--- title: Shutterstock Reviews meta_title: 'Shutterstock Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 656 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Shutterstock works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 656 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-13' parent_category: name: Stock Media url: https://www.g2.com/categories/stock-media --- # Shutterstock Reviews **Vendor:** Shutterstock **Category:** [Stock Photos Websites](https://www.g2.com/categories/stock-photos) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 656 ## About Shutterstock Shutterstock, Inc. is a leading global creative platform for transformative brands and media companies. Directly and through its group subsidiaries, Shutterstock's comprehensive collection includes high-quality licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations, 3D models, videos and music. Working with its growing community of more than 2 million contributors, Shutterstock adds hundreds of thousands of images each week, and currently has more than 600 million images and more than 45 million video clips available. Headquartered in New York City, Shutterstock has offices around the world and customers in more than 150 countries. The Company also owns Splash News, the world’s leading entertainment news agency for newsrooms and media companies worldwide; Pond5, the world’s largest video-first content marketplace; TurboSquid, the world's largest 3D content marketplace; PicMonkey, a leading online graphic design and image editing platform; Offset, a high-end image collection; Shutterstock Studios, an end-to-end custom creative shop; PremiumBeat, a curated royalty-free music library; Shutterstock Editorial, a premier source of editorial images and videos for the world's media; and Bigstock, a value-oriented stock media offering. For more information, please visit www.shutterstock.com. ## Shutterstock Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate Shutterstock's **massive and high-quality content library** , making it easy to find resources for diverse projects. (49 reviews) - Users admire the **high-quality images and videos** available on Shutterstock, enhancing their creative projects significantly. (36 reviews) - Users appreciate the **massive video availability** on Shutterstock, highlighting easy access to high-quality content for projects. (36 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Shutterstock, thanks to its user-friendly interface and efficient search filters. (34 reviews) - Users value the **vast and high-quality library** of Shutterstock, making it easy to find useful assets for any project. (29 reviews) - Users love the **easy search** functionality of Shutterstock, allowing for quick access to a vast library of visuals. (28 reviews) - Collection Quality (26 reviews) - Collection Size (22 reviews) - Ease of Finding (20 reviews) - Content Quality (18 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find Shutterstock to be **expensive for occasional users** , making high-quality content less accessible without a subscription. (31 reviews) - Users criticize the **high costs and stringent cancellation policies** of Shutterstock, feeling trapped and frustrated by the process. (18 reviews) - Users find the **repetitive images** in Shutterstock challenging, leading to a less satisfying search experience. (12 reviews) - Users find Shutterstock's **pricing issues** frustrating, particularly due to difficult cancellation policies and high costs for occasional use. (11 reviews) - Users express frustration with **repetitive content** in search results, making the browsing experience less efficient. (10 reviews) - Users find the **subscription issues** with Shutterstock frustrating due to rigidity, hidden charges, and unclear licensing terms. (9 reviews) - Users experience **poor customer support** , often failing to receive assistance for billing and subscription issues. (8 reviews) - Limited Options (7 reviews) - Limited Selection (6 reviews) - Subscription Cost (6 reviews) ## Shutterstock Reviews ### 1. Up-to-Date Asset Library for Many Topic Areas, But UX Could Be Improved **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alphonse T. | Senior Manager, Global Communications, Non-Profit Organization Management, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 28, 2026 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** Shutterstock provides the largest base of stock photos and videos that our organization could find for our specific topic and work areas, particularly up to date assets that we can re-use and re-share as an organization. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** The price has gone up for organizational accounts. The search and UX features could be improved to be clearer, especially for older image assets and for any AI generated images that are not within the search parameters. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** This organization requires a lot of photographic content and assets for design, web publishing, and printing materials, and much of it is also internationally focused. shutterstock's library and vendor reach is beyond many other platforms. ### 2. Rising Costs and Poor Practices Overshadow Shutterstock's Benefits **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brooke W. | Founder | Creative Consultant , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2026 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** I used to really appreciate the quality of the media on Shutterstock. It made it easy for me to sort and work with clients as we perfected their stock assets due to its really diverse portfolio of media. I utilize all of their features, and the initial setup was so easy. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** The immense expense stands out and their poor business practices are quite concerning. I've been asked to upgrade my account multiple times, with significant price hikes from $1,500 to $5,000, which I find absurdly ridiculous and insanely unprofessional. They don't seem to value long-term loyal customers, and it feels like the rate hikes are to account for customers they're losing to competition. The reputation and how they manage pricing is worrying. To be transparent, they were willing to reduce the price to $2,000 per year for 250 PER YEAR. So I am no longer a customer after 5 years. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** Shutterstock made it easy to sort and work with clients, offering a diverse portfolio of media to curate stock assets. ### 3. Difficult Cancellation Process Makes Subscription Frustrating **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Diego P. | CEO , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** The selection of stock images available here is impressive and distinct from what you typically see on other sites, which was the main reason I chose this service. With the membership, you can download 10 high-quality assets each month, which I find sufficient for the needs of a small company. