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Shutterstock

Shutterstock is a stock photography, footage and music platform that provides high-quality assets for businesses, marketing agencies and media organizations. It features an extensive library of photos, videos clips and songs that can be licensed for commercial or editorial use.

What is Shutterstock?

Shutterstock is a leading global provider of licensable photographs, vectors, illustrations, videos and music. Founded in 2003, Shutterstock has grown to one of the largest platforms for stock media in the world, with over 400 million assets available for easy licensing.

Shutterstock works on a credit-based system, where customers purchase image packs allowing them to license photos, vectors, videos and music based on their needs. The platform features an intuitive search system that makes finding the perfect asset efficient. Users can search by keywords, categories, colors, image orientation, people, collections and more.

With its massive selection, Shutterstock is used by businesses small and large to elevate their marketing materials, websites, online stores, publications, presentations and more. The company reviews all content for quality before adding it, ensuring customers have access to exceptional stock media. Contributors range from independent photographers, videographers and musicians to creative professionals.

In addition to photographs and videos, Shutterstock offers music tracks and sound effects through its subsidiary PremiumBeat. Over 115,000 exclusive, royalty-free music files are available to enhance video projects. The company also provides custom music if unique audio is needed.

Shutterstock is headquartered in New York City, with additional offices worldwide in Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Krakow, Copenhagen, Milan and Tokyo to serve its 1.9 million customers globally. With new photos and footage added daily, Shutterstock has cemented itself as an essential resource for creatives, marketers and media professionals seeking quality licensed assets.

The Best Shutterstock Alternatives

Top Apps like Shutterstock

Pexels, 500px, Getty Images, MixKit, Ungraded, Visual Hunt, Openverse, Pixabay, StockUnlimited, Adobe Stock, Zoommy, Twenty20, Videvo, StockSnap.io, Max Impact Search, Mazwai, Alamy, Depositphotos, PurePNG, VideoBlocks, Negative Space, Dreamstime, Wallpoper, VectorStock, Tiling Textures, Gratisography, Fotolia, motosha, Photolancer Zone, Snapwire, colourbox, PicJumbo, FreeFoodPhotos, PhotoDune, Stock Unlimited, AfricanStockPhoto, AllTheFreeStock, Framepool, Viewbook, findA.Photo, Bee Inc., Galeph, Yay Images, Stockfresh, Offset, FoodiesFeed, Smithsonian Open Access, Pixabang.com, Veer.com, Dissolve, Shoot The Frame, Barn Images, Photostockeditor, New Old Stock are some alternatives to Shutterstock.

Pexels

Pexels is a popular free stock photo and video service that offers a large library of high-quality media for personal and commercial use. Founded in 2012 by Alexander Heinrich, Pexels aims to make quality stock photos accessible to everyone.Some key features of Pexels include:Library of over 1 million royalty-free stock...

500px

500px is a photo sharing and marketplace website, primarily focused on high-end and professional photography. It was founded in 2009 and has developed a strong community of photographers who upload and promote their work through the platform.Some key features and information about 500px:Very strict rating systems for photos -...

Getty Images

Getty Images is one of the world's leading providers of visual content for media and corporate customers. Founded in 1995, Getty has a library of over 415 million assets which includes photos, illustrations, vectors and videos. Getty's content comes from over 490,000 contributors across almost every country in the world.Getty licenses imagery...

MixKit

MixKit is a free stock media library that offers high-quality video footage, music tracks, sound effects, and more that creators can use in their projects. It was launched in 2019 by the same team behind Placeit and Envato Elements.Some key things to know about MixKit:The library includes over 1 million...

Ungraded

Ungraded is a free, open-source assessment platform designed specifically for teachers and education. It provides educators with an easy way to create and deliver tests, quizzes, assignments, and surveys to their students without needing advanced technical skills.Key features of Ungraded include:Intuitive interface to build a variety of assessmentsCustomizable...

Visual Hunt

Visual Hunt is an advanced image search engine designed specifically for finding high-quality, royalty-free images that can be used without copyright restrictions. It searches through millions of creative commons and public domain images across several major stock photo websites and databases like Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay, and more.Unlike Google...

Openverse

Openverse is an open source AI image generator web application launched in 2022. It allows users to create original images by providing text descriptions to its advanced AI system. The technology powering Openverse is similar to systems like DALL-E which use transformer-based neural networks to generate images.A key focus of...

