Looking for millions of visual assets (yes, millions) to bring your content and digital properties to life? Freepik has your image and video needs covered. Browse a library packed to the brim with graphics, photos, illustrations, animations, videos, icons, and vectors, thousands of which can be accessed and used for free.
Freepik: The Good and the Bad
There are a lot of websites out there that offer large libraries of visual assets. Freepik is certainly one worth checking out. We were pretty impressed with how many high-quality assets they have to offer and its handy search function. But there are some elements of this solution that left us wanting a bit more.
What Freepik Is Good At
If you are looking for a massive library of templates, illustrations, graphics, and more to boost your digital presence, Freepik is a solid option. Its selection is vast, between readymade imagery, templates you can customize, and even AI-generated graphics.
Library of millions of assets
Whether you’re a graphic designer, entrepreneur, marketer, or any other type of professional, you’ll be blown away by the treasure trove of graphics Freepik offers. You get access to a collection boasting over 30 million images, 13 million vectors, 10 million icons, 1 million videos, and 2 million PSD files. Your creative juices will overflow with possibility.
Many comparable services promise tons of options but skimp on quality. With Freepik, we can assure you the assets are generally as outstanding as they are numerous. Crisp, high-resolution photos, editable vectors that don’t distort, and 4K videos immerse you in a world of visual splendor.
The icing on the cake? Thousands of these are completely free to access. On the free plan from Freepik, you can utilize over 4 million images, vectors, AI-created images, videos, and PSDs. For startups and students watching their wallets, this is a dream. And, for pros who need to pump out visual content regularly, it’s a gold mine of affordable graphics at your fingertips.
Let your imagination run wild across hundreds of categories, from travel and business to fashion and technology. Spruce up your social posts, give reports some pop, or start boosting your brand through video storytelling. The possibilities are nearly endless.
User-friendly interface
Freepik’s massive catalog may seem daunting. But, after clicking around, you’ll find the UI is really simple and helpful. Digging for diamonds in Freepik’s trove of assets is not only possible, but actually kind of pleasant.
Freepik takes the stress out of searching with robust filtering options. Effortlessly locate what you need by filtering for resource type, colors, orientation, aspect ratio, and more. With just a few clicks, your perfect graphic is pulled from the millions available.
Or, simply browse category-by-category. Freepik helpfully organizes assets into groups of topics like sports, nature, business, and more. But it doesn’t stop there, as each parent category contains subcategories to help you focus your hunt more precisely. For example, within the nature category, you’ll find collections for animals, landscapes, plants, and more.
The Freepik homepage includes a uniquely user-friendly feature as well: drag-and-drop image search. We tried it out by dropping a photo from our hard drive onto the page and Freepik returned an exact match along with thousands of remarkably similar images.
Customizable assets
Once you’ve found an image to download, Freepik provides options for the format and size you prefer. But, beyond that, the built-in editor lets you tweak proportions to your exact needs, in addition to a whole lot more.
Add text, overlay other images, and adjust the contrast and saturation—you get all the tools of a basic photo editor in an intuitive, cloud-based interface. It’s a valuable time-saver, and the user-friendliness means even novices can modify graphics in minutes.
You can also tap into Freepik’s PSD templates for a perfect springboard for advanced design. Download assets into Photoshop and put your unique stamp on illustrations, animations, logos, banners, and beyond.
Freepik understands that off-the-shelf graphics only go so far. You need assets that can be tailored to your brand’s voice and style. That’s why they provide the tools to morph their visuals into your own captivating creations.
User collections
Freepik lets you easily collect and organize the gems you find so you can access and iterate upon them again and again.
Hover over any image, vector, or template, and you can add it to various lists like Favorites, Pinterest, or My Collections. These hubs house all your favorite visuals in one place.
The My Collections feature really helps you organize things at scale. Create customized collections within it to collect and store graphics for specific projects or topics. You can title collections how you’d like and come back to them when the right moment strikes.
