Shutterstock data licensing alternatives for licensed media data

About Shutterstock data licensing

Shutterstock licenses image, video, music and 3D content to AI developers for training, fine-tuning, evaluation and inference. Its data licensing page claims more than 640 million images, 70 million videos, 6 million music tracks and sound effects and 1 million 3D models from more than 3 million contributors. It is a source for AI buyers, not an outlet for company records.

Read our Shutterstock data licensing profile

How do the Shutterstock data licensing alternatives compare?

The Shutterstock data licensing alternatives below are compared with Shutterstock data licensing on the terms our directory tracks. "Not published" means the company's own pages do not say.

The first row is Shutterstock data licensing. Published payouts are ceilings or estimates, not quotes.

The Shutterstock data licensing alternatives

1. Content licensing platform

   Getty Images

   Best for photo, video and illustration contributors who want royalties plus an annual AI revenue share

   Getty Images licenses photos, video and illustrations from contributors and runs its own generative AI service, trained only on licensed visuals, that shares revenue with contributors each year. It signed display deals with Perplexity in October 2025 and OpenAI in June 2026. Contributors earn royalties of 15% to 45% per license, and Getty does not accept AI-generated files.

   What it buys

   Does not buy company data. Licenses content from almost 600,000 creators and almost 360 content partners

   Published payout

   Royalty of 15% to 45% per license. AI revenue shared annually by a formula that is not published

   Size requirement

   Contributors apply with six non-AI samples, must be 18 or over, and hear back within about a week

   Exclusivity

   Optional. Exclusive contributors earn higher royalty rates

   Fee to seller

   Not published

   Payment timing

   AI revenue share paid annually. Royalties paid through Payoneer or PayPal in US dollars

   Read our Getty Images profile

2. Content licensing platform

   Wirestock

   Best for AI developers licensing consented creator photos, video, design and 3D work

   Wirestock is a content licensing platform where more than 700,000 creators upload photos, video, design and 3D work that it licenses to AI developers as consented training datasets. Creators opt in to generative AI licensing and earn royalties or lump-sum payments when their content is used, paid monthly. Wirestock raised a $23 million Series A in May 2026.

   What it buys

   Licenses creator photography, video, graphic design, illustration, vector art, 3D assets and 2D game art for AI training

   Published payout

   Not published. Royalties or lump-sum payments when content is selected and used

   Size requirement

   None published. Creators opt in to generative AI licensing after uploading

   Exclusivity

   Not published

   Fee to seller

   Not published. Creators earn a commission when work is licensed

   Payment timing

   Monthly payments, tracked in a dashboard

   Read our Wirestock profile

3. Content licensing platform

   Versos

   Best for video library owners who want archives indexed in place and delivered as datasets

   Versos is a video licensing platform that indexes and enriches video libraries in place and delivers datasets to AI companies and frontier labs. Its homepage publishes no rates, fees, revenue share or exclusivity terms. A Versos blog post reports OpenAI paying $1 to $4 per minute and Adobe about $3 per minute for video, without citing a source for those rates.

   What it buys

   Licenses video archives and libraries, delivered as bespoke datasets

   Published payout

   Not published for Versos. Its blog reports $1 to $4 per minute (OpenAI) and about $3 per minute (Adobe), unsourced

   Size requirement

   Not published

   Exclusivity

   Not published

   Fee to seller

   Not published

   Payment timing

   Not published

   Read our Versos profile

4. Licensing agent

   Calliope Networks

   Best for film, TV and creator video licensed to generative AI companies on non-exclusive terms

   Calliope Networks licenses film, television, news and creator video to generative AI companies for model training, and has been part of Protege since December 2024. Its site cites more than 35,000 hours of content and describes a License to Scrape program, a voluntary collective license that pays YouTube and other creators by a formula based on volume and subscriber count.

   What it buys

   Licenses audiovisual content (movies, TV series, news) and creator videos for AI model training

   Published payout

   Not published. Creators are paid by a formula based on volume and subscriber count

   Size requirement

   Not published. Open to film and TV rights owners and to creators on YouTube and other platforms

   Exclusivity

   Non-exclusive for content owners, with no exhibition rights granted

   Fee to seller

   Not published

   Payment timing

   Not published

   Read our Calliope Networks profile

5. Data marketplace

   Defined.ai

   Best for AI teams buying or commissioning speech, text, image and multimodal data from vetted partners

   Defined.ai runs an AI data marketplace where enterprises buy or commission speech, text, image, video and multimodal training data, and where vetted partners can sell datasets. Its partnerships page says partners pass an ethical vetting process and only 30% are approved, and it does not publish revenue share, commission, exclusivity or payment timing for sellers.

   What it buys

   Lists speech, text, image, video, music and sound effects, and multimodal datasets from partners

   Published payout

   Not published

   Size requirement

   Not published. Partners pass an ethical vetting process, and Defined.ai says 30% are approved

   Exclusivity

   Not published

   Fee to seller

   Not published

   Payment timing

   Not published

   Read our Defined.ai profile

6. Data broker

   Protege

   Best for real-world healthcare, video, audio and spatial data licensed to AI model builders

   Protege licenses real-world data from data holders to AI model builders, from startups to frontier labs, across healthcare, video, audio and speech, spatial and physical data and other domains. Its site covers pre-training, post-training and evaluation data, and does not publish payouts, revenue share, exclusivity, fees or payment timing for data partners.

   What it buys

   Licenses healthcare (including evaluation datasets), video, audio and speech, spatial and physical, and other domain data

   Published payout

   Not published

   Size requirement

   Not published

   Exclusivity

   Not published

   Fee to seller

   Not published

   Payment timing

   Not published

   Read our Protege profile

7. Independent broker (this site)

   Sell My Data To AI

   Best for AI teams that want sellers vetted before any buyer sees their data

   Sell My Data To AI is an independent broker that helps companies license their data to vetted AI buyers, and helps AI teams source rights-cleared training data from vetted sellers.

   Fee to buyer

   Buyers pay nothing to submit a requirement or review a shortlist. Any fee is agreed in writing before an introduction.

   Seller vetting

   Every seller passes our eight-point vetting standard before any buyer sees their data, covering authority to sign, ownership, contract restrictions, privacy notices, third-party content, de-identification, sample quality and manifest accuracy.

   Data custody

   We do not take custody of your raw data. Buyers see redacted samples under a mutual NDA, and full data moves only after you sign a license directly with the buyer.

   Independence

   We are independent of the buyers we work with. We do not own an AI model and we do not buy data for our own use.

   How we workOur fees

Frequently asked questions