Adobe Stock vs. Pixabay

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Stock
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Stock consists of curated asset collections that allow users to explore diverse collections of high-resolution, royalty-free, stock assets for use in digital projects.
$29
per month
Pixabay
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Pixabay headquartered in Germany offers a digital content platform, which they present as a community for sharing copyright-free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons.N/A
Pricing
Adobe StockPixabay
Editions & Modules
Individuals
Starting at $29
per month
Teams
Starting at $29.99
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe StockPixabay
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe StockPixabay
Considered Both Products
Adobe Stock
Chose Adobe Stock
IStock doesn’t have the breadth of assets that Adobe has, and doesn’t have an accessible price point for individuals to pay a monthly subscription rate for its photo and other assets.Unsplash and Pexels have decent options for stock photography and texture backgrounds, but can …
Chose Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock has a better selection than most. It also has a free trial to help you decide if the price is worth it. The other companies are free but you may not find the right image or it will take longer to find a unique picture for your needs. Adobe Stock adds new photos …
Chose Adobe Stock
In comparison to other options, Adobe Stock is far more user-friendly. Adobe Stock has helped me find quality photos. One-stop licensing's convenience and variety were important. Instead of buying photos per image, we usually find something similar at Adobe and license it under …
Chose Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock was selected by our organisation because it's integrated with Creative Cloud. Adobe Stock offers a more flexible on-demand option and a much longer free trial than other products. Adobe Stock is a good alternative as the subscription has a wide range of photos to …
Chose Adobe Stock
As I already mentioned Adobe Stock is the perfect place to search for great stock photos. The following is stacked up against them. More than 100 million images Straightforward Regular updates accessible directly within the Creative Cloud platform smart search.
I think one of the main advantages of Adobe Stock over the other programs is that Adobe has a much larger and better quality catalog that adapts in a better way to the needs of my projects, considerably improving the quality and the experience they provide to the user. In …
Chose Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is very unique and versatile compared to other vendors that we have evaluated because it provides access to the largest library of high-resolution, royalty-free stock assets. The premium stock images, video footage, templates, music, and audio files are incredible …
Chose Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock offers a more robust set of stock images. They also have a very useful search feature to help us quickly locate the image we want to use in our content. The quality of the images also appears to be better - a larger database, and higher-quality images to pick from.
Chose Adobe Stock
The sheer choice is fantastic, and the search function is exceptional. I also like how many illustrations there are, which is an added bonus (ie icon packs). It’s just genuinely been a pleasure using the product and has made finding images so much easier and faster.
Chose Adobe Stock
Some of my favorite pictures that I have gotten have been kid pictures on Adobe Stock compared to other sites. The photographers that sell their photos pick the most photogenic kids. Often times I can find ones that look like they were taken right in our office. Adobe Stock is …
Pixabay
Chose Pixabay
Pixabay is way ahead of Adobe Stock, as it provides better Image & graphics quality, a very improved design tool. Pixabay provides a variety of search results when compared to Adobe Stock or other tools or software. Pixabay provides really great online support. Pixabay …
Chose Pixabay
We also looked at Adobe Stock and Freepik. Adobe Stock has a better breadth of images available on their site, but they can be expensive depending on your needs. Sometimes, if Pixabay doesn't have an image that matches what I need I may use Adobe Stock or Freepik. Freepik is …
Chose Pixabay
Pixabay is a very user-friendly site, and feels less 'business' orientated and approachable. The graphic designers that used it got to grips with it very quickly and found a decent range of stuff. However, there were occasions when we needed to go somewhere else to find the …
Chose Pixabay
Overall, I really like Pixabay as the quality of images has never let me down. On top of that, I really love the community/creators as they're very supportive. I would say that you will have not many problems or complaints when you use Pixabay and will definitely help in your …
Chose Pixabay
Pexels is free and fully licensed for commercial use, as is Unsplash to a certain extent. I generally open all 3 to search for free stock images for budget-sensitive clients; that being said, I always find myself searching Pixabay first. They have the best user interface of …
Chose Pixabay
Pixabay gets around the language barrier by being available in more than 20 different languages. The website doesn't have any ads. They do have "sponsored images" from Shutterstock, but I really like that there are no other ads. When I download an image, I can choose from a …
Chose Pixabay
Pixabay is adequate but needs to up its image game in order to compete with other free stock sites, which have more extensive and better quality imagery available. I personally moved from using Pixabay to other free image sites due to the quality and range of images not …
Chose Pixabay
Pixabay is my starting point for any image search as it provides cross-over/reference to other sites but isn't so overwhelming with images. I feel with the other sites I could get lost in the endless pages of stock imagery, especially when they seem so similar.
