List of image-sharing websites

This article presents a non-exhaustive list of notable image-sharing websites.

Active image-sharing websites

Name Location / Owner / Hoster Description/Focus/Registration requirements       Other Registered users Storage Space Allowed Per User (standard)
500px Canada / Amazon AWS (hosting) Free, registration required Yes Yes Yes ChromeOS 13,000,000[1] 7 uploads/week free plan, unlimited for paid accounts
Album2 Oslo, Norway / Sveinung Dammen Free 30 day trial, registration required 2,000[2] 150 prints/year
Dayviews Sweden / Dayviews AB (Bilddagboken AB) Free image hosting, registration required Yes Yes Yes 1,291,500[3] Unlimited storage for 547×410 pix reduced images, also unlimited resolution and size for paying BDB HD users, costing approximately equivalent to $10.50 a year.
DeviantArt United States Free image hosting, registration required. Subscription option provides additional services, and unlocks hidden features. Generally allows art-specific content only, as the service is not a generic image hosting service. 44,000,000[4] Unlimited uploads with 30 MB limit per image for all account types.
Dronestagram France Free, Dronestagram is a photo sharing community dedicated to drone photography. The site that has been described as "Instagram for drones", allows hobbyists to share their geo-referenced aerial photos and videos.[5] Yes No No 30,000[6]
Facebook United States Yes Yes 1B Unlimited
Flickr United States / SmugMug Photologging/hosting

Free registration/Pro service

Yes Yes Yes[7] 112,000,000 (May 2015)[8] Since 20 May 2013, 1TB free, 200MB per image, all photos display, original files downloadable. Starting January 8 of 2019, free accounts will be limited to 1000 images. The 1TB limit for Pro accounts will be removed.[9]
Fotki Estonia[10] / Fotki, Inc. Free registration photo sharing service and communication portal. Yes Yes 1,250,000[11] 50MB for free, unlimited storage for $30/year.[12]
Geograph Britain and Ireland United Kingdom / Geograph Project Limited Geo-located Geographical Images whole of Britain and Ireland, free, registration required 12,634 Unlimited
Google Photos Image and video hosting service. 500,000,000[13] Files use a storage quota (15 GB free).
Instagram United States / Facebook Photologging/Social networking . Registration is required. Yes Yes Yes 100,000,000[14] Owned by Facebook
Imgur United States Free image hosting, no registration required. Yes Yes Unknown From 9 Feb 2015 all Imgur accounts are treated as Imgur pro accounts. No limits.[15]
Ipernity France[16] Photo, video & blog sharing. Operated by the world's largest non-commercial photo sharing community, without profit interest, advertising, data trading or sale of any content. No Yes 2,500,000[17] 100 GB for €44,90/year (Standard), including unlimited uploads, geo-mapping, picture processing (PicMonkey) and the worlds best integrated translator (DeepL). Basic subscription with reduced limits and features for €22,90/year.
jAlbum Sweden[18] Free hosting of galleries created with Jalbum software. Yes 340,000[19] 30MB of space given for free accounts, upgrade to 1GB space for €19/year.
Photobucket United States Free registration service. As of July 2017, payment of $400/year required if hosted images are to be displayed on external sites[20] Yes Yes 50,000,000[21] With a free account, the user can use up to 10GB of bandwidth per month and 2GB storage. Unlimited free storage, 1MB per photo and 10 minutes per video (with image size restrictions). No size restrictions with Pro account.
Pinterest United States Photo sharing/social networking 11,700,000[22] Unknown
Pixabay Germany[23] Sharing of high-quality public domain photos.
Free to browse and download, registration required to contribute. Includes social networking capabilities.
Unknown Unknown
SecureTribe United States Free registration service Yes No No No 13,800,000[24] Secure photo/video sharing
Shutterfly United States Free registration service 2,000,000[25] Free, unlimited picture storage. Shared Albums are limited to 1,000 photos. Full resolution downloads only possible via purchase of archive DVD.
SmugMug United States Free search, subscription hosting 315,000[26] "unlimited" storage
Snapfish United States / Hewlett-Packard Free registration service, also provides services for Costco's online photo processing store. 90,000,000[27] unlimited, pay per download
Unsplash Montreal, Quebec / Unsplash, Inc.[28] Free, registration required to upload pictures. Unsplash license only. It's similar to CC0, but the user can't use the pictures to replicate a similar or competing service.[29] Yes [30] Unknown Unknown
VK Russia Free, Russian social network Yes Yes Unlimited
Wikimedia Commons United States Free, Creative Commons license, Public domain[31] Yes Yes Yes Unlimited

