Vectors are fantastic!
Why?
For starters, they’re not the same as raster images. The most common raster image formats found on vector websites are jpg, png, and gif.
Whereas, vector images can be found in many formats such as WMF, EPS CDR, and SVG.
Vector files are digital graphics featuring lines, points, and curves created using mathematical formulas and vectorial software. This comes in handy for web designers.
Contrary to popular belief, the word “web designer” does not usually indicate “artist.” On most days, many very talented web engineers and designers are lucky to be able to produce a quality stick figure.
Even if you can design complex artwork, there are instances when you need something generic, and you’re on a tight deadline!
That’s where you need to find platforms to buy vector images.
For a variety of reasons, vector art is significantly superior to other sorts of visuals.
They can, for example, be resized indefinitely without losing quality.
This isn’t the case with raster and other formats of pictures, which start to seem pixelated as soon as they’re enlarged.
As someone who’s onto finding vector sites, we are sure you understand what we’re talking about as we’ve all been there.
Vectors can also be easily modified, allowing for additional creative possibilities and customization. You can have several vector backgrounds in different graphic formats.
Fonts can be converted into outlines, and loading them takes the same amount of time whether you have them installed or not.
A vector just needs to know the coordinates of the beginning points, width, and height, whereas a raster file with 50 x 50 pixels must save 2500 pixels of data.
Therefore, if you don’t want to lose the resolution of your photographs or other artwork, buy vector images.
Fortunately, there are several websites on the internet where you may obtain vector art or vector packs.
The nice thing about these platforms is that you may receive a wide range of photographs in high-quality and many formats.
You can buy vector images in a few clicks and customize them to meet your individual needs.
To make your job easier, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten websites where you can get free vector art with only a few clicks.
Top 10 Platforms where you can buy vector images in 2021
- VectorGrove
- Depositphotos
- VectorStock
- Freepik
- Shutterstock
- Iconfinder
- iStock
- Flaticon
- 123RF
- DryIcons
*All the tools are listed randomly and are not based on our preference order.
VectorGrove
VectorGrove was founded in 2019 to provide designers, creatives, agencies, and small businesses with limitless access to a gorgeous library of over 1.4 million royalty-free vectors, illustrations, and graphics.
All graphics and designs are inspected and protected with a $25,000 copyright protection per asset from a contributor pool of over 18,000 artists.
With over 50,000 new bold vector illustrations added each month, the collection seems to be continually growing.
Once you choose VectorGrove as the correct platform to buy vector images, you get access to the following benefits:
- More than 1.5 million vector image assets
- Copyright Protection/License: $25,000
- You have options to choose from: Orientation, color, text space, and more
- Orientation filter – You can change the orientation of the image to narrow your search results. This is a fantastic function for quickly locating that rockstar vector to boost your marketing strategy
- Color filter – You can narrow your search by the photo’s colors
- Text space – If you want to add text to an image, this filter will help you identify images with text-friendly sections. Select one or more regions to work with
- Safe Search – You can remove explicit/mature content from the search results
- Folders – It lets you keep track of your favorite vectors from your search and use them to develop your own projects
- Contents to Download – Once you’ve discovered a vector you want to download, simply select a subscription and the size you want to download, then click download
- Across the whole collection, regular, and extended licenses, use safe search filters with unlimited downloads
VectorGrove is an ideal StockUnlimited alternative to buy vector images and is best suited for online or offline businesses, SMBs and SMEs, designers, startups, agencies, freelancers, and solopreneurs.
Pros:
✅Vector images of high quality
✅The quantity is more than enough for any project
✅Searching is simple, and downloading is quick
Cons:
❌More high-definition colored vectors could be added
❌In comparison to other sites, there is a smaller selection of vectors
Pricing:
- Contact on pricing
Now, contact on pricing – doesn’t that seem like a down deal?
Like if you’re opting to buy vector images, you obviously need to know the price first, then compare with other platforms, and then sign up for a done deal!