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** I don't consider myself a difficult customer—quite the opposite, in fact. However, my experience with Shutterstock has been by far the worst I've had with any stock service or subscription. When I first started using Shutterstock, I noticed that it was overpriced, but that's their choice. To get a more reasonable rate, you have to commit to a yearly subscription paid monthly, which is their policy and I accepted it. The real issue arose when I tried to cancel my subscription. If you attempt to cancel before the end of the year-long commitment, you are required to pay all the remaining monthly payments upfront, and you lose access to the service for the rest of the period! There is no option to simply "Cancel Auto-renewal." If you want to continue using the credits you've paid for, you have to stay subscribed and remember to cancel exactly on the renewal date. If you miss that window, they will charge you for another full year, and if you then try to cancel, you'll have to pay for the entire next year without being able to use your credits. I contacted their support three times, and each time they apologized and told me those were the terms I had agreed to. But I never agreed to be locked into a service that's nearly impossible to cancel! Again, I don't have an issue with their pricing or subscription terms themselves, but making it so difficult to cancel auto-renewal feels abusive and unsettling. It leaves you feeling completely powerless. In the end, I managed to cancel my subscription, but only after paying the cancellation fee because I had no other choice. It's a disappointing experience. Please, don't make the same mistake I did. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** It can be difficult to find original images and illustrations, as most people tend to use the same generic images and icons. However, the selection from Shutterstock is less commonly used, which can help your work stand out if you're looking for something unique. ### 4. Extensive Stock Library with Top-Quality Visuals **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mukesh R. | Marketing Team, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** Shutterstock is a website that has range of stock photos, videos, GIFs graphics, vector designs etc available for free and paid downloading. This website has almost each and every kind of relatable picture that we look for our business and use for editing purposes to promote on our social media pages. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** One and only thing that I dislike about shutterstock is that most of the premium photographs and videos in available in this platform are paid when they are in high definition and the free photos are mostly in lower quality so if you want to get access of high end content then you will have to buy it's costly premium plan **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating different type of meta ads and info infographic designs for our i instagram stories is our day to day task and we generally need different type of car related posts and high definition images to create designs that can be relevant for our audiences as well as our social media pages in longrun. ### 5. Massive High-Quality Library with Fast Downloads and Precise Search **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ♠ Äñkµr G. | 3D modeling and texturing Artist , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2026 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** Shutterstock offers a massive, high-quality library of images, videos, and graphics that saves me a lot of time during projects. The search filters are very accurate, making it easy to find exactly what I need. The platform is user-friendly, downloads are fast, and licensing is clear and straightforward. It’s reliable for both creative and commercial work. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** Some premium assets can feel slightly expensive, especially for frequent downloads. Occasionally, similar-looking results appear in search, which makes browsing a bit time-consuming. A more flexible pricing structure or additional subscription options would make it even better. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** Shutterstock solves the problem of sourcing high-quality, copyright-safe visual content quickly. Instead of spending hours creating assets from scratch or worrying about licensing issues, I can instantly access professional visuals for client projects. This improves my workflow speed, enhances presentation quality, and helps me deliver projects on time with confidence. ### 6. All-in-One Media Platform for Effortless Promotions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Konjengbam M. | BDR, Financial Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 10, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** This platform provides all media needs that we can use for promotions and advertisement. It have tons of option from where we could select media that will fit our needs. I love this platform for its user friendly interface and ability to provide the best requirement with its powerful search engine. Its AI is of great assistance and the best part is its its capability to assist in the design. It AI is also available for a reasonable price which makes this platform more attractive. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** I wish if we could know where the pictures are used. That would allow us to differentiate from the competitors or we could avoid using the same media content being used by our immediate competitor. I also wish that the price of the media content was a little bit high sometimes. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** This platform assist a lot in advertisement and promotional campaign. Its large pool of media for content creation allows effective communication with masses with its high resolution media. The large pool of contents allows organization to connect with masses through visual communication in campaigns. Moreover once the media is purchased, it ensures that the organization will no be charged for any copyrights cases. ### 7. High-Quality Content, But Lacks Built-In Editing Tools **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohan T. | Marketing Team, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** I like accessing best quality of audio and video files through shutterstock and it also provides us high definition images of different varieties in the free version. But we are not able to download any video files that's why we have subscribed its premium plan for premium contents. So, we generally use shutter stock to get the best online digital contents mainly in the form of images and use them on different type of design work and Instagram posts. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** There is no proper editing tool in the shutter stock software as they have a large range of stock photos and video library on their website but whenever we want to edit some photos on shutterstock. We are not able to do it then for editing we download these photos and use a third party software to get the work done. This increases the total time consumption in creating best designs for our business. