What is Vecteezy?
Vecteezy is an online platform where you can license royalty-free stock photos and stock videos. Unlike competitors that keep adding new AI tools monthly, Vecteezy prioritizes human-created content and leverages AI only to improve search relevance and build tools, such as their background remover, the founder told me in an interview.
Vecteezy’s plans: Free, Pro, On-demand credits
Unlimited image subscriptions are known for simple and affordable pricing, and Vecteezy is no different. Vecteezy offers three different plans or buying options to license their royalty-free media, each with different permissions and price points.
Free plan that lets you download 10 files per day from a collection of a few thousand. But you need to attribute the creator, and you don’t get legal protection, full commercial rights, or access to bundles and tools. You’ll also see lots of ads.
Pro plan is designed for professional and commercial use. It’s $9 per month if you pay for the full year, or $14 monthly, and comes with a 7-day free trial. The daily download limit is 200 files, much more than most competitors (Envato has more).
On-demand credits are best if you don’t want to subscribe and only need a few files. They cost $10 for 1 download, $15 for 5, or $20 for 10.
So, how do Vecteezy’s prices stack up against other options? For unlimited services, Envato is $16.50 per month and Freepik’s Premium plan is $20 per month. For video subscriptions, Motion Array is $24.99 per month, and Artlist is $31.99 per month.
What makes Vecteezy great?
Good royalty-free license
Any time you download a file from Vecteezy, you get one of three licenses. Which one you get depends on the plan you have and whether or not you paid extra for extended rights.
In short, here’s everything Vecteezy’s licenses permit you to do.
| License | Free | Pro | Pro Extended |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to get | Free account | Pro account | +$99 per file |
| Legal gurantee | $500 | $10,000 | $100,000 |
| 50 copies | 100,000 copies | Unlimited | |
| Digital use | Unlimited views | Unlimited views | Unlimited views |
| Production | Budgets up to $1,000 | Budgets up to $10,000 | Unlimited |
| Merhcnadise | No | Yes, but no resale | Yes |
The Free license is, as you can expect, quite limited. You can make just a few prints, and you can’t use files for merchandise. Despite being free, you still get a $500 legal guarantee, so even your commercial projects are covered.
The Pro license is also comparable to most competitors. I rarely need to create thousands of prints, but if you do, the relatively low print number could be an issue. While it’s good for such an affordable stock image site, most competitors allow 500K prints with their standard licenses.
Bundles
Vecteezy Bundles are packages of various creative resources grouped together and distributed as a single download. They typically include content like fonts, slide decks, Photoshop brushes, mock-ups, templates, and presets. Many of the included assets are exclusive and cannot be downloaded separately.
If you’re a Pro subscriber, Bundles are completely free during their limited-time availability windows. After the clock runs out and a new bundle becomes free, the old one costs $39.
Today, for example, I can download “1000 Wedding Lightroom Presets Collection.” But in just a few hours, this bundle will become unavailable, and the new bundle, “2000 Filmmaking LUTs and Presets Bundle”, will get unlocked for a few days.
Note: after a bundle expires, Vecteezy adds a note that says “THIS BUNDLE WILL UNLOCK AGAIN NEXT MONTH!”. This, however, is usually not true. Bundles rotate on a 2 to 5-month basis.
Free image editor and background remover
Vecteezy has two related tools: a background remover and a simple image editor. You can use both for free, and you don’t even need to create an account.
If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a link to Vecteezy’s free background remover. For some reason, you can’t use it directly on Vecteezy’s images. Instead, you have to download an image first, then upload it.
Background removers aren’t new, but they’re still a nice bonus. I tested Vecteezy’s remover a few times over the past year. For this review, I gave it the hardest test: removing a non-uniform background from a photo of a person with curly hair. (If you’ve never had to do this by hand, you’re lucky.)
It did a good, but not perfect, job (left: original; right: background removed). The main issue is that you have no control over the process. You can’t tell the remover which parts need fixing. If it gets something wrong, you can’t change it.
After removing the background, you can open the image in the editor. You can also open any image from the library in the editor (for this, you need to sign in).
The image editor is like a basic version of Canva. There are fewer images and vectors, and the templates aren’t as nice as Canva’s. Still, you can make simple social media graphics.
Search works as it should
You might think, “Of course it works—it’s their core feature.” You’d be surprised. Many stock media platforms I review have a poor search experience.
I like browsing on Vecteezy—the search is snappy and there are plenty of filters to narrow down results. For example, you can filter images by orientation, color, number and age of people, and image style.
With about half the images being AI-generated, Vecteezy also has a much-needed AI filter. It actually works, letting you easily include or exclude AI images. (I’m still waiting for Freepik to fix theirs, though.)
Where could Vecteezy do better?
Image (and video) selection. Vecteezy has over 50 million files, but about half of those are AI. If you don’t mind using AI images, it’s not an issue, but I prefer to avoid them, especially for commercial projects. Besides that, a good portion of the images are almost identical to one another. I even found many “collections” which are the same image but with different crops or slightly tilted to either direction.
No AI tools. AI image, video, and audio generators are not a must, but many creators like them. Freelancers and non-enterprise marketers use them for inspiration as well as to create highly specific imagery.
No integrations. Most stock media platforms offer plugins and extensions that integrate their libraries into popular creative software. Nowadays, almost every library supports Photoshop and other Adobe apps.
So: Is Vecteezy worth it?
If you need cheap photos, vectors, templates, and other creative resources, Vecteezy’s subscription is a good deal. But if you can afford it, I recommend choosing a larger stock photo site with a larger selection of content, a more comprehensive royalty-free license, higher legal indemnity, and extra tools, features, and integrations.
This article was originally published in February 2022. The most recent update was in June 2025.
