Most stock photographers leave money on the table because they treat all three platforms identically. They aren't. Shutterstock rewards keyword volume. Adobe Stock pays better per download but is brutal on rejections. Getty Images can pay 5–10× per license - if you survive the exclusivity demands. The right answer in 2026 isn't "pick one." It's knowing which photos belong where, and what metadata each platform actually reads.
Quick Answer
Shutterstock pays the lowest per-image but converts on volume, especially for commercial commodity shots. Adobe Stock offers the most balanced commission split - a flat 33% royalty on most licenses - with strong Creative Cloud integration and faster approvals. Getty Images (and iStock) pays the highest per-license but enforces strict editorial standards and rewards exclusivity. If you shoot lifestyle, food, or business in volume - start with Adobe Stock and Shutterstock dual upload. If you shoot editorial, sports, or premium commercial - Getty is non-negotiable. Either way, your metadata workflow decides whether your portfolio earns or rots in the backlog.
Quick comparison table
| Factor | Shutterstock | Adobe Stock | Getty Images |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission model | Tiered, percentage per download | Flat 33% royalty on most licenses | Royalty share, generally 15–30% non-exclusive |
| Exclusivity required | No | No (Premium tier optional) | Higher rates with exclusivity |
| IPTC keyword limit | Up to 50 keywords | Up to 50 keywords | Curatorial, quality over quantity |
| Approval speed | Hours to days | Days, often within a week | Slower, more curatorial |
| Editorial accepted | Yes (separate workflow) | Yes | Yes - their core strength |
| AI-generated content | Accepted with disclosure | Accepted, Adobe Firefly integration | