Are Dreamstime Images free?

Free you say? The short answer would be ‘no’, most Dreamstime images are not free, but the long answer is more complex so stick around and you will certainly find some freebies in here.

The short answer is ‘no’ because royalty free (which is the license under which microstock media is usually sold) does not mean that an image is free, it means that you only pay for an image once and then you can use it as many times as you like (almost) in as many ways as you want (almost) without paying for each usage separately, as opposed to the Free Images section of Dreamstime, where all the images are free right from the start.

The term “royalties” was coined by the publishing industry, where authors (writers but also cover artists etc.) received a fee each time their creation was sold or used.

It may sound a bit confusing but it’s really not. Most of our images are not free but they are very cheap, especially if you buy a subscription, and our selection is truly gigantic, over 87 million images to choose from and the continued use of our website will bring you a lot of advantages.

And now, let’s talk about the big beautiful elephant in the room, free images.

Dreamstime has quite a large collection of royalty free public domain cc0 pictures, photos and images. Royalty free images are donated by our contributors and you can download them for free, as well as a great choice of public domain images under the CC0 license, that are also free to download.

The images downloaded from the free RF selection can be used under the same terms as the Royalty Free license, with a single additional restriction: the maximum amount of physical copies in any form is limited to 10,000 copies. If you exceed this amount and you already purchased credits you may request to download the Media under the regular RF license. Downloading an image from the free section will give you access to the maximum size download.

The images from the CC0 selection are free to use in any manner you choose provided you avoid sensitive usage and provided you do not use them in connection with offering a service that is competitive to Dreamstime. Downloading a public domain image will also give you access to the maximum size image as well.

With so many options to choose from you will certainly find the image and license that best suits your needs. Just remember that you should always check the license of the image you wish to use to be sure it is actually free.Free images will be great for student projects, personal work, too print for your own use, even for commercial websites and other activities. CC0 images can legally used for merchandise such as posters, t-shirt, phone and laptop cases, etc. They can also be used to enhance your own artworks and creations.

As a side note we don’t accept CC0 images for resale from our contributors, these images are free and public domain and their intended purpose is to be freely used by anyone. We don’t believe they should be resold in the same form they are offered for free as they would only contradict each other. However, we do accept artworks, composition and illustrations in which these images are thoroughly enhanced or changed, such as is the case of NASA images that are used by many photographers and artists to create new concepts and imagery.

If you are using a free image repay the photographer by adding a credit line to the image if at all possible, artists will appreciate this little nod to their work.