The cheapest way to buy three photos, and the plan you should not pick
Dreamstime is the cheapest place in our stock photo comparison to license a handful of images, and the pricing page is built so that you will overpay anyway.
Start with the good number. Three credits cost $14.99 and stay valid for twelve months. A Level 0 image, which is most of the catalogue, costs one credit at any size, so that is three full-resolution photos for five dollars each. Shutterstock's smallest pack is two images for $29. Nothing else in the set comes close for somebody who needs three pictures this quarter.
Now the subscriptions. The same page sells 5 images a month for $25 and 15 images a month for $25. It sells 10 images for $39 and 25 images for $39. Same price, a third of the downloads.
Buy 15. There is no reason on the page to buy 5.
At $25 a month, fifteen images on a monthly plan with no annual commitment works out at $300 for the year, the same as Shutterstock charges for ten on a contract you cannot leave without paying half the remainder. That is why it is our Best Value pick, at 7.2 under how we rate.
One caution on the figures. On a second visit the same day, under a banner reading "Tick tock, hurry! Discounts expire soon", the 5 and 10 image plans had dropped to $23 and $35. We quote the list price. A price that moves between two page loads is a sales technique rather than a discount.
Rollover that lasts exactly as long as you keep paying
Unused subscription downloads roll over, up to 5,000 of them, the highest stated cap in the set. The condition is in the terms: "for as long as your subscription is active".
Switch off auto-renew and the subscription ends, and the downloads end with it. The buyer FAQ is explicit that "once you disable auto-renewal, your subscription will be canceled, and access to your downloads and benefits will no longer be available." Renewal can also be charged up to 48 hours before the date on your account.
So use the balance first, then cancel. In that order.
The free section is a six-month licence
Dreamstime has a free section, and most people who land on it assume free means free to keep. It does not.
Free downloads are licensed under a limited licence: no more than 10,000 physical copies, and "valid for 6 (six) months after the initial download for unsubscribed members or 6 (six) months after your Dreamstime download subscription ends."
Put a free Dreamstime photo on your website in January and, unless you subscribe, you are unlicensed in July. Unsplash has no expiry on its free licence, which is the better free offer even with its own gaps.
One image, one project, one client
A paid licence is perpetual and since 2017 has no copy limit. It is also narrower than it sounds.
"You need to license the media individually for every individual project or design and for each different client." An agency that reuses a photo across two clients buys it twice. A company where more than one person uses the file needs the U-EL extended licence. Logos are excluded under every licence except Sell the Rights, which removes the image from sale for everyone else.
None of that is unusual in stock. Dreamstime is unusual for writing it down where a buyer can find it.
"Unlimited" means Level Zero
The Unlimited Downloads plan, at $1,499 a month, is not unlimited access to the library you searched. It covers "Level Zero" files only, images that have sat in the catalogue for at least six months, and a file stops being Level Zero the moment anyone downloads it.
Each download licenses one use. And the clause that matters: "Your license to use Media in a new context expires immediately if your subscription ends." This is the one plan here where stopping payment takes something back.
Where Shutterstock or Depositphotos beats it
If you need images every week, Shutterstock is the better buy. Its unlimited plan costs barely more than ten a month, and the library is deeper.
If all you want is the lowest twelve-month total for heavy use, Depositphotos is cheaper paid upfront. It also caps its total liability at $5,000 against Dreamstime's $10,000 per image, and sends no renewal reminder.
Who should buy it
Buy credits if you need a few images a quarter. Buy the 15-image monthly plan if you need some most months and want the unused ones to wait. Do not build anything you plan to keep on the free section.
Prices, licence terms and rollover rules on this page were read from the Dreamstime pricing page, terms, licence page and buyer FAQ on . We did not test the service.
