Pixabay Reviews

Pixabay is a great site to get assets for you personal or professional projects. It allows to use content for personal and even commercial purposes.

Free - Community backed content.
Royalty free images, music and videos.
Large collection of images.
Available online and as smartphone app.

0 cons - it is probably the best collection which has surprisingly high quality content for free.

Stay away, stay far away. They mislead you into thinking you can use as Public domain and they are not.

I see that most People reviewing Pixabay are the artists themselves. Apparently, they are trying to get people to come and donate to them.

OK, this is my story.

I am a Graphic Artist. I was one of the top illustrators on Pixabay. Canva purchased a website where I have approximately 11,000 images where people can download and pay me donations (I receive around $50-300 a day). I have been a member since 2017. Usage of my images as of Jan. 2019 is to add more graphics and text for use. Canva purchased Pixabay in 2019 but when they became very popular in the US, around 2021, they started using our images to give to their website users without asking the artist's permission. They never notified the users in any way. I found my 11,000 of my images this year of 2022 on Canva. I tried to contact Canva via email and they told Pixabay that I was harassing them. I told Pixabay that I would pursue any action I could take legally and they warned me they would inactivate my account. As of May 25, 2022, they deactivate my account without contacting me or taking all my images down. Perhaps what they are doing is legal, but morally they are wrong. They are charging people to use my images without my consent and they are making money off my artwork which many I painstakingly drew. This is a terrible way to treat a small business. So BOYCOTT PIXABAY AND CANVA.

I am not writing pros and cons, just read the bloody review.

Great images, leans a bit artsy, but definitely images that can be used for business / consumer facing sites. They need better search functionality on their photographer portfolio pages.

I like that they've expanded beyond stock photos to include illustrations, vectors, music, and sound effects as well. The quality of their images are great.

There is no good search feature or filters on the pages of their photographers, that would definitely increase the ease of use. Though their images are great, they sometimes they lean a bit more on the artsy side from their photographers versus practical for things like e-commerce, but regardless still great quality.