Chose Pixabay
While Pixabay doesn’t offer the same variety that other paid stock image sites, they offer a good enough variety for my needs. And you really can’t go wrong with free. If you’re starting out in the blogging world or don’t have enough money, or simply don’t want to spend the …
Top Pros
Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
Adobe StockPixabay
Small Businesses
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
Pexels
Pexels
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe StockPixabay
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(66 ratings)
8.4
(39 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe StockPixabay
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
If you're looking for quality professional images for sales and marketing collateral, presentations, social media pages, and graphics, it's great. If you have a very specific industry or subject, sometimes it is too cumbersome to find what you need. They need a better variety of people in their images as well.
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Pixabay
This is perfect for any individual or organization that's working on a budget. You'll get stock photos that, while there's a more limited selection than the usual paid sites (Getty, iStock, etc.), are often just as high-quality. For smaller businesses and nonprofits where every dollar counts, I've found myself leaning on Pixabay quite a bit for stock images and, from time to time, will end up buying one of the linked commercial images when Pixabay doesn't have what I need. However, if you have a large budget for stock images, Pixabay will likely not be your best choice, as the paid services offer generous discounts for bulk credit purchases.
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Pros
Adobe
  • Presents a huge collection of distinctive graphics with all sorts of options to fit the user's particular need of the day.
  • Allows for easy grab-and-go, cut-and-paste of the sample proofs so that a graphic designer can work up an idea and present it to the team before purchasing it.
  • Operates a user-friendly platform so that team members who haven't used the program but is suddenly needed to jump in on a project can figure it out quickly.
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Pixabay
  • Separate photos, illustrations, and vectors—Many competitors have these images all lumped together with a limited ability to sort through them, while Pixabay has a robust library of all of these, making it easy to find what you're looking for.
  • Free, high-quality images and easy-to-understand licensing rules—Often a new client will have bad image usage habits, freely snagging any image off of google. Pixabay is an excellent resource to give clients a huge range of photos without the fear of getting into copyright trouble.
  • Sound effects—Free, good-quality sound effects are surprisingly difficult to find amongst competitors, but Pixabay has them in their lineup as well.
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Cons
Adobe
  • I really do wish Adobe Stock would offer editorial-based content. There are no historical photos, photos of world figures, or other event-based content. We have to go to Getty for that.
  • Their video offerings are OK, but there is room for improvement.
  • The current enter-level monthly plan does not provide for any video downloads at all.
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Pixabay
  • One thing that kind of sticks out is that with so much to choose from, you can feel overwhelmed.
  • Some of the photos I sometimes can find separately by googling. In the music business, it seems like many photos rotate on the web so there isn't as much to pick from.
  • I didn't see an option for more vertical videos for use in Instagram or TikTok.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
In comparison to other options, Adobe Stock is far more user-friendly. Adobe Stock has helped me find quality photos. One-stop licensing's convenience and variety were important. Instead of buying photos per image, we usually find something similar at Adobe and license it under our subscription. I prefer Adobe's curated resources over other services. Adobe Stock's filters make finding the right image easy.
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Pixabay
Pixabay has given me the free vectors I need for my whiteboard animation videos, which aren't available on the other sites, in addition to the video and audio clips. They've been around for a long time and have stayed consistent, valuable, and easy to use throughout the years. They were my first site for free downloads and remain my favorite image download site to this day.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • I used stock photos for my blog posting on medium and website creation. I found adobe stock a very amazing site for high-quality images.
  • It has resolved the issue where I would spend countless hours looking for a photo on Google or other stock-image websites, no other stock photos website is perfect and stunning like Adobe Stock. Overall, it's a fantastic time-saver.
  • Overall, I found images impact more than words while blog posting on medium and other social media, so I can say that Adobe Stock helps me in growing my startup…
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Pixabay
  • We don't lose any money trying to buy images
  • Our videos get more views if we put the good quality images we find in Pixaby
  • The posts we make with their images always get a professional aspect, and get more engagement from a diverse social media users.
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ScreenShots