Defunct photo-sharing websites

These also include sites that may still operate, but do not accept new users. Listed in chronological order of shutdown.
Name Location/Owner
(if any)
Description/Focus/Registration requirements Date closed Status/Notes Registered users Storage Space Allowed Per User (standard)
Zooomr United States / BlueBridge Technologies Group No registration service since 2007. 2007 Users are no longer accepted. 100,000 Unlimited uploads and unlimited storage for ALL users.
Radar.net Free registration. May 26, 2010 Radar shut down on May 26, 2010 at noon (PDT).[32] Unknown ?
GazoPa Bloom Flower photo sharing service 2011 Unknown ?
Fotopic.net UK/Snappy Designs Ltd March 8, 2011 Unknown
Ovi Share Finland / Nokia Nokia's multimedia sharing service, formerly called Twango.
Service closed on May 30, 2012.
May 30, 2012 Other Nokia services still available with the registered account.[33] 20,000,000 unlimited, pay per download
MobileMe Web Gallery United States / Apple Inc. Subscription service.
Ended June 30, 2012
June 30, 2012 For an advertised "limited time", data was still able to be retrieved from MobileMe until July 31, 2012, when the site finally closed completely. Services moved to iCloud on June 30. 180,000[34] 10GB (standard level)
Kodak Gallery United States Free registration service, archiving photo service for $25/year. July 2, 2012 (Closed down on July 2, 2012; all accounts moved over to Shutterfly) 20,000,000[35] Used to be unlimited low-resolution, paid users can download high-res images that they've uploaded. New minimum purchase requirements 3/09: $4.99/yr for 2GB or less, $19.99/yr for more than 2GB.
Webshots United States Free registration service.
(Discontinued on December 1, 2012, including paid service.)
December 1, 2012 All old user photos from accounts not migrated to Shutterfly were deleted. Webshots still operates in other fields, and is owned by Threefold Photos. 32,000,000[36] One 800×600 image per day
Pixorial United States Personal photo and video sharing platform.
Registration required. Free subscription available.
July 18, 2014 No new accounts being accepted. 636,000 Free subscription available with 7 GB of storage for photos or videos. No limits on resolution of images or length of videos. Additional paid subscriptions available with increased storage. Unlimited uploads of photos or videos.
Lockerz United States Free registration service 2014 19,000,000[37] Unlimited uploads for all users; 5MB per image
Bayimg Sweden / The Pirate Bay Free image hosting, no registration required, uncensored 2014[38] Temporarily reopened in 2016 for file recovery.[38]
imm.io United States / Autodesk Free image hosting, images removed if not viewed in the last 30 days. February 3, 2014[39] Unknown
Streamzoo United States Mobile photosocial game, free registration service, unlimited storage and sharing, available on Apple iOS, Android and Web March 21, 2014 All services stopped and photos deleted. Unknown Unlimited
Trovebox United States / Wide Angle Labs, Inc.[40] Free image hosting, registration required. Subscription option provides additional features. March 31, 2015 Unknown 100 photo uploads per month for free users, unlimited for Pro accounts. 30MB per photo.
Panoramio Headquartered in Switzerland / Google Free registration service November 4, 2016 4,700,000 Unlimited provided the photos comply with the Google Earth Photo Acceptance Policy.
Phanfare United States / Carbonite Subscription-based photo sharing May 28, 2017 Phanfare and SmugMug have worked out a transition plan.[41] Unlimited storage. Subscription accounts only. Bought out by Carbonite.
yfrog United States / ImageShack Twitter photo sharing. Registration required. As of 2011 holds approximately 29% of the Twitter photo sharing market.[42][43] ?
TinyPic United States / PhotoBucket Free image hosting, no registration required September 9, 2019 All services stopped. Uploaded photos downloadable up until September 19, 2019. Unknown No known limit, but largest image dimension limited to 1600 pixels.

