DepositPhotos sells subscription and pack-based access to a library of photos, vectors, video and music, with the Standard licence capped at 500,000 copies and an Extended licence for resale merchandise. Its AI generator issues images under the same Standard licence and keeps your prompted results out of the public library.
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DepositPhotos is a royalty-free media library that sells licences, not files — and the difference between its two licence tiers determines whether half of what you plan to do is legal.
The homepage frames it plainly: Royalty-free Stock Photos, Vector Images, Videos and Music. The company reports a library of 332 million files, a vendor-stated figure. Four content types sit side by side — photography, vector illustration, video footage and music with sound effects — and each carries meaningfully different terms, particularly music.
Most buyers arrive looking for a picture and leave having bought a permission slip. The Standard licence is described in the agreement as a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable and non-sublicensable license. That is generous in duration and geography but bounded in volume: unlimited website visitors, yet up to 500,000 copies or impressions for reproduction.
Cross that ceiling, or build a product whose value is the image, and you need the Extended licence. This is the single most consequential thing to understand before subscribing, because subscriptions and standard packs deliver Standard licences only — the Extended licence requires buying an extended pack separately.
The site is unusual in occupying three positions in the AI supply chain at once. It sells generated images, it sells the underlying data, and it sells conventional stock. The navigation lists an AI Assistant, an AI Generator and AI Training Data as distinct entries.
That third item matters more than it first appears: the company licenses its rights-cleared library as training datasets, meaning it supplies the raw material to AI builders while simultaneously selling AI output to creatives. Few competitors sit on both sides of that transaction.
Founded in Kyiv in November 2009 by Dmitry Sergeev, the company was acquired by Vistaprint for a total price of $85 million in October 2021, with its sibling design tool Crello rebranded as VistaCreate. Buyers evaluating long-term vendor stability should know they are contracting with a Vista-owned entity, not an independent startup.
Photos, vectors, video and music are sold together but governed apart. The instinct to treat a subscription as one undifferentiated pool of downloads is exactly what produces licence problems later, because rollover behaviour and licence duration both vary by category.
The Standard licence covers the majority of ordinary commercial work: advertising, packaging, editorial layouts, websites. Its constraint is quantitative rather than qualitative — the 500,000 figure applies to copies and impressions across print applications, and it is the number to check before any large print run.
The comparison table draws the line explicitly. Gift wrapping, posters, postcards, calendars, interior design, t-shirts, mouse pads, playing cards and keychains for resale are all Prohibited under Standard and Allowed under Extended. A second tier — folders, notebooks, stationery, board games, cups and software — is permitted under Standard only if the file plays a minor role.
Generated images arrive under the same Standard licence as stock downloads. The official FAQ states that images created with the AI Generator are provided under the Standard license, which means that you get lifelong rights to use them for personal or commercial purposes.
Two further provisions matter. Exclusivity: the company says the images created with your unique prompt will not be added to our stock library or used by others. And content safety: it states that the generated images will never include brand logos, copyrighted objects, or other characters that are not secure for promotional campaigns. The model was built in partnership with Bria.ai.
The platform licenses its rights-cleared catalogue as datasets for model training, offering both ready-made collections and custom-built sets. For a buyer, the relevance is indirect but real — it signals that the company's provenance controls are being sold as a product in their own right.
The main case. Standard licensing covers outdoor and indoor advertising, newspapers and magazines, product packaging, labels, wrapping, book and magazine covers, CD/DVD covers and business cards — all inside the 500,000 ceiling. For most campaigns that ceiling is never approached.
Viable, but only through the Extended licence. If you are printing a design onto a t-shirt or poster to sell, the image is the value, and Standard does not permit it. Budget for extended packs from the outset rather than discovering the gap after listing products.
Website design and television use are permitted under Standard. Templates are permitted too, with an important carve-out — except for resale. Anyone building themes or templates to sell should read that exception closely, since it removes the obvious commercial model.
