Shutterstock is an excellent app for browsing through 424 million royalty-free images. You can also access videos, music, templates, and organize all these files in one place. However, Shutterstock is quite expensive, which often causes users to look for cheaper Shutterstock alternatives.
So, I’m going to list some great stock photography sites where you can find free stock images. Some of them even include videos and music.
To determine the best Shutterstock alternatives, I consider factors such as the number and quality of images, pricing, licensing terms, features, and customer support. During the quality review process, I checked technical quality, including exposure, sharpness, grain, saturation, color temperature, and added value.
Also, I checked to see if the stock photo agency offered subscriptions, on-demand options, and sizes. Finally, a free trial is beneficial because it gives customers a glimpse of what to expect.
If you’re a Creative Cloud user, you’d rather use Adobe Stock for free and its full integration with Photoshop and the like. If you need images for creating graphics for social media, take a closer look and download Canva. And if you need images for everyday use, iStock is a good and affordable choice with its subscriptions.
Verdict: Adobe Stock is considered one of the most reputable Shutterstock alternatives. Above all, if you prefer to use Creative Cloud tools in your design process, you can access, browse, test, edit, and license images from the collection directly in your favorite Creative Cloud apps.
This product proposes various subscription plans and grants access to a collection of over 290 million royalty-free photos and vector illustrations. There are also graphic templates, 3D models, video clips, and more. Here, you can get 10 images for free. A subscription will cost you $29.99/mo; 10 images are already available.
Verdict: Photocase is a fantastic app similar to Shutterstock, especially if you’re looking for unique photos you rarely find in the Shutterstock catalog. The available, carefully curated library is full of high-quality stock photos with great artistic value and original, contemporary aesthetics that are trending in the market. The photos are categorized by theme, color tone, and user preference. For example, you can view the best pictures of the month.
The price starts at $15/5 credits. A 20% discount applies for editorial use. If you're a registered user, you also get five free credits for downloading images from Photocase, including a 10% discount on your first purchase.
Verdict: PhotoDune provides a collection of millions of high-quality photos and videos. There are also themes, vectors, and audio files. The number of your downloads is unlimited. Plus, this Shutterstock alternative offers new freebies every month: from photos to video effects and footage to 3D assets and website templates.
In contrast to many alternatives, PhotoDune offers a simple and clear payment model. Each photo has a fixed price that starts at $2. However, most images can be purchased for $5 or more.
Verdict: iStock is similar to Shutterstock in features, pricing, and quality of images. The most significant difference is that Shutterstock offers more than 400 million images, while iStock currently has only 150 million pictures. iStock provides free files weekly on its homepage, including one free photo, one free illustration, and one free video per week.
You can use iStock credits to download any asset, whereas, with Shutterstock, you’re forced to buy different packages for each type of content. A single picture can cost around $10. For a photo, you pay $2.49 for a 1-month subscription. The subscription with ten photos costs $24.90 per month.
Verdict: While Shutterstock is a typical stock photo agency, meaning it sells images and videos first and everything else second, Canva does the opposite. This online platform for graphic designers is based on an intuitive image editor that lets you straightly add over 1 million stock photos to your library.
Unlike other stock photo websites, Canva lets you use unlimited images for a fixed subscription fee. This makes Canva one of the finest alternatives to Shutterstock for beginners and people on a budget.
Moreover, you can use the program for free with no time limit. But if you want to expand the number of stock photos and videos to over 100 million, you need to subscribe for $12.99/mo for one person. You can try the Pro plan for free, but only for one month.
Verdict: Unsplash is an exceptional alternative to Shutterstock, especially if you have a small budget. Unlike Shutterstock, which offers over 400 million images for purchase or subscription, Unsplash has 4 million photos for free.
Besides, you should know that this historical stock photo site doesn’t ask for registration. However, if registered, you’ll get access to other features, such as collections, which will grant you the tool for organizing your favorite photos into customized folders.
Verdict: Anyone who needs royalty-free and high-quality images at affordable prices should try Depositphotos. This Shutterstock alternative will be a terrific choice for bloggers and small businesses. The website offers 234 million files, including royalty-free images, videos, vectors, illustrations, and music.
Depositphotos offers subscriptions and image packages similar to Shutterstock, except that it is much cheaper. The key difference is the purchase of images on demand, which is up to three times cheaper at Depositphotos, costing only $2.99 per image. Subscriptions start at $9.99/mo for ten photos.
Verdict: Pexels is a free marketplace for high-resolution photos and a video library with more than a million royalty-free images. Like Shutterstock, this company focuses on outdoor images such as landscapes, buildings, beaches, and other similar objects. However, the service also offers photos of people, which are available in relatively large numbers.
Downloading an image from Pexels is easy: select the image you want and choose the desired resolution from the drop-down menu on the “Free Download” button. The artists contributing to Pexels are happy to receive donations, even though the images are free.
At least 1,500 new photos are added every month. They are either selected from content uploaded by users or taken from other websites.
Verdict: Pixabay is one of the largest image databases and has a stock of more than 2.7 million pictures. All photos have a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, and you can take them for commercial use without any fees to be paid.
Here you can find not only images but also royalty-free vector graphics, illustrations, and videos. The images can be downloaded in different resolutions, depending on your needs. The collection is quite extensive and, what's best, actually free! You don't even have to sign up for an account.
Shutterstock site operates on a micro-stock model, with individual content creators providing photos or videos. At all times the content is sold, the creators receive a share of the proceeds.
However, it is not the most suitable solution for every customer. Even if Shutterstock is not an expensive image database, it could be barely affordable for certain small businesses or individuals. This is why for those with a limited budget, I recommend Canva or Depositphotos.
Shutterstock offers image and video packages separately. Also, the standard and extended licenses are sold separately. If you confer Shutterstock vs Adobe Stock, you’ll get it — Adobe Stock offers only one pack. That is, you can buy credits and use them for any content.
Adobe Stock is the perfect alternative to Shutterstock if you use Creative Cloud tools or need more flexible on-demand images. For one thing, it works smoother; for another, it is natively built-in, and finally, it has support in more apps compared to Shutterstock.
