Storyblocks review

Storyblocks, formerly known as Videoblocks, has long been a mid‑tier option in the stock media space. It never had the largest library, the lowest prices, or the most advanced features. What it did offer was a great deal: unlimited downloads of stock footage, music, and templates, backed by an excellent royalty‑free license.

Storyblocks’ principle of quality over quantity hasn’t changed, but it’s finally caught up in one area where it used to fall behind: AI. The new AI Toolkit brings ElevenLabs‑powered voiceovers and Runway‑powered video editing directly into the platform. It’s not as fully-featured as what you’ll find at Envato or Artlist, but it’s a good addition that makes the $21 to $40 monthly price easier to justify.

If you want an all‑in‑one platform for stock footage, audio, and basic video editing, with a few AI-built tools, Storyblocks is a solid option. If you care most about rock‑bottom pricing or cutting‑edge AI generators, you’ll still find better fits elsewhere.

Table of contents:

• How much does Storyblocks cost?
• One of the best royalty-free licenses among competitors
• The search works, but lacks advanced features
• Maker (video editor) is good enough for basic edits
• AI Toolkit: Voiceovers and video editing, but no generators
• Is Storyblocks worth your money?

How much does Storyblocks cost?

Storyblocks has overhauled its pricing structure since my last review. The entry-level option is now the Essentials plan, which costs $21 per month with an annual commitment ($42 if you pay month to month). This plan includes unlimited downloads of everything in the core library, including 4K and HD footage, video templates, photos, vectors, and illustrations. You also get access to the AI Toolkit with 3,000 credits per month, though AI Voiceover is reserved for higher tiers, plus the Adobe Creative Cloud plugin.

Most users will gravitate toward the Unlimited All Access plan. It runs $30 per month with annual billing ($60 if you pay monthly) and adds several key features on top of Essentials. In addition to everything in the base plan, you get access to the full music and sound effects library, your AI Toolkit allotment increases to 4,500 credits, and you unlock AI voiceovers and Maker, Storyblocks’ browser-based video editor. For editors who need both footage and audio under one subscription, this is the plan that makes the most sense.

Storyblocks also targets teams with a Small Business tier. Priced at $40 per month, per user (billed annually), it’s available to companies with fewer than 50 employees, excluding agencies, production houses, and broadcasters. This plan is essentially the Unlimited All Access tier, but with an increased 6,000 AI Toolkit credits and higher legal protection.

Above that, Storyblocks sells an Enterprise tier with custom pricing for larger organizations and anyone who needs full broadcast rights. Enterprise adds multi-user access, raises indemnification to $1 million, and extends licensing to cover streaming and TV.

In testing, I compared Storyblocks with several direct competitors. Envato Elements remains the price leader at $16.50 per month and offers a larger library of roughly 22 million assets, along with its own AI tools. Motion Array charges $24.99 per month and includes 8K footage and more than 50 editing plugins. Artlist is the priciest of the group at $39.99 per month, but it has 8K footage, RAW/LOG options, the Clearlist service for copyright protection, and over 50 video-editing plugins.

With the recent plan changes and the addition of AI features, Storyblocks has narrowed the feature gap with rivals. Even so, it still doesn’t win on price: if your main priority is the lowest-cost unlimited downloads, then Storyblocks is a good choice, but not the best.

One of the best royalty-free licenses among competitors

Storyblocks offers three license tiers depending on your plan. The Essentials and Unlimited All Access plans come with the Individual License, Small Business gets its own license, and Enterprise subscribers get the Business License.

*Excludes agencies, production companies, and broadcasters.

The Individual License covers just you—the person whose name is on the account—not your company. You can use downloaded assets for print, multimedia, games, and internet projects, but not for broadcast or streaming. The license is royalty-free and perpetual for any project you complete while your subscription is active. If you cancel, you keep the rights to the assets within those specific projects, but you cannot use those same downloads for brand-new projects in the future.

One thing Storyblocks does better than most rivals is legal protection. Individual and Small Business subscribers are covered for up to $20,000 if there’s ever a claim over how you use an asset. By comparison, Envato only backs you up to the value of your last six subscription payments. It’s not going to save you from a worst‑case lawsuit, but if you do regular client work, having an extra layer of protection is reassuring.

The Small Business License works similarly but extends coverage to your organization, as long as it has fewer than 50 employees and isn’t an agency, production company, or broadcaster. You still get the $20,000 indemnification and the same usage rights.