Starting a yoga studio? Gather a bunch of peaceful imagery across several Freepik categories to serve as yoga inspiration. Promoting a big event? Gather videos, graphics, and photos that will get potential attendees hyped up.
The ability to strategically group visual assets is a game-changer compared to many other asset libraries where you’re stuck just dumping files randomly into a favorites folder.
AI-generated images
Need an image so specific that even Freepik’s massive library doesn’t have it? Their AI generator brings your wildest visions to life.
Simply describe your dream image and a cutting-edge AI in the mold of DALL-E creates it within minutes. Want a unicorn dancing in a field of marshmallows? A robot playing tennis on Mars? Anything you conceptualize, Freepik’s AI can generate.
Beyond making any bizarre idea a reality, this has many practical applications. With how scarily good AI is at this, you can construct precise images for your brand or project. You also get some control over the output beyond your description by choosing a style from generic, photo, digital art, painting, or 3D rendering.
It’s not perfect, like all current AI-driven tools. But the results are more often impressively accurate than perplexing. And Freepik’s AI doesn’t just provide one creation when prompted—you get five unique generated images to select the best option from.
Freepik contributor community
At the core of Freepik’s ever-expanding catalog is its contributor community. Over 50,000 new assets are added each day by designers who share their work with the platform and its users. This fuels a non-stop influx of diverse, high-quality imagery and video.
Freepik users can follow their favorite contributors and get notified whenever they upload new material. It’s a creator ecosystem that keeps Freepik’s library fresh, relevant, and continuously growing.
Importantly, Freepik ensures that all resources comply with licensing requirements before being made available. This gives users confidence that the assets they access can be reused legally
Active on social media
We appreciate that Freepik maintains an active social media presence. Not only do they demonstrate their expertise in the world of graphics and digital assets by maintaining healthy social media accounts, Freepik’s social pages also provide users with a valuable archive of updates, tips, and inspiration.
Their YouTube channel is a particular standout, full of short, digestible videos that teach and inspire. With over 100,000 subscribers enjoying these nuggets of wisdom, Freepik clearly provides content their audience finds valuable.
From guides on how to accomplish tasks in Photoshop and Illustrator to rundowns of trends, best practices, and inspirational examples, you can level up your design capabilities and learn how to maximize your access to the Freepik library.
Seeing their graphics in action on their own social feeds provides some fun, visual inspiration you can emulate. And Freepik often teases new releases and features on their social channels before they launch.
Freepik also connects with users on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. No matter your preferred platform, you can follow them for the latest news, tips, and asset spotlights.
Freepik’s Potential Drawbacks
For the access you get to a massive library of assets, there are still some shortcomings of Freepik to be mindful of. Let’s dive into those real quick so you can make a confident decision on whether you should pay for this solution.
Required creator attribution
After exploring Freepik, one big downside of its Free plan emerged. You’re stuck with mandatory attribution for any asset you download and intend to use.
What that means in practicality is that, whenever or wherever you deploy a Freepik asset, you’ll need to include attribution with it. Whether a caption, a part of your social post, or anything else, you’re required to include either a disclosure that the asset was designed by Freepik or, if it’s the work of one of Freepik’s community of creators, a link back to the original designer’s homepage.
Of course, we don’t mind giving credit where it’s due. But this repetitive extra step becomes tiresome fast if you’re deploying many different assets you acquired from Freepik.
You can probably stomach this if you only tap into Freepik’s library infrequently. At scale for high-volume projects or any organization constantly needing fresh assets, you’ll likely want to pony up for a paid plan just to remove this persistent hurdle.
Other free plan limitations
Mandatory attribution isn’t the only thing that makes using Freepik’s Free plan underwhelming. The daily download allowance is capped at 10 assets if you create a Freepik account. If you use Freepik without an account, you’re further limited to just three downloads.
On top of that, much of the content that’s accessible to free users is generic and overused compared to the premium assets. That’s to be expected, though. Unique, high-quality assets are almost always locked away for paid members, no matter which asset library you use.