But what if we tell you that you do not need to know about their pricing details to figure out whether VectorGrove is the best platform to buy vector images or not?
What if this platform is available to you for a one-time fee?
Sounds good, right?
Well, this once-in-a-lifetime transaction has finally come to fruition.
Take a look at the following lifetime plans for VectorGrove:
- Plan A (Early Bird Offer): $49/lifetime
- Plan B: $99/lifetime
Depositphotos
Depositphotos is a popular source for premium high-quality stock photos, drawings, and vectors, and is one of the world’s fastest-growing microstock agencies.
Contributor submissions are checked for quality and originality before being added to Depositphotos’s libraries containing their collection of illustration vectors.
Over 200 million beautiful vector backdrops are available in the Depositphotos collection, including royalty-free stock photos, vector images, video clips, and editorial materials.
Depositphotos’ library surpassed 10 million combinations of vector files, in less than four years in 2012, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing platforms to buy vector images.
The platform has a community of 100,000 contributors and a library with a huge database for vector images.
Depositphotos now offers a variety of payment options for both individuals and businesses to buy vector images.
They allow you to download royalty-free vector images and the license comes in two kinds: regular and extended. A limited standard license is offered for editorial files.
Depositphotos has also introduced Crello which is an online tool where you can design your own content.
Crello
An online graphic design tool by Depositphotos, Crello allows you to quickly and easily create graphics and also edit vector files for social media, blogs, marketing materials, and other forms of ads without having to hire a designer.
Crello offers 25,000 professionally designed static templates as well as 5,000+ animated templates.
It also features a Depositphotos collection built-in, as well as 500,000+ premium photos and two mobile apps for android and iOS.
Pros:
✅Everything from the most obscure office photograph to a fantastic outdoor event photograph can be found here
✅The photographs in some categories are so unique that it’s unusual to see one in another deck at the same event
✅When you utilize the images, you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement
✅Comparable photographs, images with the same model, and images by the same artist can all be found using the search features
✅You can go back and re-download any photo you’ve already downloaded for free
Cons:
❌You can’t use some photos on your site unless they’re for a magazine publication since they’re considered editorial
❌Some of the celebrity photographs are very old
❌Users often have problems in finding what they’re searching for on the platform
Pricing:
- Contact on pricing
VectorStock
VectorStock is a specialist stock agency dedicated to representing the best vector-only photos, graphics, icons, and illustrations, all of which are available for royalty-free download at incredibly low prices.
When you buy vector images from them, you’ll get the files for download as zip archives including EPS, AI, and PDF file formats.
Once the images are unzipped, vector editing software such as Adobe Illustrator is required.
Vectorstock provides the best decorative vectors at the best possible pricing. No bitmap graphics are represented by them and they only display vector files (i.e. Digital Photography).
Top graphic designers and illustrators from all around the world contribute to their ever-expanding vector library.
Every time you buy a vector image, they also include a high-resolution JPEG image (up to 3000*3000 pixels).
They also offer you a free vector converter app by which you can export your vector to any other size or file type.
You may use the content for advertising, promotional design, and a variety of other reasons, including designs that will be available for commercial resale based on the license level you select.
There are two types of licenses available: standard and expanded, which cover a wide range of applications. Every time you buy vector images, you’ll always get royalty-free content.
VectorStock also provides a service in which one of their vector images is customized on your behalf.
They have a team of talented artists who can make quick adjustments to the artwork and send it to you in the format you prefer. All you have to do is tell the artist what you want to be changed and provide feedback as they make changes.
The service isn’t recommended for creating complex new parts or designing fresh artwork but can be used in cases of:
- Element removal (eg. background layers)
- Changing the colors
- Text personalization (eg. change “Lorem Ipsum” to your company name)
- Including your company’s logo or symbol in the artwork
- Few minor alterations (eg. switch an image from facing left to right or adding simple graphic elements)
Pros:
✅Price is reasonable to buy vector images
✅Image personalization is available
Cons:
❌Some celebrity images are dated
Pricing:
- Contact for pricing
Freepik
Freepik is a search engine that assists users in locating high-resolution pictures, vector images, drawings, and PSD files for their creative projects.