Pixabay

Pixabay is an online platform that provides high quality stock media content including photos, illustrations, vector graphics and videos. Founded in 2010 by German entrepreneur Hans Braxmeier, Pixabay aims to make visually appealing copyright-free content easily accessible to everyone.One of the key features that sets Pixabay apart is that all...

StockUnlimited

StockUnlimited is an online stock media agency that provides royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, and vector images that can be used for both personal and commercial projects. Founded in 2009, StockUnlimited has quickly grown to house over 1 million high-quality stock files covering a diverse range of categories.Some key features of StockUnlimited...

Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is a premium stock content and asset platform owned and operated by Adobe. Launched in 2015, Adobe Stock brings together over 200 million photos, graphics, videos, templates, 3D assets, and more that creative professionals can license and use for commercial and personal projects.Compared to other stock content sites, Adobe...

Zoommy

Zoommy is a versatile screen and video capture software for Windows and Mac. It provides a wide range of tools to record, edit, and share screen activity with ease.Key features of Zoommy include:Intuitive interface for quick screen and webcam recordingsAnnotate screenshots and screen recordings with arrows, text, highlights...

Twenty20

Twenty20 is a free photo editing and stock photo app designed to help users enhance, organize, and share high-quality photos. It provides a streamlined editing workflow along with a library of filters, effects, and adjustment tools for applying quick, professional touch-ups to mobile photos.Key features of Twenty20 include:Intuitive...

Videvo

Videvo is a stock video website that provides high-quality, royalty-free stock video footage that can be used for both personal and commercial projects. Launched in 2014, Videvo aims to make stunning stock video accessible to everyone.With a library of over 950,000 video clips, Videvo has one of the largest royalty-free stock...

StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io is a free stock photography site that offers a large library of high-resolution images that anyone can use for personal or commercial projects. The images are released under the CC0 license, which means they are completely free from copyright restrictions.The site aims to make finding great stock...

Max Impact Search

Max Impact Search is a comprehensive SEO software designed to help website owners and marketers improve their search engine rankings. It provides a suite of tools to analyze websites and identify opportunities for optimizing on-page content, backlink profiles, page speed, and technical issues.Key features of Max Impact Search include...

Mazwai

Mazwai is an easy to use free online video editing software. It can be accessed directly through any web browser without any downloads or installations required. It provides basic yet powerful video editing tools for beginners and hobbyists.Some of the key editing features offered by Mazwai include:Importing videos...

Alamy

Alamy is an online stock photography agency launched in 1999. It brings together professional photographers and customers who need images for editorial, advertising, design, and other creative purposes. Alamy has one of the world's largest collections of stock photos, with over 250 million high-quality, creative images covering just about any topic imaginable...

Depositphotos

Depositphotos is an online marketplace for royalty-free stock photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, and music files. Founded in 2009, it has grown to become one of the largest stock content sites with over 200 million creative assets.Depositphotos aims to provide high-quality and affordable stock media for businesses, marketing agencies, designers, bloggers and...

PurePNG

PurePNG is a free online tool that allows you to easily convert images from formats like JPG, GIF, BMP to PNG. It also provides options to optimize and compress PNG images to reduce their file size without losing quality.Some key features of PurePNG:Drag and drop image conversion -...

VideoBlocks

VideoBlocks is an online marketplace that provides unlimited access to a library of high-quality stock media assets like video footage, motion graphics, backgrounds, music tracks, sound effects, and more. It was founded in 2011 with the goal of making stock media affordable and accessible for all users.Some key features of...

Negative Space

Negative Space is a minimalist image editor designed for drawing, painting, and photo manipulation. It has a clean, distraction-free user interface that focuses solely on creativity, without all the complex panels and menus found in other image editors.Some key features of Negative Space include:Layer-based editing - Easily create...

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is one of the largest stock photography websites with over 202 million royalty-free stock images, vector illustrations, video clips, and PSD files. Founded in 2000, Dreamstime aims to provide a wide selection of visual content for business and creative professionals at affordable prices.Photographers and visual artists can sign up for...

Wallpoper

Wallpoper is an open-source wallpaper manager application for Windows that makes it easy to discover, download, and manage wallpapers. It has a simple and intuitive interface that allows you to browse wallpapers from built-in online sources like Unsplash, set wallpapers to rotate automatically after a configurable time interval, and manage...

