The Ultimate List of Best Stock Photo Websites

Compelling visuals are critical for successful marketing and engaging an audience in the digital age. Stock photos provide an affordable way to get eye-catching, relevant images to elevate your website, ads, social media, presentations and more. This comprehensive article reviews the 10 best stock photo sites to find the perfect visuals for your business or creative projects.

The 10 Best Stock Photo Sites for High-Quality Visual Content

Getty Images

With over 420 million images, illustrations, vectors, videos, and music tracks, Getty Images is the world’s leading creative stock agency. It offers contemporary, archival and news images at all price points. Advanced search tools, expert curation, and a variety of licensing models suit all budgets.

Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock provides over 200 million high-quality photos, graphics, videos, templates, 3D assets and more created by talented designers. Smart search functionality powered by Adobe Sensei AI helps find the most relevant assets quickly. Tight integration with Adobe CC apps allows seamless access and use.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock houses an ample collection of 380 million stock photos, vectors, patterns and videos starting under $10. There are specialty collections like editorial images and a diverse model library. Contributors are reviewed to ensure professional quality contributions.

iStock

Owned by Getty Images, iStock provides access to a library of over 37+ million affordable royalty-free stock files. Collections include photos, illustrations, video clips, After Effects templates and more for all your creative needs. Downloads start under $1 with subscription options too.

123rf

123rf has over 100 million stock photos, audio files and videos at reasonable prices. They require all content contributors to pass review before acceptance. Useful features include zip downloads, layered vectors, lightboxes and integrated image editor.

Depositphotos

Boasting a collection of over 200 million stock photos, vectors, videos and music files, Depositphotos focuses on quality yet affordable content. Extended licenses, free trials and custom content development is also available.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime houses 217+ million stock images and grows daily through contributions from over 1.35 million users. Flexible subscription plans provide great value. Pay-as-you-go pricing starts at just $0.74 per image making it very budget-friendly.

Canva

Canva is best known for its graphic design platform, but also hosts an impressive library of over 2 million stock photos, graphics and videos. Curated free and paid fonts, templates, and illustrated elements are also available. Great for social media image creation.

Pexels

Pexels provides over 2 million high-quality, completely free stock photos and videos. Their curated collection is growing constantly with additions from their talented creative community. No attribution is required for any use.

Unsplash

Unsplash offers a wide range of beautiful, free stock images shot by their global community of professional and hobbyist photographers. All photos are licensed under Creative Commons Zero for use in any project without attribution.

With this curated list of the top stock media websites, you can source stunning professional visuals for your business, creative or personal needs on any budget.