Comparison of photo-sharing websites

Legend:

  • File formats: the image or video formats allowed for uploading
  • IPTC support: support for the IPTC image header
    • Yes - IPTC headers are read upon upload and exposed via the web interface; properties such as captions and keywords are written back to the IPTC header and saved along with the photo when downloading or e-mailing it
    • Some - IPTC headers are read but information added via the web interface is not saved back to the IPTC header; or, IPTC headers are lost on resizing[44]
  • Tags/keywords: the ability to add to and search by tags or keywords
  • Comments: the ability of users to leave comments on the photo
    • Yes - full control over who can leave comments (friends, registered users, non-registered users)
    • Some - users must register with the website to leave comments
  • Rating:
    • Yes - star rating: the ability to rate photos numerically, usually on a scale from 1 to 5
    • Some - thumbs up/down rating, "mark as favorite", or a rating system accessible only to logged-in users
  • Download originals:
    • Yes - anyone can download the original photo
    • Some - only photos of "pro" members can be downloaded
  • Notes/annotations: the ability to overlay textual notes to areas of a photo
  • Friendly URLs: human-readable URLs (e.g. /photos/greece_album/athens.jpg) vs. numeric identifiers (MemViewImage.asp?AID=5610943&IID=205062034&INUM=5&ICT=5&IPP=16)
  • Subscriptions
    • Some - RSS feeds[45] and web interface[46]
    • Yes - RSS feeds, web interface, plus photo updates can be sent by e-mail to non-registered members[47]
Name File formats Upload Folder/ album structure Limitations IPTC support Tags/ keywords Comments Rating Download originals Notes Geo- tagging Friendly URLs API Custom layout Subscriptions
Flickr JPEG, GIF, PNG, (TIFF displayed as JPEG, compressed up to 58:1 for a 16bpc TIFF) collections contain albums After 20 MAY 2013, 1TB free, 200MB per image, all photos display, original files downloadable. Some[48] Yes Some Some[49] Some[50] arbitrary notes Yes No Flickr Services No RSS
Fotki Animated GIF,[51] JPEG, PNG;[52] BMP and TIFF are converted to JPEG e-mail, FTP, Java, browser (mass/fetch from URL; upload one photo at a time), desktop app (basic), desktop image viewers hierarchical folders contain folders or albums 50MB for non-paying users; can get 20MB extra/month; filenames are truncated to 34 characters Some[48] Yes Yes[53] No Some[54] No Yes Some[55] Fotki full help registered users[56] RSS,[57] Web [58]
ImageShack [needs update] JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, mkv, mp4, MOV, AVI, MPEG, wm, 3gp, flv browser (one at a time), browser (multiple, zipped) flat slideshows free users: 5GB storage 5MB/image limit; subscribers: 3MB/image limit No[59] Some[60] Some Yes No No Some
OneDrive JPEG, ? HTTP, Silverlight albums 100MB per photo[61] (7GB total) No Yes Some[62] Some Yes[63] Yes No No Yes[64] No No
Picasa Web Albums Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG browser, Google+, Picasa, Exporter for iPhoto, the Aperture to Picasa Web Albums plug-in, Uploader on Mac OS X,[65] or F-Spot on Linux flat albums Unlimited for photos smaller than a certain resolution; 1GB free for larger photos; Additional storage for monthly fee.[66] Some[48][67] Yes Some No Yes[68] face recognition Yes friendly album/path, numeric filename No RSS
Shutterfly JPEG only Flash batch flat albums No, even Exif support is incomplete via desktop app (Shutterfly Studio) Some No No multiple templates
SmugMug JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, Video 12MB per Photo (Standard/Power), 24MB per Photo (Pro and during 14 day trial) Some[48] Yes Yes[69] Yes[70] Yes[71] No Yes Yes Yes[72] Yes
Snapfish JPEG only No No ? No $0.25/photo No
Webshots JPEG, ? 5,400 photos, 540 videos No Yes Some[62] Some[73] Some[74] No No No

