ICONS 8 is a design asset library of icons, illustrations, photos, 3D models and music drawn by an in-house team, paired with the free Lunacy design app and a set of AI editors — free with attribution, or licensed without it.
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ICONS 8 is a library of design assets with tooling wrapped around it. The site's own framing puts the order of importance plainly — Original stock graphics by our team, plus design apps and AI tools — and that order matters, because it distinguishes this from the AI generators it is often shelved next to. The core product is five parallel asset categories drawn by staff designers: icons, illustrations, photos, 3D models and music. The apps and the AI editors sit on top of that library rather than replacing it.
The company positions itself against stock marketplaces on exactly this point, describing itself as artists, not resellers — meaning the catalogue is produced in-house by its own teams of icon designers, illustrators, animators and 3D artists rather than aggregated from contributors. It has operated since 2012, reports roughly four million users, and states it has taken no venture capital. Those user figures are vendor-reported and unaudited, but the in-house production model is verifiable in the structure of the catalogue itself: the consistency of style across large icon packs is precisely what a contributor marketplace cannot easily produce. The legal entity behind it is Icons8 LLC, and the licence agreement names distinct sub-brands for each library — Moose for photographs, Ouch for illustrations and Fugue for music.
For anyone evaluating it, the decisive question is not what the assets look like but what you are allowed to do with them. This is a licensing product as much as a design product, and the licence has unusually specific boundaries. That is where most of this page's attention goes, because it is where most users get caught out.
Free access is genuine and open-ended rather than a trial: the assets are usable at no cost provided you credit the source, and Lunacy is free outright. That is the path most individual users should evaluate first, because for a great many projects a footer link is a perfectly acceptable price.
Paid subscriptions come in three tiers on monthly billing. The entry tier at $6.5 per month for AI tools only provides 10,000 AI credits and access to the AI generators and editors, but no hand-drawn graphics. The middle tier at 24 dollars per month adds 100,000 credits plus a metered allowance of hand-drawn assets — 100 icons, 25 illustrations, 50 photos and 15 3D models. The top tier at 199 dollars per month provides a million credits and unlimited graphics. An enterprise plan is quoted individually, and annual billing is advertised at a 20 percent saving. Several tools are also sold standalone — the upscaler and background remover at 9 dollars per month each, face swapper and illustration generator at 19 — which suits people who need one capability rather than a library.
Two structural points matter more than the headline numbers. First, exceeding a plan's allowance triggers per-item fees rather than a hard stop. Second, and more consequential: the refund policy is strict. The agreement states Icons8 does not issue refunds except when required by law, with fees non-refundable including when a subscription is cancelled before expiry or a trial is not cancelled in time. EU residents who cancel within 14 days and have downloaded nothing are the stated exception. Evaluate on the free tier first.
For icons specifically, open-licensed sets such as the major open-source icon families impose no attribution requirement and no usage caps, which makes them simpler for products that cannot carry a credit line — at the cost of a narrower and less stylistically unified catalogue. For photography at scale, the large stock agencies offer far deeper libraries and licences written for high-volume commercial and merchandise use, at substantially higher prices. For illustrations, several open illustration projects are free with no attribution, though with limited style range. For the design application itself, Figma is the industry default for collaborative interface work and Sketch remains entrenched on macOS; Lunacy's distinguishing arguments are that it is free, runs natively on Linux and Windows, works offline, and can be self-hosted. The honest summary: ICONS 8 wins on catalogue consistency and on bundling an editor with the assets, and loses to open-licensed alternatives on licensing simplicity.
Yes, genuinely free — the catch is attribution. You may use the assets at no cost provided you place a visible, clickable link to the source wherever they appear, and the rules are specific by medium: a footer link for websites, the About section for desktop and mobile apps, the closing slide or content slide for presentations, the copyright page for e-books, the Credits section for indie games. Lunacy, the design application, is free outright with no attribution condition.
For ordinary commercial work such as websites, apps, presentations and marketing material, yes. But several categories require prior written consent and may cost extra: merchandise goods, fast-moving consumer goods, web templates and UI kits, distributable digital merchandise like skins and decals, paid advertising campaigns, on-demand services, and using an asset as the sole or indispensable element of the final product. Check your specific use against that list rather than assuming a paid plan covers everything.
Not without asking first. Merchandise goods and on-demand services both appear on the list requiring express written consent, and using an asset as the major or sole element of a product is separately restricted — which is precisely what most print-on-demand designs do. Physical printing is also capped at 1,000 reproductions in aggregate under the ordinary permission. Contact the company for a specific licence before building a shop around it.
You keep them. Assets downloaded during an active subscription remain yours to use afterwards, and the attribution requirement does not reapply to them. What you lose is unused download quota, which expires with the plan, along with access to new assets and customer support. This makes a deliberate short subscription a legitimate strategy for permanently clearing attribution on a defined set of assets.
No. The licence explicitly prohibits using licensed material for training machine learning or artificial intelligence systems, and separately prohibits use in NFTs. Note that the company does sell training data as a distinct commercial product — so the capability exists, but it is not conveyed by the ordinary asset licence.
Each AI operation deducts a fixed number of credits, and the amounts differ sharply by operation: generating an icon or an illustration costs 200 credits each, a GenYOU selfie costs 150, a Mega Creator image 50, a face photo or human photo 30, a face swap 20, and upscaling or background removal 9 each. If you exhaust your allowance, an extra 1,000 credits costs 2 dollars and is added to your next bill.
It is a genuine design application rather than a viewer — auto layout, components and variables, prototyping and real-time collaboration are all present, and it runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux with an offline mode. Its distinctive strengths are that it costs nothing, opens and edits Sketch files, imports from Figma, and can be self-hosted for teams with data-residency requirements. Whether it replaces Figma for a given team depends mostly on collaboration workflow and plugin ecosystem needs.
No. The agreement states in capital letters that no other persons — including employees, co-workers and independent contractors — may access your account or use content licensed through it, and that two or more users require a team licence. Team members can be added to a subscription at the same per-seat price, with credits pooled and downloaded assets shared across the team.
Realistically, no. The agreement states that refunds are not issued except where required by law, and that fees are non-refundable including when a subscription is cancelled before its term ends or a trial is not cancelled in time. The one stated exception is EU residents who cancel within 14 days and have not downloaded or licensed any material. Test on the free tier before subscribing.
Icons8 LLC and its contributing independent artists retain ownership; you receive a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, revocable and non-transferable licence to use them, with no transfer of title or intellectual property rights. The company warrants that the material will not infringe third-party rights — but only if you use it strictly according to the agreement. Assets are supplied as-is, and total liability is limited to what you paid for the licence, with claims time-barred after one year.