Every month, Freepik uploads approximately 80,000 free materials created by the Freepik team or the community of graphic designers and vector artists contributors.
It was founded in 2010 and now serves 32 million monthly users from over 200 markets with a database of resources that includes over 13 million icons, vectors, pictures, and templates, among other things.
In reality, the image bank is one of the top 126 websites in the world, ahead of Nike and the NBA, for example.
Icons, Stock Photos, PSD Files, and Vectors are among the elements or resources available on Freepik, which are grouped into four categories.
Each major category comprises a number of sub-categories. These subcategories aid in the search process. Overall, Freepik’s navigation mechanism is very user-friendly.
Pros:
✅Fairly cheap prices
✅The best part is the user experience
✅Finding resources to buy vector images is simple
✅Based on the type of design you’re looking for, you’ll get better options and suggestions
✅There are a number of graphics that are similar in different layouts
Cons:
❌It contains download limits
- Non-registered free users are limited to three downloads per day
- Only 10 downloads per day are permitted for free users
- The download limit for premium clients is set at 100 resources per day
❌You can’t keep using the same resource over and over. The next time you need the same visual or assistance, you’ll have to either locate an alternative or go to a different website
Pricing:
- Free plan
- Monthly Premium: $14.99 per active user, per month (billed monthly)
- Annual Premium: $9.99 per active user, per month (billed annually)
- Premium Plus: $13,99 per active user, per month (billed annually)
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is the world’s top distributor of high-quality licensed pictures, vectors, drawings, films, and music to businesses, marketing agencies, and media organizations.
It adds hundreds of thousands of creative assets each week thanks to its increasing community of over 1 million contributors, and now has over 330 million photos, 50 million editorial images, and 18 million video clips available.
Shutterstock’s brands also include:
- Bigstock: A stock media company that focuses on providing good value
- Shutterstock Custom: A platform for creating custom content
- A high-end image collection called Offset
- PremiumBeat: A royalty-free music library that has been carefully picked
- Shutterstock Editorial: A leading provider of editorial photography to the world’s media
Shutterstock is also a globally-recognized digital firm that provides a creative platform for high-quality assets, tools, and services. They offer numerous premium content to buy vector images from.
The majority of the photographs can be used for web distribution. As a result, when your clients and customers don’t have branded photos or a creative library, you can use these.
Overall, the availability of millions of high-quality photographs in one location, as well as the ability to discover images for virtually anything, is quite beneficial.
Shutterstock has several options for individuals, teams, and businesses, as well as creative editing and collaboration tools.
Pros:
✅It’s easy to use
✅Due to the huge database, you have infinite options to buy vector images from
✅The images are auto-licensed whenever you download them
Cons:
❌Due to having millions of photos, often you see similar models and subjects in non-related searches
❌Their editor is not very featured, so many basic functions are missing
Pricing:
- Contact on pricing
Iconfinder
Iconfinder’s primary product is an icon search engine. Martin LeBlanc Eigtved started it in 2007.
After a revamp in 2009, Iconfinder grew in popularity and is now the largest icon search engine, with over 2 million monthly unique users.
It is the world’s largest marketplace for SVG and PNG vector and raster icons.
Iconfinder’s premium content is suitable for commercial usage.
The Basic license is the premium content’s license agreement (which outlines the restrictions for how you can use the icons).
Some of their free content is licensed for commercial use, while others are only permitted for personal use.
They support a wide range of categories, from food to sports, and offer a wide range of options from themes to icon styles (filled, outlined, filled and outlined, and so on).
Iconfinder can search for icons, and locate small to huge groups of icons. This solution is a wonderful tool to employ if you have a range of purposes that require distinctive, and well-designed icons.
According to their website, they have over 2,000,000 icons, so you’ll be able to locate one that suits your needs.