See also

References

  1. ^ 500px
  2. ^ "Album2". Album2.com. Archived from the original on 2020-08-11. Retrieved 2016-09-10.
  3. ^ "Dayviews - A place for your photos. A place for your memories". bilddagboken.se.
  4. ^ "DeviantArt". About DeviantArt. Retrieved 2018-06-27.
  5. ^ Sim, David (4 December 2015). "Dronestagram: Award-winning aerial photographs of climate change captured by drones". International Business Times. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
  6. ^ McKenzie, Sheena (13 November 2015). "Dronestagram: See the world through the eyes of a bird". CNN. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
  7. ^ "Flickr: Tools". www.flickr.com.
  8. ^ Zhang, Michael (2015-05-07). "Flickr Launches New Design and Features, Now Has 112M Members". PetaPixel. Archived from the original on 2022-12-25. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  9. ^ Andrew Stadlen (2018-11-01). "Why we're changing Flickr free accounts". Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. If you need unlimited storage, you'll need to upgrade to Flickr Pro.
  10. ^ "Why some of your photos are not being displayed" (CSS3; Renders passably with Internet Explorer 7 / Firefox 4, or newer; viewing with Firefox 2 / SeaMonkey 1.1 or equivalent with Gecko 1.8 strongly advised against). Fotki Blog. Fotki, Inc. 2013-01-15. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
  11. ^ Fotki
  12. ^ "Fotki Help". help.fotki.com. 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  13. ^ "Google Photos passes 500 million users, gets better sharing features and $10 photo books". May 17, 2017.
  14. ^ "Instagram hits 100M monthly active users". Geeks Hut. Archived from the original on 2013-03-02. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
  15. ^ "Imgur Pro for Everyone – Imgur Blog". imgur.com. Retrieved 2015-07-06.
  16. ^ "Terms of Service" (Requires JavaScript). Ipernity. 2019-05-31. Retrieved 2019-10-23.
  17. ^ "About ipernity". ipernity.com. Retrieved 2019-10-23.
  18. ^ "TERMS OF SERVICE". jAlbum. 2013-08-07. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
  19. ^ "Jalbum Forum". Jalbum.net. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  20. ^ http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010128088-What-users-are-affected-by-the-changes-to-our-3rd-Party-Hosting-policies- Archived 2017-07-27 at the Wayback Machine Photobucket policy page regarding the change. Retrieved 2017-07-28.
  21. ^ Photobucket reaches 50M users (as of August 29, 2007)
  22. ^ "Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever -comScore". TechCrunch. February 7, 2012. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  23. ^ "About Us". Archived from the original on 2015-01-28. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
  24. ^ "SecureTribe".
  25. ^ SEC 10-K filing (served over 2M customers as of 2007-12-31)
  26. ^ "315,000 paying customers". Archived from the original on May 9, 2008.
  27. ^ Snapfish.com AboutUs Archived 2008-05-15 at the Wayback Machine (July 2012)
  28. ^ Cho, Mikael (5 January 2017). "Hello, Unsplash, Inc".
  29. ^ "License Unsplash". unsplash.com.
  30. ^ "Mysplash - F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository". f-droid.org.
  31. ^ "Commons:User pages - Wikimedia Commons".
  32. ^ MG Siegler (May 10, 2010). "Radar Locates The Deadpool On May 26". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2011-10-11.
  33. ^ "Service Notification: Ovi Share is closing on 30 May 2012". Nokia. 28 February 2012. Archived from the original on 26 June 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
  34. ^ "Apple Press Release, 2002". Archived from the original on July 27, 2006.
  35. ^ Kodak Gallery
