Depositphotos

What is Depositphotos?

Depositphotos is one of the big stock libraries — 250-million-plus photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips — at prices meaningfully below the Getty/Shutterstock tier. For creators, it’s the practical answer to a recurring problem: you need a clean background for a thumbnail, a b-roll shot of “person looking stressed at laptop,” or artwork for a channel banner, and you need it without a licensing headache.

Why creators pick it

• Cheap, flexible plans. Small image subscriptions start around $10/month, and on-demand packs cover the “I need five images this month, not fifty” reality of most channels. Downloads don’t feel like spending money, which changes how freely you design.
• Thumbnail raw material. Backgrounds, textures, cut-out-friendly objects, and expressive faces — the ingredients of a scroll-stopping thumbnail when you pair the library with an editor like Pikzels or Photoshop.
• Licensing you don’t have to think about. The standard license covers YouTube videos, thumbnails, and social content, so you’re not reading legal pages before every upload.
• Video too. The footage library is smaller than the photo side, but for generic b-roll it’s often all you need.

What to know

It’s a stock library, not a magic one: the photo selection is enormous, the video selection is solid-but-thinner, and if your channel leans on lots of cinematic footage, a dedicated footage service may fit better. Unused subscription downloads roll over for a while but not forever — match the plan size to your real usage.

Who it’s for

Any creator who regularly needs images — thumbnail makers, faceless channels living on b-roll and stills, podcasters making audiogram backgrounds, and anyone designing channel art without a designer.

Verdict

The best value-for-money stock library for creators we’ve found. Not the biggest name — just quietly cheaper for the same job, which is exactly the kind of tool this site exists to surface.