8 Best Sites to Sell Stock Photos of 2026

Adobe Stock is the easiest site here to plan around, because it publishes what a photographer earns per download rather than only a percentage. Photos, vectors and illustrations earn a 33% royalty and video earns 35%. The earnings table shows $3.30 for a download by a 3-credit monthly subscriber, $1.65 or $0.99 for 10-credit monthly or annual subscribers, and $26.40 for an extended license bought on demand. Buyers on plans of 350 or more credits a month pay out a guaranteed minimum of $0.33 to $0.40 per image. Joining is free with an Adobe ID, the agreement is non-exclusive, and accepted files feed Adobe Stock as well as Firefly, Express and other Creative Cloud apps. Contributors also get free access to Behance to show a portfolio and find clients. The weak spot is the low per-image payout from heavy subscription buyers, which is common across microstock sites.

Alamy pays the largest headline share of the general agencies we compared: up to 50% commission, with the top rate tied to images that are exclusive to Alamy. Students get 100% commission on direct image licenses for two years through a program running since 2011. The agency is non-exclusive by default, so you can keep selling the same files on other non-exclusive sites. Alamy states that it does not accept AI-generated images, which suits photographers who shoot in the real world and want to avoid competing with synthetic content. It takes a broad range of work, from stock and vectors to reportage and archival images, and runs a Live News team that sells news, sports and entertainment photos taken in the last 24 hours. Files go on sale within 24 hours of adding captions and tags. The collection lists 296,669,475 stock photos, panoramas, vectors and videos, so keywording carefully matters.

Shutterstock is the volume player. Contributors earn a percentage of the price Shutterstock receives for each license, across six earnings levels for images and six for video that run from 15% up to 40%. You move up as customers download more of your work in each category, and the two tracks progress independently. The catch is that every contributor drops back to level 1 on January 1, so the rate you reach in December does not carry into the new year. Registration and submission are free, and Shutterstock says it has paid over $1 billion to contributors since 2003. The program now goes beyond classic licensing: photographers can sign up for custom content briefs for AI and machine learning training, regional footage requests and paid review tasks, and existing portfolios can earn through data licensing and the Contributor Fund. A mobile app handles uploads and earnings tracking.

123RF advertises the widest commission range on this list, between 30% and 60% of each license sold, which answers the question of which site pays the largest share on paper. The contributor page does not spell out what moves you from the low end to the high end, so treat 60% as a ceiling rather than a typical rate. The company says over 5 million buyers can license your portfolio and that it markets content in 44 countries and 17 local languages. Contributors can upload photos, vectors, video, audio and fonts. Payment is hands-off: 123RF pays automatically on or after the 15th of each month once you pass your minimum payout threshold, through PayPal, Skrill, Payoneer, or Alipay for contributors in China. Its own example uses a US$50 threshold paid by the third week of the next month.

Depositphotos publishes its full royalty table, which makes earnings easy to predict. Photos and vectors sold in packs under a Standard or Extended License earn 30% at Green level, rising through Bronze, Silver and Gold to 38% at Platinum. Subscription downloads pay a fixed amount per image instead, from $0.25 at Green to $0.33 at Platinum. Contributors in the Revenue Share Special Program share 40% of net subscription revenue, prorated by how often subscribers download their files. Video pays 30% to 38% by level and audio 34% to 42%. Registration is free with no obligations, but you must pass a short examination test with a few of your best files before you can upload freely. One detail to note: royalties follow what the buyer actually paid, so discounts and taxes on app store purchases lower your share. Images must be JPEG, JPG or PNG in RGB.

Getty Images and iStock share one contributor program, so we list them together. You apply with six original, non-AI samples; if accepted, you sign a non-exclusive agreement with Getty Images (US) and upload to iStock. Accepted files are searchable by all iStock customers and by subscription customers on gettyimages.com, plus Getty's distribution partners. Royalties run between 15% and 45% per license depending on your agreement, and customer prices range from under a dollar to several hundred dollars. Exclusive creators earn higher royalty rates, get their best work in front of all Getty Images customers, and can shoot for brands such as American Express, Google and Toyota through Custom Content. The tradeoff is that exclusivity means licensing a content type only through Getty. Royalties are paid in USD through Payoneer or PayPal. Getty allows limited retouching but rejects any file created or modified with generative AI models.

Pond5 is a footage marketplace first, but it accepts photographs and illustrations and pays them a flat 30% royalty share, the same rate as music, sound effects and templates. Video earns 30% for non-exclusive contributors and 40% for exclusive ones, and Pond5 says its referral program can raise the share to as much as 70%. Contributors who opt in to dataset licensing earn a 20% royalty on each licensed item. Payouts happen on the 15th of each month once your balance reaches $25; smaller balances roll over. You can be paid through PayPal, Payoneer or Skrill, though Skrill deducts 4% per payout. The contributor portal offers shoot briefs, music briefs, buyer requests and monthly data and trends reports, which help you decide what to shoot. Stills earn 30% while exclusive video earns 40%, so photographers who only shoot stills miss Pond5's best terms.

Magnific runs a contributor program for its stock library and pays contributors for every download their content gets. It accepts photographs as well as vectors, illustrations, PSD mockups and templates, and says contributors' resources get over 100M downloads every day. To join, you register and send 150 to 200 assets for review, a much larger starter set than other sites ask for, and the team gives feedback before publishing. Once accepted, a single panel handles batch uploads of mixed resource types, keyword entry and performance tracking, and a referral program adds another way to earn. The contributor page does not publish a royalty percentage or a per-download amount, so you cannot compare its pay directly with the sites above before joining. That missing number is the main reason it ranks last here despite the traffic figures.