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Best Stock Photo Sites Review: Getty vs. iStock vs. Shutterstock vs. Fotolia vs Adobe Stock & More!

Are you looking for a photo to make your brochure or website homepage stand out from your competitors? If so, you will find that looking for royalty-free media on the net brings up an overwhelming number of services to choose from. Depending upon the media you are looking to serve (photos, illustrations, vector art, audio, video) and the usage license you require, the sheer number of stock image companies can be daunting. Let’s face it, all this marketing lingo can also be intimidating. So let’s break it down and help you find the best stock images for your needs.

What Are the Best Stock Photo Sites?
We have composed a stock photography company comparison table that highlights the products and services offered by each company and the pros and cons of each. Referencing this table alongside our reviews below will help you to determine which stock photo company best meets your needs. If at any point you get confused by the lingo used in this article, please take a look at the terminology section on the comparison table page.

What Is Digital Media?
Digital media is any type of media that is used on computers, websites, blogs, etc. The images you see on websites are considered digital media as well as the audio or video tracks. Digital media files do not need to be as high resolution since they will be optimized for web and you might find yourself needing a lot more digital media files to use throughout your site so a subscription plan might be best in this case.

BigStock Review
BigStock is an affordable stock image service that specializes in images and illustrations. Their straightforward, inexpensive pricing model paired with a wide range of images to meet most digital marketing needs makes it the go-to location for the best stock photos for online use. This is the company we use for our website’s photos most often. Our experience with their customer service department has been top-notch. However, if you are looking for vector images, you will definitely pay more here so you may want to look to another company.
Price at time of writing: Image credits start at $35 for 10 images up to $495 for 500 images. Subscriptions start at $69 per month for 5 images a day and go up from there depending on the number of photos and how frequently you download.

Coupon Code
Ongoing: our readers have access to 5 free credits with promo code SPC6 (if that doesn't work, try DIGIX210). Seasonal: Bigstock is offering 15% off your first month for any subscription. Click here take advantage of these offers!

Depositphotos is a relatively new company with an affordable pricing structure. Their excellent selection of media is available for one of the lowest per image costs around. That being said, we do not find their current library robust or easily searched, so it may be difficult to find what you are looking for. But, if you can find the right image for you, the price will be good and they, have a nice user feedback option so that you can learn more about others’ experiences with a particular artist/photographer before buying or to guide your image search further. They offer images and video, but no audio. They have a good selection at one of the lower per image costs around, with low-resolution photos starting at around $1.
Price at time of writing: Subscriptions start at $29/month ($0.96 per image) or $299/year and on demand images start at $4.90 per image.

Coupon Code
Get 10% off Depositphotos subscriptions with coupon code OS0290048 via our link.

iStock is run by the highly reputable Getty Images (our #1 pick for traditional stock photography, see below). Graphic designers and small advertising agencies find iStock to be a great resource due to their low prices, affordable subscription plan, image variety and versatility. With millions of pieces for sale, iStock is one of the better choices for those in need of lots of online, royalty-free, low-resolution images for websites or e-newsletters. The iStock website can be a bit challenging to users who prefer to browse without a keyword in mind, as it is difficult to just browse without first typing in a keyword. Overall the search function via keywords is easy and intuitive for the reader. This is a good service that offers great images at a good price. iStock is one of the most commonly utilized online stock image companies these days for graphic designers and small advertising agencies due to their low prices, affordable subscription plan and versatility. With millions of pieces for sale, iStock is one of the better choices for large quantities of online royalty-free content, especially if low-resolution is acceptable.

Price at time of writing: Starts at $12 for 1 image/credit and subscriptions start at $40/month for 10 images.

Coupon Code
Until March 9, 2018: All customers save 20 off credit packs with coupon code SAVE20; Click here to take advantage of these offers!

What Are the Best Stock Photography Sites for Traditional Media?
Traditional media is what you typically think of for media. This is media that is printed in publications, used outdoors or on television. You see them every day from magazine ads to TV commercials. Anything that uses visuals or audio in a commercial form must be purchased or have the original rights to. And often, depending on if people or places are involved, there might be a time limit or renewal fees so the models, artists and creators can continue to get fairly compensated. You might require higher resolution photos for traditional media which is why they might cost you more but the quality is much better.