  36. ^ "Webshots' overview page, 2004" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  37. ^ "Source". TechCrunch.com. 2011-04-12. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  38. ^ a b "Pirate Bay's Image Hosting Site 'Bayimg' Returns, For a Bit - TorrentFreak". 26 April 2016.
  39. ^ developexaccount (Feb 3, 2014). "I'm sorry to say that imm.io is officially shutdown". GitHub. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
  40. ^ "Privacy Policy". Trovebox. 2013-01-19. Archived from the original on 2013-08-30. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
  41. ^ "Photo Sharing. Stunning Photo Websites. - SmugMug".
  42. ^ "A Snapshot Of Photo-Sharing Market Share On Twitter". TechCrunch. June 2, 2011. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
  43. ^ "How People Currently Share Pictures On Twitter". Sysomos. June 2, 2011. Archived from the original on August 2, 2011. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
  44. ^ "Photo Resizer". Bulk-photo-resizer.com. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  45. ^ "Wikipedia's "Test album" album". Archived from the original on 26 June 2011.
  46. ^ "What's new on Wikipedia's "Photo Albums" pages - Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy". 6 July 2011. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011.
  47. ^ "23: Help". www.23hq.com.
  48. ^ a b c d tags added via the web interface are not written back to the IPTC header; Exif and IPTC headers are lost when saving resized versions of the image
  49. ^ members can mark an image as favorite
  50. ^ "If you have a free Flickr account, no one (including you) can access your original file". Flickr.com. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  51. ^ "animated GIF hosted on Fotki.com". Public.fotki.com. 2008-09-17. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  52. ^ "PNG file hosted on Fotki.com". Public.fotki.com. 2008-09-17. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  53. ^ no CAPTCHA
  54. ^ anyone can download photos uploaded by Premium members
  55. ^ Fotki limits the length of the file portion of the URL to 24 characters
  56. ^ Fotki: paying users can edit the HTML of their album layout (Co-branding. Non-paying users can only select the photo frame style.
  57. ^ "Wikipedia's "Test album" album". Feeds.fotki.com. 2010-06-23. Archived from the original on 2011-06-26. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  58. ^ "What's new on Wikipedia's "Photo Albums" pages | Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy". Whatsnew.fotki.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  59. ^ "No support for description or tags". Img510.imageshack.us. Archived from the original on July 11, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  60. ^ The user can add tags, but they are not displayed on the photo page
  61. ^ "IMZuber". IMZuber. 19 April 2019.
  62. ^ a b "To be able to leave a comment please Log in or Sign up."
  63. ^ Originals"
  64. ^ "RSS feeds"
  65. ^ "Picasa Web Albums". Archived from the original on 2008-11-19. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  66. ^ "Free storage limits - Picasa and Picasa Web Albums Help". Google Inc. 2011-12-29. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
  67. ^ "Google Groups". groups.google.com.
  68. ^ filenames are preserved
  69. ^ CAPTCHA-protected for anonymous users
  70. ^ both star-rating and thumbs up/down
  71. ^ files get renamed to unique ID
  72. ^ "SmugMug API". Wiki.smugmug.net. 2011-05-11. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  73. ^ only Pro or Premium photos can be star-rated; rating by members or anonymous users
  74. ^ attempting to download the full-size version of a photo produces a Flash file of the photo and the message "This photo may only be saved by friends"