Their designs are also available in a variety of forms. It doesn’t have a pattern editor, but you can work with their icon designers to create whatever you need.
Pros:
✅They support a lot of categories including food and sports
✅When you buy vector images from them you made a wide variety of options from themes to icon styles (filled, outlined, filled and outlined, and more)
Cons:
❌It can get pricey if you use many sets of icons, especially when there are free alternatives available online
❌Searching by style can’t be done
Pricing:
- Pay As You Go: $2 per icon
- Pro Unlimited: $49- infinite icon downloads
- Pro Starter: $19- 50 icon downloads
- Pro Micro: $9- 10 icon downloads
iStock
iStock, founded in 2000, is an ideal source for user-generated stock images, vectors, and drawings, and video clips, pioneered the crowd-sourced stock sector.
iStock is part of the Getty Images family of companies.
With over 405 million assets, including images, videos, and music, Getty Images is one of the most trusted and respected visual content providers in the world.
Getty Images serves creative, business, and media consumers in nearly every country on the planet, and is the go-to place for discovering, purchasing, and sharing amazing visual content from the world’s finest photographers and videographers.
Each year, Getty Images collaborates with over 330,000 contributors and hundreds of image partners to provide comprehensive coverage of over 160,000 news, sport, and entertainment events.
They also offer impactful creative imagery to communicate any commercial concept and the world’s largest digital archive of historic photography.
As a subsidiary of Getty Images, iStock offers stock photography and picture collections for advertising, graphic design, and print and online publishing.
Pros:
✅You can search their full library without the need for a subscription
✅They have popular categories from which you can buy vector images
✅The images sets bookmark on the homepage
Cons:
❌The depth of their vector images is lacking
❌Random images that have no relation to the searched content can pop up you must know from time to time
Pricing:
- Contact for pricing
Flaticon
Flaticon is a collection of free vector icons that can be imported directly into Photoshop.
Although Flaticon simply includes icons, you may download them in a variety of formats and they are of high quality.
You can do it for free on occasion, but you must always be logged in. You may also design your own collections or use the icon packs on the site to create patterns.
Each collection is also styled differently, so you’ll find everything from flat to stroke to realistic icons.
You can provide them with your symbol sets and graphic designs and really make money with them if you’re a designer, so that’s a plus.
Pros:
✅It offers free downloads
✅You have different formats available when you buy the vector images
✅You can freely make patterns from the icons
Cons:
❌Flaticon only has icons available
Pricing:
- Contact for pricing
123RF
123RF (part of the Inmagine Group) is a stock photo agency that provides royalty-free photographs and stock photography. It was started in 2005.
123RF has increased its inventory in recent years to meet the growing demand for web-based content.
The website has a wide variety of vector images, icons, typefaces, movies, and audio files in addition to over 170 million photos in its library.
123RF has assisted a diverse range of individuals and businesses in telling their stories via the use of creative photos, sounds, and motion given by global talent.
There are a lot of images to choose from in terms of quantity and quality. They have practically every type of photo and vector artwork imaginable.
Pros:
✅Easy to use user interface
✅It gives you the ability to buy on-demand credits for future use
✅Navigation is easy and you can save content to select later when you buy vector images
Cons:
❌Less editorial photos to purchase from
❌You cannot edit their vector illustrations
❌Easy to use user interface
❌They do have a variety of images but not a wider array of imagery like other alternatives like Shutterstock and iStock
Pricing:
- Contact for pricing
DryIcons
DryIcons makes one-of-a-kind icons, icon sets, vector graphics, and web templates, all of which are initially available for free under our Free License.
DryIcons prioritizes individual coders/developers, small design businesses, and organizations in this way.
DryIcons offers two different, cheap licensing options for the rest of the customers who are unable to utilize the Works with the Free License: the Regular and the Extended License.
Their icons come in a wide range of sizes and formats, because their primary audience is web-based applications, they provide all icon sets in 32-bit PNG, which is likely the most appropriate web image format.
