Stocksy review (2024): Pricing, pros, & cons - Photutorial (2024)

Stocksy refers to its collection as “authentic”. And while yes, their photo and video libraries are heavily curated, there are still many heavily posed stock photos that don’t look any better than what you can get from Unsplash for free.

Stocksy pricing & licensing

Key takeaway: from $15 to $125 per image and from $75 to $400 per video depending on resolution. There are no subscriptions and no refunds. Stocksy’s prices are much higher than the average.

Stocksy sells (licenses) images and videos on-demand only, which means you buy each file individually—there are no subscriptions. Considering Stocksy’s small collection, a subscription wouldn’t be a wise investment anyway because you would quickly run out of fresh files to download.

Images come in four different resolutions that dictate the pricing: Small ($15), Medium ($30), Large ($75), and X-Large ($125). The Small and Medium sizes work well for use on the web, while Large and X-Large are better for large prints and billboards. Even though there are no image packs, which typically ensure lower prices, Stocksy is still cheaper than Getty Images ($140–$500) and about the same as Alamy ($9.40–$60). But Stocksy is much more expensive than Shutterstock ($0.22–$11) or Adobe Stock ($0.27–$10).

Videos are even more costly than photos and cost $75, $175, or $300 for 720p, FHD, and 4K resolutions. All videos are available in H.264 codec, and some in ProRes, but if you want to encode them in H.265, you need to get ungraded LOG footage, which costs $100 more per clip.

This is prohibitively expensive compared to unlimited video subscriptions, which have been gaining lots of traction in recent years. The cheapest option I know of to get ungraded footage is Artlist—you need to get their Video & Templates plan for $29.99 per month (or Max – Everything for $39.99) and pay $18/month for an add-on that enables you to download LOG footage. The bottom line is that for just $48 per month you get unlimited downloads of up to 8K ungraded footage, while a single 4K video will cost you $400 at Stocksy.

All prices I’ve discussed up until now are for Stocksy’s Standard royalty-free license. In brief, it allows commercial use, 500K copies and prints, and unlimited web use and impressions. If you want to use any of these files within your team (multiple users), get unlimited print rights, or use it for merchandise, you need to get the Extended license.

You buy the Extended license on top of the Standard license. For example, the Team License costs +$100 for images and +$200 for videos. So if you wanted 4K ungraded video with Team License you would pay $700 ($400 + $100 + $200).

The Product for Resale Extended license costs +$500 for photos and +$750 for videos, while the Unlimited Print license is available only for images (duh) and costs +$300.

These are very expensive, considering that you can get unlimited prints plus merchandise rights extended license at Shutterstock for as low as $17 (it’s a bit more for teams).

You can also get exclusive rights (Market Freeze)

Market Freeze gives you exclusive use of an image or video for a certain time period. During this time, no one else can use it. This license is useful for large commercial campaigns when you plan to run an ad in front of an international audience. We call this type of license a “rights-managed” license.

With this license, you also get all Extended Licenses and the original file size of images and videos. Here’s how much they cost:

• 6 months: $1,250/image; $1,500/video
• 1 year: $2,500/image; $3,000/video
• 2 years: $4,500/image; $5,400/video
• 3 years: $6,000/image; $7,200/video
• 4 years: $7,500/image; $9,000/video
• 5 years: $9,000/image; $10,800/video

Is Stocksy worth it?

I see no glaring issues with Stocksy, it’s just that it’s not the best value for its money.

If you have a high enough budget to afford their prices and you find a photo or a video you like, you should probably go for it. But that’s not to say you can’t find a similar photo for a much lower cost at a different provider. Especially if you need multiple downloads each month (say, 10+), a stock photo site that provides subscriptions would be a better investment.

One issue that does bother me about Stocksy is the lack of indemnification. For such high prices, I would expect at least $10,000 for the Standard license and $250,000 for the Extended license. Because there’s none, Stocksy is not a great option for enterprise client projects, which usually require some insurance.