A picture is worth a thousand words. Whether for creating advertisements, making your content more expressive, or simply creating a beautiful social media post, we need images for various purposes. While there are stock images available for free over the internet, content creators often realize that the options available for free are limited. So, here we have listed the top websites for paid stock photos that offer a wide range of images for all your creative needs. Some of these stock photography sites also contain vector images, illustrations, video clips, graphics, and even music.
Now let’s also talk a bit about the CopyRights. The paid images that you purchase from these stock photo sites are royalty-free images, i.e you are purchasing a license that lets you use the images purchased for a lifetime for purposes like social media posts, presentations, blog posts, sales brochures, or for in-store displays. However, in case you intend to use the bought images for purposes like mass printing in coffee mugs or other items for selling, you may need an extended license. Hence it is always advisable to go through the terms and conditions of the site from where you are purchasing images, to avoid any copyright infringement issues.
So here goes the list of the top paid stock photo sites that you can consider. The pricing plan of these sites is also included so that you can choose the best that suits you.
123rf
Canva Pro
Dreamstime
Shutterstock
iStock
Pond5
Media Bakery
BigStock
Purestock
Alamy
Let’s explore more about these paid stock image websites, what they have to offer, and how much they cost.
123rf
123rF is known as one of the most distinguished budget stock image websites that contain a wide category of photographs, music, video clips, and vectors. You can find any photographs by searching through the categories. Also, you’d find the most trending and new photographs.
123rF provides different subscription plans along with on-demand credit purchasing plans.
Canva Pro
Canva Pro is known for its incredible drag-and-drop image editing feature and tools. While Canva has much to offer for free as well, like free templates, photos, graphics, free cloud storage, and features that lets you collaborate with your team, the pro version comes with much more. For an annual or monthly subscription fee users get access to a huge collection of images, graphics, video, and audio. Besides, there are many other features that allow you to customize your design, schedule your social media posts, and do instant animation.
Canva Pro also comes with the advantage of the unlimited download of stock media which makes it a great choice.
Below is the pricing plan for Canva Pro. Canva Enterprise plan is most suited for businesses.
Dreamstime
Dreamstime offers a great variety of royalty-free stock photographs with a minimum price of Rs. 16.27INR/download. The interface is simple and you can easily search for and find the photos, videos, illustrations, etc you need by typing in the search box. However, if you want to download free media from Dreamstime, the images, illustrations, etc are available only with a watermark. To access images, videos, and illustrations without a watermark, users need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Dreamstime comes with a free trial of one week where you can download any 10 images for free. Afterward, it costs different subscription and credit plans.
Have a look at Dreamstime’s subscription plans-
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is one of the pioneer stock photo websites. The platform consists of a wide variety of stock images, besides illustrations, videos, vector images, and music.
Shutterstock has much more to offer. You can create custom content for your business with Shutterstock Custom. Shutterstock also offers online editing tools that let you edit the media as per your requirements. Besides the website, Shutterstock is available via an app and a Chrome Extension.
Shutterstock offers a range of subscription plans that you can choose from as per your requirements. For single users, it offers an on-demand plan that lets users download the images whenever they need them, within a year. Besides, there are subscription plans that let users access everything including images, illustrations, music, and videos. Interesting subscription plans are also available for teams and enterprises.
Here is the pricing plan for Shutterstock Images-
Ansh Mehrey
iStock
iStock is widely famous for the collection of the most incredible and creative imagery that could be perfect for any commercial or personal purpose. It offers the facility of downloading high-resolution stock images. There are numerous categories such as landscape, holiday, seasonal, careers, technology, and many more.
iStock is counted among the most preferred paid stock image websites. iStock also partnered with Craft Stock Plugin which helps users access the iStock images right within Sketch & Photoshop. iStock comes with a free video editor.
Pond5
Pond5 is known for the collection of a great variety of videos. Although it does have photographs, the video collection is just astonishing. It is one of the platforms having the largest stock video collection online. Pond5 works by building a media marketplace that could be easily accessible for video creating and editing purposes.
Pond5 has around 25 million high-resolution videos with the most incredible features like video editing, patented visual search, and more. All in all, Pond5 has all that it takes to make your videos the best. With SFX, 3D models, and after-effects you can consider using Pond5 if you are into video content creation.
The pricing plans include Pay per Item, where you can pay per image, per video, or per music basis. Besides one can opt for credit packs ( where one can purchase credit and use these credits to buy any media from Pond5 when required) and memberships.
Media Bakery
Media Bakery is an image aggregator site that curates hand-picked photographs from different sites. The site has a wide collection of Royalty-Free Images, videos, audio and flash content. Media Bakery’s clients include big corporate houses as its collection is very diverse. It has some very amazing features such as scrutinizing the photographs before outlying them for the custom of the users. This facilitates the license of the images as well as the well-developed content for purchasing. Media Bakery also allows users to follow photographers and like images. As per the company site, Media Bakery does not offer subscriptions but does offer credit accounts as of now.
Niku Mandal
BigStock
Bigstock is counted among the top paid stock image websites, started in 2004. It has grown with great graphs and now has more than 83 million content for various purposes and events. It comes with great purchasing plans with a 7-day free trial session. It has many outstanding categories of illustrations and photographs.
Bigstock offers distinguished search images and high-resolution of videos with the appropriate keyword selection.
Below is the Big Stock Pricing plan for images:
Purestock
Purestock is one of the most standardized paid stock image websites that offer the best quality of images and services. It does not have any trial session or service, but once the premium plan has been purchased, it guarantees the most incredible and licensed protected image with the best resolution. Purestock also offers the search by image option.
Purestock guides you with blog posts and featured artists to let you know how to use the images and other materials.
Below are Purstock’s yearly pricing plans-
Rishabh Rathi
Alamy
Alamy is known for its real-life-based images with great special effects. It offers a huge collection of images that you can use and relate to for the society-based works and handles. It always keeps up with the trends and provides great image content. It offers some absolute subscription plans at reasonable pricing.
Alamy provides great effective and convenient customer service along with news feeds and distinct forums. It holds a collection of over 165 million images, vectors, video clips, and more. Checkout Alamy’s pricing plans-
Conclusion
There might be some great unpaid image websites but the services and offers that come with the paid one are non-comparable. The paid stock image websites offer a huge breathtaking collection of images, illustrations, video clips, vectors and many others. This works best with any of your content or blog posts. It makes it more vibrant and encompassing for the viewers. These websites come at very reasonable and affordable prices.
FAQs
What’s the best stock photo site?
Shutterstock, Alamy, iStock, Getty Images, and Canva Pro are some of the best stock photo websites you should consider.
What is a stock photo website?
Stock image websites contain an extensive library of high-quality images, graphics, and often videos, which you’re free to use or different websites also have affordable subscription options.
Where can I get high-quality images for free?
Pixabay, Unsplash, StockSnap, Flickr, and Pexels are some of the sites to get high-quality images for free.