VectorStock

VectorStock is an online marketplace for vector images, illustrations, clipart graphics, and stock footage. Founded in 2000, it has become one of the largest repositories of royalty-free vector files on the web, with over 450,000 files from thousands of contributors around the world.VectorStock is primarily focused on vector graphics, which use...

Tiling Textures

Tiling Textures is a standalone application designed specifically for creating seamless texture tiles. It provides a suite of tools to help transform regular images into seamlessly tileable textures for use in 3D rendering, game design, and more.Some key features of Tiling Textures include:Intuitive user interface for quickly editing...

Gratisography

Gratisography is a free stock photography site created in 2013 by designer and photographer Ryan McGuire. The site offers high-resolution stock photos that are completely free for personal and commercial use with no copyright restrictions.Gratisography aims to provide striking, stylish imagery for websites, presentations, print materials and more. The image...

Fotolia

Fotolia is an online media marketplace where users can browse, search and purchase royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, video clips, vectors, and music files for both personal and commercial use. It was founded in 2005 in France and acquired by Adobe in 2014.Fotolia provides a library of over 100 million files including photos...

Motosha

Motosha is a code-free mobile app development platform designed to empower anyone to build, publish and manage their own native iOS and Android apps. With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, Motosha makes it easy for non-coders to design beautiful, functional app UIs and workflows in minutes.Some key capabilities and benefits...

Photolancer Zone

Photolancer Zone is an online freelance marketplace that specializes in connecting businesses and individuals with professional creative freelancers. It is used by companies, marketing agencies, and independent clients to outsource creative projects like photo editing, graphic design, video production, animation, and more.Some key features and benefits of Photolancer Zone...

Snapwire

Snapwire is an online marketplace platform that connects photographers and other visual content creators with clients who need quality photos, videos, illustrations, or graphics. It was founded in 2012 and is based in Austin, Texas.Some key features and benefits of Snapwire include:An extensive network of over 60,000 enrolled creative professionals...

Colourbox

Colourbox is a popular jQuery lightbox plugin released in 2010. It allows users to overlay images, HTML content, and multimedia on the current page in a stylish, dimmed overlay. Some key features include:Lightweight codebase - under 13KB minified and gzippedCustomizable via CSS, options, methods, and eventsSupports responsive designInline HTML support...

PicJumbo

PicJumbo is a free stock photo site that offers high quality, royalty free stock images that can be used for both commercial and personal projects. Launched in 2013, PicJumbo aims to provide designers, bloggers, and businesses with beautiful stock photography that can help enhance their websites, marketing materials, and more.Some...

FreeFoodPhotos

FreeFoodPhotos is an online library of free stock food photos. It was created in 2013 by photographer Jay Wennington to provide a collection of high quality food images that can be used for free without copyright restrictions.The site currently hosts over 7,500 high resolution images covering a wide range of food...

PhotoDune

PhotoDune is an online marketplace owned by Envato that specializes in stock media including photography, graphic design assets, video footage, and more. It was launched in 2009 and has since grown to feature over 4 million files from hundreds of thousands of contributors.PhotoDune aims to make high-quality stock assets accessible and...

Stock Unlimited

Stock Unlimited is a leading stock media subscription service providing unlimited downloads of high-resolution stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. With a vast library of over 5 million visual assets covering a wide range of categories, Stock Unlimited caters to creative professionals, designers, publishers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.Founded in 2015, Stock...

AfricanStockPhoto

AfricanStockPhoto is an online stock photography agency that specializes in African-themed images. Launched in 2012, the website aims to promote a more positive and diverse portrayal of Africa through photography.The collection includes over 20,000 high-resolution photos shot by professional photographers across the continent. Categories cover a wide range, from African people...

AllTheFreeStock

AllTheFreeStock is a free stock media website that provides a large library of high-resolution, royalty-free photos, illustrations, video footage, and vectors. Launched in 2021, the site aims to make quality stock assets accessible to creators, businesses, students, and anyone needing visual content.The library includes over 300,000 photos, vectors, and videos across...

Framepool

Framepool is an online marketplace for stock video footage, offering a library of over 5 million high-quality video clips, motion graphics, and images that can be licensed for commercial or personal use. Founded in 2001 in Munich, Germany, Framepool has become one of the largest stock footage agencies in Europe.Framepool works...

Viewbook

Viewbook is a feature-rich digital publishing software used to create interactive catalogs, brochures, magazines, and other publications. It has an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for anyone to build visually engaging content without coding.Some key features of Viewbook include:Modern templates and themes to choose fromDrag and...

