The short answer
Shutterstock is the best stock photo site for anyone who needs images every month, because unlimited downloads cost barely more than ten. Dreamstime is the cheapest way to buy a few, with no annual contract. Unsplash is free for commercial use but clears nothing in the frame. Adobe Stock earns its higher price only inside Photoshop.
Every price on this page is twelve months of ten standard images a month, on the cheapest plan that covers it, read from the vendor on .
Not the monthly rate. Three of the five paid libraries here sell an annual contract by default, and the number that decides your money is what the year costs and what you lose when it ends.
The best stock photo sites cost between nothing and $360 a year
Unsplash costs nothing. Depositphotos is $264 paid upfront, for unlimited downloads. Dreamstime is $300 for fifteen a month, on a monthly plan with no commitment. Shutterstock is $300. iStock is $348 for its Basic collection and $840 for the whole library. Adobe Stock is $359.88.
The two figures to sit with are Shutterstock's. Ten images a month is $300, and Unlimited Images is $348. Forty-eight dollars a year separates ten from as many as you can use, up to the hundred a day Shutterstock allows. If there is any chance you need eleven, the small plan is the wrong plan.
And the cheapest paid year is not the best value here, which needs explaining.
Why the order is not the score order
Shutterstock scores 8.3 under how we rate, the highest in the set, and it is our Best Overall pick.
Dreamstime takes Best Value on 7.2, a tenth above Depositphotos. On a pure twelve-month total Depositphotos is cheaper. It also caps its total liability for every claim at $5,000 and states in its subscription agreement that it sends no renewal reminder. Dreamstime publishes $10,000 of cover per image, sells the anchor without an annual contract, and is the cheapest place in the set to buy three photos: three credits for $14.99. Value is the price and what the price leaves you exposed to, and on that Dreamstime wins.
Unsplash takes Best Free on 7.3. iStock outscores it and Dreamstime, at 7.5, and sits in also considered because its advertised price buys half a library. The whole of it costs more than double.
Adobe Stock is the specialist pick on 8.1, second highest here, for one reader: somebody who designs in Photoshop or Premiere all day. For everyone else it is the dearest year on the page.
What you lose the day you stop paying
Every library here lets you keep using what you already licensed. The difference is what happens to what you paid for and did not download.
Shutterstock rolls nothing over. Its own words: subscription downloads "must be used within the month and do not roll over into the next month". Skip a month and you paid for nothing.
Adobe Stock, Dreamstime and iStock roll over, and all three delete the balance when the plan ends. Adobe keeps unused credits for up to twelve months. Dreamstime keeps up to 5,000 "for as long as your subscription is active", and switching off auto-renew is how you end it. iStock keeps up to 250 a month and loses them if auto-renew is off when the term ends.
So a rollover balance is a reason to keep paying. That is what it is designed to be.
Leaving early costs money in two places. Shutterstock charges 50 percent of the remaining subscription on an annual plan billed monthly. Adobe Stock charges up to half the remaining commitment after the first 14 days. Dreamstime's annual instalment plan can be converted and cancelled by repaying the discount on the months already used, which is the fairest exit term here and still not free.
Unlimited plans, read as written
None of the three is unlimited without a condition, and each condition is different.
Shutterstock caps its unlimited plans at 100 downloads a day "for security reasons". For almost anyone, that is unlimited.
Dreamstime's Unlimited Downloads plan covers "Level Zero" files only: images that have sat in the catalogue for six months without being bought. Each download licenses one use, and the terms say a licence for a new use "expires immediately if your subscription ends". It is a different product from the library you searched.
Depositphotos reserves "automated protection measures" for "unusually intensive download activity", and does not say where that starts.
Free photos are licensed, not cleared
The Unsplash licence is the most generous in the set. Commercial use, no attribution, no permission. And the terms say plainly what it is not: the licence "does not include the right to use: Trademarks, logos, or brands... People's images if they are recognizable... Works of art". Free photos also come with no warranty at all.
A recognisable face in an advert needs a model release, and a free download does not give you one. Unsplash+ does, at $84 a year on a launch price that Unsplash itself labels temporary.
Dreamstime's free section is a different trap. Its licence caps you at 10,000 copies and expires six months after download for anyone who does not subscribe. Free there is a trial with a date on it.
Prices, licence terms and cancellation clauses on this page were read from each vendor's pricing page, licence and terms on . We compared the documents; we did not test the libraries.
