Free for commercial use, and what that does not cover
Unsplash is the best free stock licence in our comparison. You can download, change and use the photos commercially, without paying, without asking and without a credit line. It scores 7.3 under how we rate and it is our Best Free pick.
The licence covers the photograph. It does not cover what is in it.
That second sentence is the whole review, and most pages that recommend Unsplash leave it out.
The release you do not get
The Unsplash terms are direct about it. The licence "does not include the right to use: Trademarks, logos, or brands that appear in Images; People's images if they are recognizable in the Images; Works of art or authorship that appear in Images". If you use one of those, "you may need the permission of the brand owner".
So a landscape on your blog is fine. A smiling, identifiable stranger in your Facebook ad is a different matter, because nobody has promised you that person agreed to advertise your product. And the terms disclaim every warranty on free content, including non-infringement.
Paid libraries sell exactly the thing missing here: a release on file and a vendor who will defend you if it turns out to be wrong. Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Adobe Stock and iStock each publish $10,000 of cover per image on their standard licences.
Three more limits are in the terms. You cannot sell unaltered copies, "including selling them as prints or printed on physical goods". You cannot compile the photos into a rival service. And you cannot use them in machine learning or AI datasets.
What Unsplash+ buys, and what it costs after the launch
Unsplash+ is the paid tier, and it closes the gap. Every image is model and property released, and Unsplash warrants that your use will not infringe, backed "Up to US $10,000 per licensed photo". The licence on downloaded images is perpetual.
It costs $84 for twelve months, which Unsplash labels a "Limited Launch Special". The regular price is $20 a month or $240 a year. Even at $240 it undercuts every paid entry plan in the comparison. It still excludes digital templates, AI and machine learning, and sensitive topics without a disclaimer such as "posed by model".
How to use the free licence without the risk
Four habits cover most of it, and none of them costs anything.
Keep identifiable faces out of advertising. A blog post about remote work carries a different risk from a paid ad that implies a stranger endorses you, and only the second is likely to bring a complaint.
Crop out logos and brands. A laptop logo in the corner of a stock photo is somebody else's trademark, and the licence says so.
Do not sell the photo itself. A poster that is just the photograph, unaltered, is the use the terms prohibit. A design that incorporates it with real creative work is not.
Keep a record. Note where and when you downloaded each image. If a photographer later removes it, your note is the evidence that you had it legitimately.
Why the photos turn up everywhere
Unsplash runs a public API and lists apps and plugins built on it, which is why its photos appear inside so many design tools and website builders. The licence travels with them. A photo picked from a built-in image panel in another product is still an Unsplash photo with the same gaps, whatever the other product's own terms say.
Who should pay for Unsplash+
Stay on the free licence for backgrounds, textures, landscapes and blog headers, where nobody identifiable appears and no brand is in shot. That is a lot of the stock most people actually use.
Pay for Unsplash+ the first time a recognisable face goes into something you advertise with. At the launch price it is the cheapest legal cover in the set.
Move to a paid library when you need a specific scene the free library does not have, or video at volume. Shutterstock is the deeper library. Dreamstime is cheaper if you only need a few.
Unlike Dreamstime's free section, Unsplash's free licence does not expire. That alone makes it the better free offer.
Licence and price terms on this page were read from the Unsplash licence, terms, Unsplash+ page and Unsplash+ licence on . We did not test the service.