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** Accessing premium digital contents is always one of our basic requirement. As we do lot of social media marketing. So, posting multiple designs frequently and get access to High Definition photos and videos is very important for us and after subscribing shutterstock all of these day to day work is being done in a short duration of time. ### 8. Great Source of High Definition Photos And Videos **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neelesh M. | Technical Team Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** I like shutterstock because this platform help us in accessing lots of different varieties of photos and videos which are in high definition and 4K. Also this platform provides a rage of digital contents that too free of cost and their data is also copyright free that's why I use it everyday to download some of best images that could help our designers to create beautiful designs **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** The videos that this platform provides are totally paid you cannot download a single video in the free version of this tool and one feature that shutterstock lacks is AI image generation because nowadays only getting access to stock copy right free images is not enough for developing best designs you also need some AI generated images to get the work done. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need to design lot of brochures and leaflets for our business and most of them are edited through canva but the high quality images and posters that we need to edit are only accessed through shutterstock so we use this software to download some of the best images that can be used on our digital posters as well as physical brochures for our business ### 9. Shutterstock is great for variety of visuals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ashu L. | Senior Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** So ideally use Shutterstock and I like the high-quality images, illustrations and videos that I can get some shutter stock and the search filters and licensing options of Shutterstock are very easy and timesaving that helps me so usual dashboard and images easily. As part of my data work, I have to create more engaging, professional and easy to understand stories that require shutter stocks, images, so it’s very useful for me. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** Even when shutterstock offers high quality content but its licensing cost is very high for frequent and large scale use. Also one more thing i dislike about it is that few of the niches or if I being very specific for the visuals then it takes more time to refine the search. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** So shutterstock helps me to find high quality and royalty free visual content. As a data analyst, I often require impactful visuals to create more engaging reports and dashboards. Shutterstock is having a very large library of professional images icons that helps me communicate the data sites that I have brought from the data in a more effective and engaging way with the audience. It also help me save time that otherwise we spent in creating those visuals from multiple source. ### 10. Most convenient way to get the professional content and upload our own creative content. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aritro B. | Product Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 24, 2025 **What do you like best about Shutterstock?** Shutterstock has got a massive base of very high quality content. Millions of content makes it one of the best updated base out there. Additionally, the browsing and accessing these content is super easy. **What do you dislike about Shutterstock?** The subscription plan is little bit expensive and the originality actually suffers a little bit as so many persons ae accessing this content. **What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?** The best problem Shutterstock is solving is giving us the access to these huge millions of high quality content and that too without much hassle. Accessing and browsing these content is super easy as it also provides the option to save and bookmark the liked content. You can access the content irrespective of the platform - mobile or laptop as per our need. Also, if you are someone who is active in this domain, you can easily create your own content and upload as well. ## Shutterstock Discussions - [Can I download the videos from Shutterstock which are greater than 3minutes](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-i-download-the-videos-from-shutterstock-which-are-greater-than-3minutes) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Does anyone have an issue with this site? It's been super helpful to me.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/does-anyone-have-an-issue-with-this-site-it-s-been-super-helpful-to-me) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [are you wantl get earn from your photography hobbys ?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/are-you-wantl-get-earn-from-your-photography-hobbys) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Why is my photo so difficult for the shutterstock to accept?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/42554-why-is-my-photo-so-difficult-for-the-shutterstock-to-accept) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Can you please make an in between price range around $200](https://www.g2.com/discussions/26411-can-you-please-make-an-in-between-price-range-around-200) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Shutterstock pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/shutterstock-shutterstock/reviews/shutterstock-review-4298910?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-13+19%3A04%3A48+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=5dd93eed-f8fe-4413-9f51-299433f59d16&secure%5Btoken%5D=bdd4021601b73aa312e7f35fc0811eb1194bd18ce4a18721fb888c166aea10b3&format=llm_user) ## Shutterstock Integrations - [Adobe Illustrator](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-illustrator/reviews) - [Adobe Photoshop](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-photoshop/reviews) - [Adobe Premiere Pro](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-premiere-pro/reviews) - [Canva](https://www.g2.com/products/canva/reviews) - [Google Workspace](https://www.g2.com/products/google-workspace/reviews) - [Sprinto](https://www.g2.com/products/sprinto-inc/reviews) ## Shutterstock Features **Pricing** - Free Footage - Pay Per Image - Subscription **Media** - Sounds Effects - Genre Tagging **Media** - Animation - 4K High Definition **Pricing** - Royalty Free - Pay Per Track - Subscription **Agentic AI - Stock Footage** - Cross-system Integration **Agentic AI - Stock Music** - Cross-system Integration ## Top Shutterstock Alternatives - [Storyblocks](https://www.g2.com/products/storyblocks/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (419 reviews) - [iStock](https://www.g2.com/products/getty-images-istock/reviews) - 3.5/5.0 (115 reviews) - [123RF](https://www.g2.com/products/123rf/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (20 reviews)