iStock vs Yay Images

iStock licenses royalty-free photos, illustrations, vectors and video clips for advertising, websites, blogs, presentations, video productions, podcasts and other uses. Its Essentials collection covers everyday content; Signature is a collection of handpicked material exclusive to iStock. The service also offers AI image editing to add or remove objects, extend images, change backgrounds, edit by prompt and upscale generated images to 4K. iStock says its AI is trained exclusively on licensed content, not visuals or data scraped from the web, and that generated images receive automatic legal protection of $10,000 per image. Licensed files include a $10,000 USD legal guarantee, with an Extended Legal Guarantee available up to $250,000 USD. Basic costs $29 a month and Premium costs $70 a month, each billed annually with 10 downloads monthly. Premium + Video is listed at $125 a month, with a new-customer offer noted; Unlimited AI costs $14.99 a month. iStock also offers one free Signature photo each week and free illustrations and video clips each month. API access is available, and a plugin links Dropbox for accessing, sharing and collaborating on content across devices.

Yay Images is a web service for royalty-free stock images, videos, and vectors, with search tools and image-generation utilities. Its homepage lists more than 29.69 million images, 307.15 thousand HD videos, and 4.41 million vectors. The AI image generator makes images from text prompts and offers photographic, digital art, and cinematic styles. Its upscaler provides 2x, 3x, and 4x options. Search can be narrowed by color hues, number of people, text space, or orientation, and includes image search. Listed formats are JPEG for images, EPS or SVG for vectors, and MP4 or MOV for video. Standard and extended royalty-free licenses are available, but account licenses are limited to the account owner and their employees. A free account provides 10 downloads per day after account creation. The Unlimited Plan is listed at $8.25 a month, with a yearly option at 99.00 USD every 12 months; a 50-credit option is $50 a month as a one-time payment. Automated scripted downloads are prohibited, and some unlimited-plan users may be capped at 30 downloads per day.