For broadcast, TV, or streaming, you need the Business License. Unlike the lower tiers, this license covers future projects as well, meaning once you license an asset under an Enterprise account, you can use it in new productions even after the subscription has ended. This license covers the entire organization, indemnifies up to $1 million, and doesn’t include channel restrictions.

Storyblocks also offers submitting your YouTube channel IDs to avoid receiving copyright claims. By providing your YouTube channel ID, Storyblocks can automatically remove most claims in less than 30 minutes.

To add your YouTube channel ID, click the profile icon in the top right corner, select My Account, scroll all the way down, click the Edit YouTube Channels button, and enter the ID(s) of your YouTube channel(s). If you do get a copyright claim, just click YouTube Claims and fill out the form.

The search works, but lacks advanced features

How good the filters and search functionality are defines how easy it is to find content on stock media platforms like Storyblocks. In short, Storyblocks’ search checks out all the basic requirements but still lacks some advanced or quality-of-life features I’ve been hoping to see them improve since my last review.

For video search, you can filter by resolution, frame rate, and duration. That covers the basics. But you can’t filter by codec or alpha channel, which matters if you’re working with motion graphics or need transparent backgrounds. You can find this information by clicking into the video details page, but having to open each clip individually to check slows things down.

Audio search is more feature-rich. You can filter by moods, genres, instruments, vocals, and tempo, similar to what I’ve seen at Epidemic Sound. If you’re looking for upbeat electronic music without vocals at 120 BPM, you can get there pretty quickly.

Image search falls somewhere in between. It offers reasonable filters for orientation, color, usage rights, and even alpha-channel support. Not as bare-bones as video, not as detailed as audio.

A neat feature unique to Storyblocks is its recommendation of music that would best fit a video. For instance, I opened a sunset clip, and Storyblocks suggested soft, acoustic, relaxation audio clips. It’s a small touch, but it helped find me the right music clip much faster (Hint: you can click “Search Similar” to get even more related music). They could take this further by recommending audio based on your current project or download history.

Results are generally accurate for the first few pages. Search for “office meeting,” and you’ll get office meetings. But as you scroll past page 5, results start to worsen. You’ll see increasingly irrelevant results mixed in, which is frustrating when you’re trying to find something specific and the obvious options on page 1 didn’t work. That’s pretty standard among footage subscriptions with small-to-mid-sized libraries.

However, Storyblocks keeps the collection small intentionally by regularly removing underperforming content. The idea is that a tighter library saves you time because you don’t have to search through mediocre clips to find a good clip. Their music library is also 100% exclusive, meaning you won’t find the same tracks on other platforms.

What I still miss from Storyblocks is reverse search, which has been a standard for a couple of years in this space. It would make finding the right asset much easier when you have a sample but don’t know how to describe it in words.

Maker (video editor) is good enough for basic edits

Storyblocks’ proprietary video editor is called Maker. Its simplicity is a double-edged sword. Beginners and marketers will pick it up in a minute, but if you’re used to Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, it’s not going to be enough (it’s like 3-years-ago-Canva vs. Photoshop).

The main advantage of Maker is integration with the Storyblocks library. You don’t have to download clips first, import them into separate software, and manage files on your hard drive. Everything happens inside the browser. You search for footage, drag it onto the timeline, trim it, add music from the audio library, and export. For creators who just need to assemble simple videos from stock assets, this workflow saves real time (it’s like Premiere Pro + Adobe Stock).

You can actually edit a video with a free account, including adding Storyblocks’ stock footage. But to download the final video, you need an active subscription to license the content.

In terms of features, Maker covers the basics: add videos, audio, and images from the Storyblocks library or your own uploads, define your brand styles (colors and fonts), add and animate text, use overlay animations, cut, trim, adjust opacity, and add fade-ins and fade-outs. You can switch aspect ratios with one click, which is useful when repurposing content for different platforms (e.g., 16:9 for a YouTube video and a 9:16 version for Reels or TikTok). You can do both without starting over.

And that’s about it. There’s no keyframe animation, no color grading, no motion tracking, no advanced audio mixing. If your projects require any of that, Maker won’t cut it (pun intended).

Maker includes predesigned layouts so you don’t have to start from scratch, but the selection is surprisingly limited; I counted only 120 ‘Maker Templates.’ However, this is separate from the thousands of After Effects and Premiere Pro templates available in the main Storyblocks library, which must be edited in their respective professional software.

Enterprise subscribers get access to Maker for Teams, which adds collaboration features, one-click branding, and custom templates that can be shared across an organization. For marketing teams that need to produce consistent branded content at scale without training everyone on professional editing software, it could be useful. But for individual subscribers, the standard Maker is what you get.