Video sits under the same Standard/Extended structure but with different subscription economics: unused monthly video downloads do not carry over. Video buyers should size their plan to actual monthly usage rather than assuming they can bank allowance.
Usable for social media, online advertising and one-time performances under the Standard terms. The critical caveat is duration rather than scope, and it is covered under Limitations — music subscription rights are not permanent.
Where stock fails — an oddly specific scene, a composition no photographer shot — the generator fills the gap while keeping the output under a commercial licence and out of the shared library. For agencies producing client concepts, prompt-level exclusivity is the meaningful feature.
Work out whether anything you are making will be resold with the image as its main value. If yes, you need Extended, and no subscription tier substitutes for it. Getting this backwards is the most expensive ordering mistake available here.
Subscriptions grant a set number of downloads each month. Packs are a fixed number of downloads bought once. The structural difference is commitment versus flexibility, and it should follow your actual demand pattern rather than the headline rate.
Pack downloads remain valid for one year from the purchase date. Music packs are the exception with a lifelong perpetual licence. Diarise pack expiry; unused pack downloads are a real and common form of waste.
Image subscriptions roll over unused downloads to the following month for as long as your subscription auto-renews, except the 750 image/mo subscription. Video subscriptions do not roll over at all. Rollover is conditional on continuous renewal, not a banked asset.
Files marked Editorial Use Only cannot be used commercially. They contain images of people without model releases, private property, famous trademarks and other protected elements. Check this label before placing anything in a paid campaign.
Editorial usage requires crediting in the form [Contributor Name]/depositphotos.com. Build the credit into layout templates so it does not get dropped during production.
Because Standard and Extended coexist and packs expire, maintain your own register of which asset carries which licence. If a client or platform questions your rights later, reconstructing this from memory is unpleasant.
For digital campaigns the ceiling is academic. For print it is not: national newspaper inserts, large packaging runs and mass mailers reach six figures quickly. Calculate the run before choosing the licence, not after the plates are made.
This is prohibited under both licences without exception. The comparison table lists logo or emblem that will be officially registered as a trademark or service mark as Prohibited on both tiers. Commissioning original work is the only correct route for brand marks.
Music is where the mental model most often breaks. Image rights obtained under a subscription survive; music subscription rights do not. If a brand video needs to stay online indefinitely, either buy the music as a pack or accept that the licence lapses with the subscription.
Rollover accumulates only while auto-renewal continues. If you do not renew, you lose your unused downloads when your subscription ends. Spend the balance before cancelling.
Tobacco, alcohol, medical and pharmaceutical advertising are excluded. Agencies in regulated categories should check this against the client roster before standardising on the platform, because the restriction is categorical rather than negotiable at checkout.
Depicting identifiable people in scenarios involving sexual or implied sexual activity, crime, or physical or mental abuse is prohibited, as is implying that a model endorses a political party, candidate or official. Editorial and campaign work near these themes needs legal review regardless of licence tier.
Placing files on a shared drive for free download, or transferring and sublicensing them to third parties, is prohibited. Agencies handing off working files to clients should transfer flattened deliverables, not the licensed originals.
The commercial-safety assurance is a vendor statement supported by a partnership, not a court ruling. Press coverage noted that training-data specifics were not disclosed and that the durability of such protections remains untested against the litigation aimed at other generators. Treat it as meaningful risk reduction, not immunity.
The clearest fit. Predictable monthly download needs, mostly digital or moderate-print output, and a preference for one vendor across photo, vector, video and music. Rollover smooths uneven months for image-led teams.
Well served, but only with Extended licensing budgeted. The licence explicitly contemplates resale merchandise as a category and prices it separately. Sellers who plan for this get a clean rights position; those who do not are exposed.
Business and Enterprise plans exist precisely here, providing business licences on downloaded files plus team collaboration, with Enterprise offering tailored licensing and dedicated account management. Agencies should also note the indemnity obligation runs toward the platform, which affects how client contracts should allocate risk.