FindA.Photo

findA.Photo is a photo organization and management application designed specifically for Windows. It provides professional and amateur photographers with robust tools to organize, tag, rate, and sort large photo libraries.Key features of findA.Photo include:Intuitive tagging system to add custom metadata like location, subject, event names, etc...

Bee Inc.

Bee Inc. is a cloud-based project management software designed for small teams. Its key features include:Visual work space to see all your tasks, projects, and team members in one placeTask management with statuses, assignments, due dates, and prioritiesTime tracking to record time spent on tasksDashboards and reports to monitor...

Galeph

Galeph is an open-source data visualization and business intelligence platform developed as an alternative to commercial solutions like Tableau or Power BI. It allows users to connect to various data sources both on-premises and in the cloud, including traditional databases, data warehouses, big data platforms like Hadoop, and SaaS applications...

Yay Images

Yay Images is easy-to-use photo editing software designed for hobbyists and casual users. It contains a wide range of features that allow you to crop, rotate, add filters and text, remove red eye, adjust colors, and more to your images.The simple, clean interface makes Yay Images accessible for beginners...

Stockfresh

Stockfresh is an online marketplace for stock photography, illustrations, and vector images. Founded in 2005, Stockfresh aims to provide high-quality, royalty-free images at affordable prices.Contributors upload their photos, vectors, and illustrations to Stockfresh and set their own royalty rates. The images are then vetted by Stockfresh reviewers to ensure they...

Offset

Offset is a carbon footprint tracker and offset platform aimed at individuals and businesses who want to reduce their environmental impact. The tool consists of a browser extension for Google Chrome and Firefox as well as mobile apps for iOS and Android.The Offset extension monitors your internet browsing behavior...

FoodiesFeed

FoodiesFeed is a social networking and content sharing platform designed specifically for food enthusiasts. It brings together home cooks, professional chefs, food bloggers, restaurant owners, and anyone passionate about food in one place to share and discover new recipes, restaurant recommendations, food trends, beautiful food photography, and more.Users can...

Smithsonian Open Access

Smithsonian Open Access is an open access digital platform launched by the Smithsonian Institution in 2020 to provide free online access to millions of 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian's vast collections. It serves as a central hub to explore and download high-resolution images, videos, audio files, 3D models...

Pixabang.com

Pixabang.com is a leading free stock photo and illustration website that offers high quality, royalty free images for both personal and commercial use. Founded in 2021, Pixabang's mission is to provide stunning free stock photos to creatives around the world.Pixabang has a growing library of over 800,000 free stock photos...

Veer.com

Veer.com is an extensive stock media library with over 2 million high-quality stock photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, templates and 3D assets. It was launched in 1998 and offers content covering a wide variety of topics and styles.Veer operates on a credit-based pricing model that allows flexible licensing. Customers purchase prepaid...

Dissolve

Dissolve is an innovative and user-friendly software for vector-based image tracing and conversion. Developed by Media Chance, Dissolve offers precision bitmap to vector tracing with intelligent options for detecting edges, color management and applying artistic effects.With its streamlined interface, Dissolve makes the vector tracing process fast and efficient. It...

Shoot The Frame

Shoot The Frame is a versatile photo stitching and editing software used to create stunning panoramas, collages, and multi-row/column layouts. It simplifies the process of combining multiple photos into one seamless image.Key features include:Intuitive interface for dragging, dropping and arranging photosAdvanced alignment tools to automatically match and...

Barn Images

Barn Images is an online stock photo agency focusing exclusively on high-quality barn photos and rural landscape images. Founded in 2008 by photographer John Smith, Barn Images has become a leading source of farm, country, and rustic-themed stock photos.With over 5,000 photos of barns, farms, fields, and pastoral landscapes, Barn Images...

Photostockeditor

Photostockeditor is a feature-rich photo editing application for Windows that offers an expansive set of tools for editing, enhancing and retouching images. It provides a user-friendly interface along with professional-grade editing capabilities suitable for photographers, graphic designers, web designers and photo editing enthusiasts.Key features of Photostockeditor include:Support for...

New Old Stock

New Old Stock is a popular Shopify theme designed for stores selling vintage, nostalgic and old-fashioned products. It has a clean and minimalist design that puts the focus on beautiful product photography and drives sales conversion.Some key features that make New Old Stock a great choice for antique stores...