Dreamstime is a stock photo agency with a long history of selling stock images, videos, and audio. Dreamstime is also where you’ll find the cheapest royalty-free and extended license stock photos.

This is my in-depth review of Dreamstime.

In this post I’ll show you:

• Dreamstime best & worst features
• Dreamstime pricing and licenses
• Whether or not I recommend it
• Alternative
• Lots more

Let’s dive right in.

My Experience With Dreamstime

Before we get any deeper into my Dreamstime review, I want to point out a few things.

First, I’m a current Dreamstime user. I’m not just some guy rewriting what he read somewhere else.

A long time ago, I didn’t know about Dreamstime either.

Then, I found the 30% discount and I tried their subscription plan.

In all this time, I’ve never had a negative experience with Dreamstime. Other than that sometimes I don’t find the image I’m looking for.

Second, you may have noticed my 30% discount in the intro of this article.

With that out of the way, let’s get right into the review.

About Dreamstime

Dreamstime is a microstock photo agency that was founded 21 years ago, in 2000. While its website is not the most modern one, you will find plenty of high-quality stock images.

Over the years, Dreamstime has built a well-deserved reputation for being fair. Also, they served millions of satisfied customers and put together a library of high-quality stock photos.

Being known for its inexpensive stock photos, reliability, and outstanding support staff, Dreamstime is a favourite among both customers, including big and small businesses, bloggers, and individuals.

Here are key Dreamstime features:

• 20 years+ of reliable and fair service
• 160+ million photos, illustrations, and vectors
• 33 million registered users
• 600,000 contributing photographers
• 4.1 million+ new monthly images
• Cheapest stock photos
• Owns an active blog
• Member od DMLA
• The first to receive CEPIC
• Founding member of European Tech Alliance

Dreamstime Pricing

Dreamstime has seven different subscription plans (from $0.158/image) and ten different credit packages (from $0.616/credit) for royalty-free images, extended license images, and videos.

Subscription plans

By purchasing a subscription plan, you get a fixed amount of downloads per month. You also pay a fixed amount of money each month until you cancel.

Subscription plans are the best option for you if you need stock photos for a longer time. This way you’ll also get the most out of your money.

If the image price is a big factor for you, remember the following:

The bigger the subscription plan, the more it costs, but it’s also more cost-efficient.

So, don’t forget that if you choose an annual plan (12 months in the duration column) you get an additional discount.

Images/month	Price/month	Price/image
5	$18.00	$3.60
10	$27.00	$2.70
15	$18.00	$1.20
25	$27.00	$1.08
100	$49.99	$0.50
750	$153.00	$0.20
750 (prepaid)	$118.33	$0.158

The lowest subscription prices come with the 750 monthly images prepaid plan. $0.158 is the lowest price per royalty-free image that I know of.

Credit packages

When you buy a Credit package, you get a fixed amount of credits.

You can then use the credits to purchase photos, vectors, and videos.

Credit packages are the best option for you if you don’t want to depend on monthly downloads of subscriptions.

Credits cost from $1.36 with the smallest credit package and as low as $0.616 with the largest credit package.

You can purchase Dreamstime credits with 10 different Credit packages that differ in the number of credits, price, and price per credit.

Credits	Price	Price/credit
11	$10.49	$0.95
15	$12.59	$0.84
30	$24.49	$0.82
60	$48.29	$0.81
120	$87.49	$0.73
260	$175.00	$0.67
500	$329.00	$0.66
1,000	$630.00	$0.63
2,000	$1,232.00	$0.616

You get the lowest price by purchasing the largest 2,000-credits pack, resulting in $0.616/credit.

How many credits do photos cost?

Photos don’t have a fixed credit price, which is kind of annoying.

You can download Dreamstime images in seven different sizes and two formats, jpg and tiff.

Size	Resolution	Pixel per inch	Format
XS	480×320px	72dpi	jpg
S	800×533px	300dpi	jpg
M	2121×1414px	300dpi	jpg
L	3738×1825px	300dpi	jpg
XL	3464×2309px	300dpi	jpg
MAX	5568×3712px	300dpi	jpg
TIFF	7874×5250px	300dpi	tiff

In fact, the price of photos depends on the size and Content level (0 to 5). The Content level depends on the number of downloads and the age of the photo. Read more about levels.

When you purchase images with a Subscription plan, you only pay with one download that has been given to you at the beginning of the month.

Here’s the price of images in credits based on size and Content level:

Image size	Level 0	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5
XS	1	3	5	7	9	11
S	3	5	7	9	11	13
M	4	7	10	12	14	16
L	5	8	11	13	15	17
XL	6	9	12	14	16	18
MAX	7	10	13	15	17	19
TIFF	11	15	20	23	26	29
Vector/RAW	14	20	26	30	34	38

The price of all stock photos depends on their level, ranging from 0 to 5. Levels are determined based on the age of the photo and the number of downloads.

Level	Numbers of downloads	Age
Level 0	0	> 6 months
Level 1	0	< 6 months
Level 2	1-4	/
Level 3	5-9	/
Level 4	10-24	/
Level 5	> 25	/

Dreamstime Licenses

Dreamstime sells content under two licenses: Royalty-free and Extended.

The two differ in price, legal indemnification amount, and permitted uses.