Workable with a caveat: size the video plan accurately, because unused video downloads expire monthly rather than rolling forward.
A genuine niche fit. Where a compliance function requires a documented commercial licence on generated assets, an image issued under a named licence with stated exclusivity is easier to defend internally than output from a general-purpose generator.
Anyone building a trademark or brand mark should look elsewhere entirely. Template and theme sellers hit the resale carve-out. Advertisers in tobacco, alcohol, medical and pharmaceutical categories are excluded by the prohibited-use list. Buyers wanting large indemnity backing should note the liability ceiling discussed below. And anyone needing permanent music rights must buy packs rather than subscribe.
The service runs as a web platform with account-based download management. Plan and pricing pages sit behind a login, so the current commercial terms are only fully visible once signed in.
Standard and Extended run in parallel across images and vectors, with music and video carrying their own duration and rollover rules. In practice the licence tier, not the file format, is the axis that matters most when planning.
Business subscriptions grant business licences on downloaded files and add team collaboration features. Enterprise arrangements offer tailored licensing options, dedicated account management and scalable volumes for larger deployments.
Licensed assets are cleared for television, website design and templates, alongside the full range of print applications. The permitted surface area is broad; the constraints are volume and resale, not medium.
Subscriptions provide a set number of downloads each month. Packs provide a fixed number of downloads purchased once. Both deliver Standard licences by default; Extended requires a separate extended pack regardless of which line you are on.
Month-to-month plans carry no annual commitment and can be cancelled at any time, while annual subscriptions with monthly billing offer a discounted rate against a one-year commitment. Image subscriptions roll over unused downloads while auto-renewal continues, with the 750 image/mo tier excluded; video subscriptions do not roll over.
Pack downloads are valid for one year from the purchase date. Music packs differ by carrying a lifelong perpetual licence, making packs the structurally correct purchase for any audio you intend to use indefinitely.
Business plans add company-level licensing and collaboration tooling; Enterprise adds tailored licensing, dedicated account management and volume scaling. Organisations with multiple contributors should evaluate these rather than pooling access to an individual plan, which the licence terms do not contemplate.
No prices are quoted on this page. The plan and pricing pages require a login before displaying terms, and third-party sources reporting figures carry affiliate relationships and go stale as promotions change. Check the checkout page for current amounts.
The established comparison. Both carry larger editorial and news archives and market their indemnification provisions prominently, which matters for high-exposure commercial work. DepositPhotos generally competes on price and breadth rather than on legal backing.
The natural choice for teams already inside Creative Cloud, where licensing flows into the applications directly. If your production pipeline is Adobe end to end, that integration usually outweighs a per-file price difference.
Midjourney and comparable tools will typically produce more striking imagery. What they generally do not provide is a named commercial licence with stated exclusivity and a vendor assertion that outputs exclude copyrighted objects and brand logos. The trade is aesthetic ceiling against documented rights.
Unsplash, Pexels and similar cost nothing and impose few restrictions. The trade-offs are ubiquity, inconsistent model and property releases, and no contractual recourse — acceptable for many uses, risky for large paid campaigns.
Choose DepositPhotos for broad multi-format coverage at subscription economics, particularly if you also want commercially licensed AI output. Choose Getty or Shutterstock when indemnification is the deciding factor. Choose Adobe Stock when pipeline integration dominates. Buy music as packs here regardless of what else you decide.
The most under-appreciated term on the platform. Music and SFX standard licences are valid only during the effective term of subscription, and the FAQ states plainly that music subscriptions do not grant a lifelong license. Stop paying and the licence lapses — while any video you published using that track remains online. Packs, which are perpetual, are the fix.
Nothing in the download flow warns you about print volume. The limit lives in the licence text and comparison table, and compliance is your responsibility to track across campaigns.
