Shutterstock pricing, price hikes and cheaper alternatives
Shutterstock (shutterstock.com) is a stock media library. Annual-billed subscriptions (download-based and unlimited plans from $25/mo) plus image packs, with Teams and Enterprise on contact-sales terms.. No free plan.
What Shutterstock costs
- Creator, 10/mo: $25/mo (Image downloads, the cheapest plan: $25/mo billed annually, which is the annual price divided by 12 (no monthly option shown). Its monthly download allowance and premium-catalogue access are not published in any source reached, so this assumes it covers 10 downloads a month; if it does not, the cheapest covering plan is Unlimited Images at $29/mo billed annually.)
- Business, 10/mo: $25/mo (Set equal to creator, assuming the standard licence covers company website, company social and paid online ad use, as for most image libraries. Licence terms could not be checked on the official page.)
Plan compared: Image downloads entry plan at $25/mo billed annually. Prices are the monthly cost, on month-to-month billing, of the cheapest plan that lets one person license at least 10 downloads a month of the product's main asset type from its full catalogue. 'Business' additionally requires a licence that covers a company's own website, social channels and paid online ads.
What Shutterstock does
Core: Stock photo library, Stock video footage, Unlimited downloads.
Important: Vectors & illustrations, Royalty-free music (partly), Sound effects library (partly), Indemnity & extended licences (partly), Editorial & news content (partly), AI generation tools, Team plans & licence management (partly).
Also has: Icon library (partly), Video & design templates (partly), 3D & animated assets (partly), Creative app plugins (partly), Developer API (partly).
Shutterstock price hikes
No price hikes on record for Shutterstock.
Cheaper alternatives to Shutterstock
At 1 creator, 10 downloads a month, Shutterstock costs $25/mo. 1 stock media library costs less:
- Freepik: $20/mo (Premium plan, 1 user, month-to-month price), covers 63% of Shutterstock; missing or partial: Stock video footage (partly), Unlimited downloads, Royalty-free music, Sound effects library, Editorial & news content
Shutterstock alternatives: 5 stock media librarys compared, at every size.
Sources
Pricing page: shutterstock.com/pricing. Prices last checked Oct 16, 2026. The official pricing page returned HTTP 403 and the web archive was blocked, so every price comes from PricingSaaS as of Sep 28, 2026; the $25 entry plan's allowance, premium-catalogue access and licence terms are unverified, and the price-increase web search could not run (search budget used up). PricingSaaS also logs a 2024 credits-to-downloads repackaging (25/150-download tiers and free trial removed) with no dated prices, and a Sep 28, 2026 removal of the billing switch with no new figures; neither is recorded as a change.