This format is best suited for online applications since it has true transparency, which is critical for high-quality icons.
If you insist on using other formats (such as GIF or JPG, which are also commonly used in web apps), keep in mind that you’ll need to apply a backdrop color (for JPG) or at the very least a matte (for GIF) to make the quality of the icons stand out.
Although Dryicons may not have the greatest library, the site is incredibly user-friendly. Simply type a keyword into the large search bar, and it will return pages of results.
Graphic designers will undoubtedly locate what you’re seeking because there are highly particular designs.
Pros:
✅When you buy vector images from DryIcons, you are given a variety of designs to choose from
✅Their site is very easy to navigate
✅They offer affordable licenses
Cons:
❌They do not have that big stock of images like their competitors
Pricing:
- They offer free content but with terms and conditions applied
Our Verdict
These are the top 10 web platforms in 2021 for getting vector drawings and arts that may be modified without any hassle.
As we all know, the market is flooded with platforms where you can buy vector graphics, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed while deciding which one to use.
According to our assessment, VectorGrove is the ideal platform among those on this list.
The platform has all that is offered by many vector stock websites around and the lifetime plans promised by the platform are a plus point.
You do not have to worry about knowing contact on pricing details, everything is in front of you and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime, for a lifetime, investment!
Choose The Best Platform To Buy Vector Images
Designers may find it difficult to locate the most popular vector websites online because there are so many.
The problem mostly arises when they need to look for various attribution designs in their vector images like banner design, banner template design, cartoon template design, button design, and more.
As a result, the purpose of this essay is to assist you and give your creative work a boost. There are dedicated websites for vectors in this post, as well as broader sites that provide a wide range of design resources.
When it comes to free vector graphics, the first step is to locate some reputable websites where you can quickly obtain the vectors you require.
When employing a specific vector image, you should still double-check for attribution so we hope you find this list of 10 vector websites useful.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are vector images? Why should I buy vector images instead of raster images?
Vector pictures do not rely on pixels in any way.
Instead, they’re based on a broader image made up of a series of simple geometric patterns, with mathematical formulas explaining where these shapes are concerning one another.
Whereas, raster images are bitmap images. To display an image, a grid made up of columns and rows is used to organize a large number of tiny, uniformly sized pixels, or picture elements.
In comparison to raster graphics, vector images are pliable and expandable enough to maintain quality even when stretched beyond their initial dimensions.
Vector pictures are made up of a series of points, lines, and curves and are a common graphical file type.
The computer connects these points and lines using algorithms and then colors the results, which are all varying in shape.
Why should one opt to buy vector images?
The main advantage of vector images is that they will always seem clear, no matter how large you make them.
If your logo is a vector picture, you may print it on a little USB drive for a conference and then use the same file to create a big billboard.
Even though one is gigantic and the other is little, the image will appear the same in both locations.
Having the option to resize and upscale your photographs for higher resolutions is crucial as smartphone screens continue to compress more pixels into a smaller space.
Having your source files in vector format also ensures that your designs are future-proof.
The second advantage of vector images is that they can be reproduced and still look great.
That’s one of the main reasons why typefaces are vectors: they can be printed without becoming too pixelated to read.
What can be the disadvantages of buying vector images?
If you wish to buy vector images, it is important that you know about their disadvantages too.
- First is that only a few programs, such as Adobe Illustrator, can be used to edit them and if you don’t have the right skills they can be a little difficult to use.
- This is the biggest disadvantage to buying vector images as you’re spending enough money to get good images and then you have to spend more effort and even money to edit them according to your preferences
- Second, vector images cannot be used to create photo-realistic visuals, nor can photographs be converted to vectors as photographs are far too complicated to be broken down into a few simple geometric shapes
What are the cases when buying vector images becomes a necessity?
Vector pictures are typically employed for relatively simple items, do not require photorealism, and can be enlarged without difficulty. You would typically need them for the following:
- Logos
- Iconography
- Fonts
- Screen printing images
- Flash animations