Accumulated downloads are contingent on continuous auto-renewal and are forfeited when the subscription ends. Treating rollover as a stored asset leads to writing off a balance at cancellation.
The agreement limits total maximum aggregate obligation and liability for all claims to Five Thousand United States Dollars (USD $5,000). For a national campaign facing a rights dispute, that ceiling is small relative to exposure — a substantive difference from competitors marketing larger indemnity, and worth weighing for high-value work.
Licensees agree to indemnify and hold DepositPhotos harmless against damages or liability arising from their use of the file. Combined with the liability cap, the risk allocation favours the vendor. Agencies should reflect this when drafting client-facing warranties.
Editorial Use Only files may contain unreleased people, private property and famous trademarks. They are searchable alongside commercial content, so the burden of checking the label sits with the buyer.
Tobacco, alcohol, medical and pharmaceutical promotion are excluded, as are political endorsement implications and sensitive depictions involving sexual content, crime or abuse. These are not tier-dependent — no licence upgrade unlocks them.
Neither Standard nor Extended permits registering the imagery as a trademark or service mark. Brand identity work needs commissioned original assets.
The company states generated images exclude brand logos and copyrighted objects, and the model was built with Bria.ai. But training-data specifics were not disclosed publicly, and media coverage noted that whether such protections withstand the legal challenges directed at other generators remains unresolved. It is a reasonable risk posture, not a guarantee.
The agreement is governed by New York law with disputes resolved in New York courts. Non-US buyers should factor the practical cost of enforcing or defending a claim in that forum.
Standard covers most commercial use but caps reproduction at 500,000 copies and prohibits items for resale where the image is the main value — t-shirts, posters, calendars, keychains and similar. Extended removes the volume ceiling and permits those resale items. Subscriptions and standard packs deliver Standard; Extended requires buying an extended pack.
Yes. The official FAQ states that images created with the AI Generator are provided under the Standard license, which means that you get lifelong rights to use them for personal or commercial purposes. The company also states that images created with your unique prompt will not be added to our stock library or used by others.
The company states that generated images will never include brand logos, copyrighted objects, or other characters that are not secure for promotional campaigns, and the model was built in partnership with Bria.ai. That is a meaningful assurance, but training-data details were not publicly disclosed and the durability of such protections has not been tested against the litigation aimed at other generators. Treat it as reduced risk, not zero risk.
For image subscriptions, yes — unused downloads roll over to the following month for as long as the subscription auto-renews, except on the 750 image/mo plan. Video subscriptions do not roll over. In all cases, if you do not renew, you lose unused downloads when the subscription ends.
It expires. Music and SFX standard licences are valid only during the effective term of the subscription, and music subscriptions do not grant a lifelong licence. If you need permanent music rights, buy a music pack instead — those carry a lifelong perpetual licence.
Pack downloads are valid for one year from the purchase date. Music packs are the exception, carrying a perpetual licence rather than expiring.
No. Registering the imagery as an official trademark or service mark is prohibited under both the Standard and Extended licences. Brand marks require commissioned original work.
They are files containing images of people without model releases, private property, famous trademarks and other protected elements. They cannot be used commercially without separate permissions, and using them requires attribution in the form [Contributor Name]/depositphotos.com.
Limited. The agreement caps total maximum aggregate obligation and liability for all claims at Five Thousand United States Dollars (USD $5,000), and requires you to indemnify and hold DepositPhotos harmless against liability arising from your use of the file. Disputes fall under New York law. For high-value campaigns, compare this against competitors that market larger indemnification.
Specific figures are deliberately not quoted here. The plan and pricing pages sit behind a login, and third-party sites reporting numbers carry affiliate relationships and go out of date as promotions change. Structurally there are subscriptions billed month-to-month or annually with monthly billing, one-off packs valid for a year, plus Business and Enterprise tiers. Check the checkout page for current amounts.