AI Toolkit: Voiceovers and video editing, but no generators

Until recently, Storyblocks had no AI tools while competitors like Envato and Artlist rolled out their own suites earlier this year. That’s changed with the AI Toolkit, which includes two tools: AI Voiceover and AI Video Editing. Both run on credits that refresh monthly, with Essentials getting 3,000 credits, Unlimited All Access getting 4,500, and Small Business getting 6,000.

Unlike Envato and Artlist, Storyblocks has no AI image generator, no text-to-video tool, and no AI music generator. Instead, the AI Toolkit is focused on modifying existing content and adding speech, not generating new content.

AI Voiceover

AI-powered voiceovers have become essential for video creators who can’t afford professional voice talent or need to iterate quickly. A few years ago, synthetic voices sounded robotic and unusable for anything beyond internal drafts, but that’s no longer the case.

Modern text-to-speech engines from companies like ElevenLabs, which also powers Storyblocks’ AI Voiceover, produce voices that are difficult to distinguish from real recordings. For explainer videos, social media content, e-learning modules, and even some commercial work, AI voiceovers have become a legitimate production tool.

Storyblocks’ AI Voiceover has three modes: Text to Speech, Clone My Voice, and Voice Changer.

Text to Speech is the core feature of the AI Toolkit. Here, you paste your script into the text box (up to 4,500 characters at a time), browse the voice library, and click generate. The voice selection offers close to 100 options that you can filter by accent (American, British, Irish, Canadian, Australian), gender, use case (social media, educational, advertisement, narrative), and tone (professional, upbeat, calm, confident, among others). You can also adjust the speech speed between 0.7x and 1.2x.

Here’s the paragraph you’ve just read by Shelley at 1.0x speed that cost me 87 credits and took 2 seconds to generate:

And here’s Quentin at 0.7x speed:

I tested several voices, and most sounded natural, with realistic pacing and inflection. Sometimes, the pauses are too long or too short. One thing you can do if the delivery feels off is experiment with punctuation. Commas, semicolons, and em dashes (this thing: “—”) can help add pauses and refine the pacing.

One thing that drove me up the wall is the total lack of a history or library for your generated speeches. As soon as you generate a new clip or refresh the page, whatever you just made disappears. As a web developer, I find it hard to understand how this didn’t make the cut.

Clone My Voice is a feature that’s become more popular in the last year as the technology enabled more realistic cloning. To use it, you upload a recording of your voice (30 seconds to 3 minutes long, up to 10MB), and the tool learns to replicate it. Then you can generate new speech in that voice by typing text. The clone matches the tone and sound profile from your recording, so for the most natural result, you should upload a sample recorded in the same space with the same mic setup as the audio you’re trying to match.

The use case of this tool is fixing lines in post-production. Say you recorded a voiceover and later realized you need to change a word or add a sentence. Instead of setting up your mic again and trying to match the original tone and room sound, you can generate just that portion.

You should always upload recordings of your own voice or voices you have explicit permission to use, both for responsible AI use and to ensure everything remains covered under Storyblocks’ license.

Voice Changer takes an existing audio file and transforms it into a different voice style. You upload your recording (under 10MB), select a voice from the library, and click generate. The quality of your source audio matters here. While Storyblocks claims the tool can polish rough audio, garbage in usually means garbage out. You’ll get the best results if you provide a clean read with no background noise, as the AI mimics the pacing and cadence of your original file.

A short clip costs me just 9 credits (starts at two credits for smaller files). It’s a cheap way to hear how a script sounds in different tones before hiring a voice actor, or to swap out a voice in existing footage without dragging everyone back into the studio.

For the following example, I uploaded Quentin’s previous audio clip and chose Bea for voice change. While it did work as expected, I didn’t like that I couldn’t change the speech speed.

Storyblocks is just good compared to similar voiceover tools at Envato, Artlist, and Epidemic Sound. The ElevenLabs integration means the voice quality matches or exceeds what you’ll find elsewhere, and voice cloning is genuinely useful for anyone who records their own narration.

The interface is functional, though it feels slightly unpolished. The tabs for switching between Text to Speech, Clone My Voice, and Voice Changer look like static text labels rather than clickable buttons. However, my biggest gripe remains the lack of a generation history; if you refresh the page, your generated audio is gone for good.

AI Video Editing

AI video editing tools have come a long way in the past year. What started as experimental tech that produced unusable, artifact-ridden clips has evolved into a genuinely useful tool for quick modifications.

