Most stock photo companies let you purchase individual photos, but some agencies offer a subscription model. Under this model, you are given access to download a certain number of photos every day. Unlike the per-photo method, subscribers pay a monthly or yearly access fee for the service.

Subscription Features

• Download dozens to hundreds of images per day for one fee.
• Subscribers have access to collections not available to individual photo purchasers.
• Subscription lengths of 1 month to 1 year allow flexibility based on project scope and stock photo needs.
• Low, medium, and high resolution images are available.
• Choose different subscription levels depending on image resolution requirements. For example, some companies offer web res and print res subscriptions at different price points.
• Hassle free Royalty-free licensing terms

Average Subscription Prices
Prices differ from company to company and are based on number of downloads per day, image resolution, and quality of the collection available. Here's what we found:

• 1 month subscription: $80-500
• 3 month subscription: $200-600
• 6 month subscription: $400-1,000
• 1 year subscription: $500-2,000

Price comparison to buying individual photos
Let's compare the per image cost of the subscription model vs. buying individual photos from two stock photo sites companies.

123rf.com
A single Ultra High resolution image at 123rf costs 3 credits (about $3). Their Basic Subscription Plan costs $89 for 1 month and allows you to download 5 images per day (150 images per month). That comes out to about $0.59 per image. The Premium Subscription Plan costs $199 and allows you to download 26 images per day (780 images per month) - only $0.26 per image!

Ablestock
A 1 month subscription costs $229.95 (the same price as a single pay-per-download image) and you can download up to 100 photos per day (3,000 per month). That comes out to about $0.08 per image. It would be quite an achievement to download that many photos in a month, but even if you only managed to download half that much, you’d still be paying pennies per image.

The average cost of microstock photos ranges from $1-15 per photo, so as you can see, buying a photo subscription can be a great way to cut stock photo costs, especially for higher volume users. However, to get the most out of the cost, you need to download the maximum number of images per day. That could become a bit of a hassle, but given the potential cost savings, it could be well worth the effort.

Stock Photo Subscription Service Provider Sites
123rf
Shutterstock
Photos.com

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