Getty Images Review
From historical photos to celebrity photo bombs. Getty Images offers one of the biggest databases of stock media, especially for premium, conceptual, high-resolution and editorial images. If you are working in traditional media such as print, TV, billboard or radio, high-resolution creative will be mandatory in designing high impact campaigns and no one offers more exclusively licensed, high-res art than Getty. Getty offers a wide array of royalty-free media with over eighty million different high-design, conceptual pieces for sale. It is also a good option for multinational companies and global advertising campaigns as they have websites in many different languages that will help you navigate usage laws across country borders. The website is easy to search and navigate for high-concept imagery, videography and sound.

Price at time of writing: Price varies depending on the rights, usage and size and can be upwards of hundreds of dollars each.

Coupon Code
At this time we are unaware of any Getty Images coupon codes.
123RF offers one of the most affordable subscription programs, with low-resolution photos starting as low as $1 per photo. It’s a great alternative to many of the big stock photo services and they have a wide-selection of over 37 million images video, audio, vector files. And you can expect high-quality photos for the price too. 123RF has beautiful lifestyle, editorial and non-cheesy photos making them an even better value. They have live chat and phone support should you need it and an easy to use checkout process. The one downside we found from 123RF is the search results didn’t have many filtering options, which isn’t ideal if you have something specific in mind, but their photos are all so great you might not need them!

Shutterstock is a good resource for high-resolution images, especially for large-format designs (billboards and other print media). They offer a variety of subscription plans to meet various user needs, making its pricing model more flexible than some other high-res photo options. With Shutterstock’s huge library of 70 million images and files, you won’t be disappointed in the selection. While they do offer stock photos, videos, illustrations, and vector, they do not have audio files in their database, making this another impediment from a top ranking relative to Getty Images, which has all forms of media in their library. Shutterstock would be a great choice for agencies, publications and companies with the need to use high-quality photos and illustrations often.

Price at time of writing: Starts at $29 for 2 images and subscriptions start at $49/month for 10 images.

Coupon Code
At this time we are unaware of any ShutterStock coupon codes.
Best Stock Image Sites Comparison Table
Stock Photography Comparison TableDue to the considerable size of our stock photo websites comparison table, we are putting it on another page so that it can be more easily referenced. Please visit our stock photography service comparison table (or click on the image on the left) to view the feature details of each stock photography company that we review in this article. We will do our best to continue to add to this table as we find more stock photo companies and update the current companies listed as they add new features.

Other Stock Photography Sites
The other stock photography services we reviewed are listed below. Learn more about what each of these services offers as well as pros and cons.

Adobe Stock | Alamy | Can Stock Photo | Corbis | Dreamstime | Foap | Fotolia | PhotoSpin | YAY Images

We have a listing of terminologies that will help you understand some of the technical jargon. It’s located below the comparison table as well as at the bottom of this page.


In 2015 Adobe, the popular graphic design software company, released their own version of a stock photography library with more than 40 million photos, illustrations and vector images available. You can also submit your images to sell which makes sense and is convenient since they cater to the creative community and have a built-in network of graphic design and photographer customers already. They do not offer video or audio files, so if you’re a multimedia user, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Adobe Stock is still in the early stages, so we will have to give them more time to see where they fit in our rankings.

Alamy has one of the largest selection of images and, with more than 80,000 new stock images added daily sourced from around the world from 173 countries. The result is a wide-range of culturally diverse photos from all geographic landscapes and areas giving you more than 90 million high-quality images to choose from. Alamy only sells per image so no subscription plans are available and the price varies depending on the size and the rights of the photo. You can choose to have it licensed which can expensive depending on what you are using it for or do a rights-managed option which is limited use and time for a photo. Much like other online shopping sites, it’s easy to check out without an account, but the number of options can be a bit overwhelming if you are new to stock photography.

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