Storyblocks partnered with Runway, one of the leading companies in AI video, to power their editing tool using Runway’s Aleph model. The idea is simple: instead of spending hours in Premiere Pro or After Effects manually adjusting footage, you describe what you want to change and let the AI handle it.

To use the tool, find a clip in the Storyblocks library and click “Edit with AI” (it doesn’t have its own editor). About 95% of clips in the library support this feature. The remaining 5% are from artists who haven’t opted in. Storyblocks decided to get explicit permission before allowing AI modifications to existing work, which is a more ethical approach than some competitors take. Artists are also compensated each time their content is used as the basis for an AI generation, the same as if it were downloaded normally.

If a clip supports AI editing, you’ll see a small colored magic brush icon when you hover over the thumbnail.

Once you’re in the editor, a preview of your clip appears along with a timeline selection tool for choosing which portion to modify (you can only modify 5 seconds of a video).

Below that, you’ll see suggestion cards with possible edits like “change object,” “change video style,” or “change background.” These are just thought starters. Your actual result depends entirely on what you type in the prompt box and any reference image you include.

When writing prompts, Storyblocks recommends starting with a clear action verb like “change,” “remove,” or “add,” then describing the transformation you want. Include details about lighting, atmosphere, or mood. If there’s something you want to keep the same, mention it explicitly. So a prompt might look like: “Change the time of day to sunrise with soft golden light and add a layer of morning fog. Keep everything else exactly the same.”

You can also upload a reference image to guide the AI. This is useful for matching lighting or color grading between clips. If you shot footage on location and need a stock clip to match your look, uploading a frame from your footage as a reference can help the AI get closer to what you need.

Once you click generate, processing runs in the background and takes a few minutes. You can close the preview and keep browsing while it works. A notification appears when it’s done, and you can download the result directly to your files.

The main limitations are clip length (5 seconds max) and export resolution (720p). For AI video editing specifically, meaning modifying existing footage rather than generating from scratch, 720p is actually standard across the industry right now. As the underlying Runway models improve, Storyblocks says their integration will support higher resolutions. Still, if your project requires 1080p or higher, you’ll need to choose a competitor that supports it or upscale the output yourself.

Here’s a sample of an AI-edited video I created from an original (I wish I could do more than 5 seconds at a time).

There’s also the issue of visual fidelity. To no fault of Storyblocks, the resulting videos often look AI-generated to a trained eye. Even when you add “keep everything exactly the same” to your prompt, colors drift slightly, textures change, and motion gets a bit floaty. That’s just where AI video technology is right now. The promotional examples you’ll see on the Storyblocks website are cherry-picked best cases. Your results will vary, and you should expect to regenerate a few times before getting the result you like.

That said, for quick fixes and creative experiments, the tool does what it promises. Changing the time of day, adding weather effects, recoloring a piece of clothing to match a specific hex code, and adjusting lighting to match another clip. These are all tasks that would take lots of time in a traditional editor. Being able to do them in a few minutes, even at 720p, is still really useful.

Is Storyblocks worth your money?

Storyblocks sits in a weird middle ground. It’s not the cheapest (Envato Elements wins there at $16.50/month). It doesn’t have the highest quality library (Artlist and Motion Array own the 8K/LOG space). And while the AI Toolkit is a nice bonus, it lacks the generative image and video creation tools that competitors are rolling out.

To put it bluntly: It’s a jack of all trades, but master of none.

What Storyblocks does offer is a balanced package. The Essentials plan at $21 per month gives you unlimited downloads of footage, images, and templates, plus 3,000 AI credits for voiceovers and video editing. That’s pretty good if you’re on a budget. The Unlimited All Access plan at $30 adds music, sound effects, and the Maker video editor. The $20,000 indemnification is the most important advantage Storyblocks has over everyone else.

If you are a marketer, social media manager, or a multi-hyphenate creator (the ‘producer/editor’ type) who needs a massive bucket of assets without worrying about download limits, Storyblocks is a solid choice.

But if you are a professional colorist, a high-end editor needing RAW footage, or someone looking for cutting-edge generative AI, you will likely outgrow Storyblocks quickly. It’s not the best at any one thing, but for generalists, it’s often exactly what you need.

Related reading:

• Envato Elements vs. Storyblocks: Which is best?
• The best Storyblocks alternatives
• The best stock video subscriptions
• The best stock footage sites

This article was originally published in June 2021. The most recent update was in December 2025.

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Matic Broz

Matic Broz is a stock media licensing expert with over 10 years of experience using and testing creative platforms for his own creative work. He has personally licensed over 5,000 stock assets and helped 20,000+ creators choose the right subscription services through his work at Photutorial.

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• Video & audio