and PikWizard.
Rating Methodology
To identify the best Shutterstock alternatives, we took a holistic view of 31 stock photo agencies that incorporated image number, quality, variety, prices and pricing options, licensing terms, features, and customer support.
- Image quality & variety: 20% of the score. We browsed each stock photo site for over 50 search terms and analyzed the resulting image quality and variety. Both were scored qualitatively based on our expertise and experience. The quality check comprised technical quality, including exposure, sharpness, grain, saturation, color temperature, and added value. The variety check was primarily focused on checking what percentage of images came from the same photo shoot.
- Stock photo prices and pricing options: 20% of the score. Price is the crucial factor in choosing stock photos, and having various options helps customers find the best plans. We checked whether the stock photo agency offers subscriptions, on-demand options, and which sizes. In addition, having a free trial is a bonus as it allows customers to get an insight into what they can expect. Finally, we considered the minimum, median, and maximum price per image and the price per extended license image.
- Licensing terms: 20% of the score. We read and took notes on every stock image license. We compared them based on how many copies, reprints, and impressions they allow and their indemnity value.
- Image number: 15% of the score. The number of images is essential when rating stock photo sites because when you need thousands of images, you can quickly run out of free photos. We checked each stock photo site’s database and took notes on the number of images.
- Additional features: 15% of the score. Additional features are meant to simplify or enhance a customer’s workflow. We reviewed and tested all the additional features where possible. Since some are limited to enterprises, or we couldn’t get in touch with the support team, we searched for customers with access to the additional features and asked for their opinion.
- Customer support: 10% of the score. Crucially, when testing customer support, we didn’t tell them who we were, so we got treated like every other customer. We took notes of the response times, contact options (live chat, email, and telephone), and the usefulness and kindness of the support teams.
Top Shutterstock alternatives: Summary
- Adobe Stock: Best Shutterstock alternative
- Depositphotos: Cheap Shutterstock alternative
- Envato Elements: Cheap Shutterstock alternative with unlimited downloads
- iStock: Shutterstock alternative with that sells premium photos with subscriptions
- Canva: Best Shutterstock alternative for amateur designers who rely on professional templates
- Pond5: Best Shutterstock alternative for stock footage
- Unsplash: Best free Shutterstock alternative
About your guide
Matic Broz is a multifaceted creative professional, with experience as a photographer, graphic designer, and business owner. He has a decade of experience in helping other creatives improve their craft and start their own businesses. His writing and research have been featured in notable publications such as The Guardian, PetaPixel, and USA Today. Additionally, his scientific research has been recognized with a cover feature in the prestigious MDPI-owned journal. In his leisure time, he enjoys photography, hiking, and spending time with dogs. Read more
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