Free users can technically download some premium videos, but they’ll be watermarked with a massive Freepik logo that makes it unusable in most cases.
The bottom line is that Freepik isn’t much different from other asset providers if you only want to use it for free, and such limitations are typical for providers in this category.
Poor compensation to contributors
While we love how much of Freepik’s selection of assets is thanks to real designers offering their work on the platform, we found that those creators face an uphill battle in generating meaningful revenue for themselves.
One core issue is that contributors aren’t directly paid per download of their work. Rather, earnings are calculated based on each downloader’s total number of downloads in a billing period. That means an asset downloaded by a user who has downloaded thousands of other files that month will seriously dilute any payout for the creator.
Unless a contributor’s work is extraordinarily high in demand, this structure makes it difficult for them to rack up substantial earnings. Many former contributors noted in reviews that their average payouts per asset were negligible. Only creators with the most popular content could make the effort worthwhile.
For some of you, this may not affect your decision. But if respecting and supporting independent creators is something close to your brand values, be careful of leaning too heavily on a platform that doesn’t seem to compensate theirs accordingly.
Freepik Plans and Pricing
Freepik offers a few different ways to access the platform. We’ve talked a bit already about the Free plan that costs nothing to use, but there are also a couple of flavors of paid options that expand your capability and access on Freepik. Let’s dive into your options.
Free Plan
On the free plan, Freepik grants you access to an array of assets at no cost. Download from a library of thousands of free-to-use images, videos, and more.
By signing up for an account, registered members can download up to ten free files daily. But even non-registered users can download three assets per day.
You can even generate up to three AI-created graphics each day.
However, free users miss out on downloading premium content, which is of higher quality and generally more unique than the free assets. Plus, you’re required to provide attribution for any downloaded assets you reuse when you’re a non-paying user of Freepik.
Overall, Freepik’s free version is great for students, hobbyists, and light users needing occasional visuals. Serious users, though, will quickly hit their limits and will want to step up to one of the paid plans.
Premium
Freepik offers two tracks for paid plans. The Premium package is meant for individual users to take the limitations off of the Free plan.
You get unlimited downloads and full access to both Freepik and Flaticon’s premium content libraries, including exclusive high-quality vectors, photos, videos, PSDs, icons, and more.
And there are no more attribution requirements, because Premium grants a full commercial license. You can freely reuse assets without worry.
The Premium AI image generation allowance increases to ten per day. Additional benefits include access to the icon editor, unlimited collections for organizing assets, and priority customer support.
Freepik’s Premium plan costs $12 per month if billed annually (for a total of $144 per year), or $24 if paying month-to-month.
Teams
Organizations that want a Freepik account for multiple users can utilize the Teams plan. Every seat you pay for gets full Premium plan access. And Teams plans can set an administrator to manage user account creation and access.
A Freepik Teams plan can be customized to fit your particular needs and you’ll also get access to priority support and even legal assistance from Freepik.
Pricing scales up depending on the number of users you want on your plan, with the monthly rate lowering the more seats you add. For example, an annual Teams subscription costs $11.40 per month for two seats, but just $10.75 for five.
You can work with Freepik to tailor your Teams plan to your exact specifications by reaching out to them, or get a typical Teams plan up and running by simply setting the number of seats and finalizing checkout.
Final Thoughts
Like many solutions of its type, Freepik offers decent (if heavily restricted) access to quality digital assets for free. However, we’re big fans of the size of their library and range of asset options that you get access to on paid plans. Plus, by opting for a paid plan, you get access to unique tools like an AI image generator and built-in (albeit basic) digital asset management.
In our eyes, the Free plan from Freepik isn’t wildly different from its competitors, but full, paid access to its library makes it stand out from the crowd a bit. Our suggestion is to take it for a spin on a free account and see if the premium options that are available on paid plans excite you enough to make the reasonable monthly or yearly expense worth it.