Royalty-Free (RF) license

Royalty-Free (RF) license is the most common form of a license. It also gives you the most freedom.

It’s a lifetime license that allows you unlimited printed and electronic copies.

Here’s how the RF license works:

• You pay for the image once and use it as much as you like
• There are no additional or recurring fees – once you purchase it, you can use it for as long as you want
• RF license is granted only for non-watermarked and high-resolution images
• Free files downloaded from the Free Photos section may be used under the RF-LL license

You can use RF license for:

• Your website
• Advertising postcards, flyers, and posters
• Interior designs to decorate your home and office
• To illustrate books, CDs, magazine, newspapers, and their covers
• Create posters, company presentations, and wrappings for products.

In contrast, you cannot use RF licensed photos to create any sort of product that you’re going to resell. That includes postcards, calendars, posters, T-shirts that will be resold or to create logos and trademarks.

If you have any doubts about the proper use of the license, contact Dreamstime first.

How to get RF images from Dreamstime?

You can get royalty-free images with subscription plans and with credits.

To start, simply pick a plan you like best.

As soon as you confirm the payment, you can start downloading royalty-free images.

Extended License (EL)

Extended Licenses, as the name suggests, extend the rights you gain in comparison to a Royalty-Free license.

Extended license features:

• Lifetime license
• Unlimited printed and electronic copies
• Unlimited online usage
• Unlimited printed items for distribution
• Unlimited digital items for distribution
• Multi-seat

Dreamstime offers four Extended Licenses that are not mutually exclusive:

• Unlimited Seats (U-EL) – Extends the regular RF license to an unlimited number of sit within the same organization.
• Web Usage (W-EL) – includes the right to use media for web templates that are sold to more customers, screensavers, e-cards, PowerPoint representations or as wallpapers.
• Print Usage (P-EL) – includes the right to use the media to be reprinted on items such as greeting cards, mugs, T-shirts, etc.
• Sell the Rights (SR-EL) – the license represents full ownership of the images; however, the buyer may not claim that the file was created by them nor should they sell it.

Best of all, you can purchase an Extended license with subscription plans which are a lot more affordable (3.88x) than purchasing it on-demand.

Images	Price	Price (30% off)	Price/image	Price/image (30% off)
2	$59.00	$41.00	$29.50	$20.50
5	$137.00	$96.00	$27.40	$19.20
25	$659.00	$461.00	$26.36	$18.44
100	$2,500.00	$1,750.00	$25.00	$17.50
500	$11,500.00	$8,050.00	$23.00	$16.10

Read more about Dreamstime licenses.

License description	License	Price
Unlimited Seats	U-EL	50 credits
Web Usage	W-EL	50 credits
Print Usage	P-EL	50 credits
Extended License Subscription	EL	1 download
1 Year Exclusivity	SR-EL1	$62.5
3 Year Exclusivity	SR-EL3	$150
Sell the rights	SR-EL	$250
Universal Royalty-Free	RF-U	$500
Universal Extended License	U-U	$1,000

Dreamstime Image Quality

Dreamstime sells more than 150 million images, all of which were carefully checked for technical quality and overall usefulness by the Dreamstime curators.

I dare say, that even if you download tens of stock images every day, you’ll never run out of fresh ones. In the screenshot above, you can see that by typing “Christmas”, you get a lot of high-quality, beautiful stock photos, and there’s plenty more where this came from.

With more than 4 million being uploaded every month, Dreamstime is also one of the fast-growing stock photo sites.

How to download images from Dreamstime?

Immediately when you try to search for photos, you’ll find a few suggestion tiles with the best selling collections of photos.

If you’re at all familiar with Google Image Search, you’ll immediately understand Dreamstime Image searching tools.

The most useful search option is by searching with a keyword. For example, “Puppies”.

To find the best image for your project, you may sort them by several filters.

Take your time to find the best photo. Sometimes, it won’t be on the first page.

When you find an image you like, click on it.

First, make sure you picked the right license.

If you forgot which is which, go back to the Licenses chapter.

Finally, choose the image size and click the Download button.

Dreamstime free downloads

You can download Free Photos and Images by clicking here.

Even though these photos are free, they are registered under Royalty-Free and CC0 license. I encourage you to read the terms of use before you actually start using free photos.

In short, you can download photos and use them as long as you abide by the rule of the RF license and attribute the author and Dreamstime as such: Free photo 144892350 © Publicdomainphotos – Dreamstime.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Dreamstime review: The Bottom Line

Among all the microstock sites, Dreamstime sells its photos at the lowest prices and takes special care of the image quality and its contributors.

The variety of subscription plans and credit packs guarantees that you’ll find a plan that suits you.

Whether you’re looking to buy some stock photos or looking to earn more money, Dreamstime is a great option.

I recommend Dreamstime to you if you’re looking for a great combination of a large number of high-quality stock photos and the lowest prices. With $0.158/photo, Dreamstime is the most inexpensive stock photo agency.

I don’t recommend Dreamstime to you if you want an even larger collection of images (Shutterstock) or if you’re designed using Adobe apps (Adobe Stock).

Now I’d Like to Hear From You

So that was my Dreamstime review.

Now I want to hear about your experience with Dreamstime.

What did you like? Is there something that bothered you?

Let me know by leaving a comment.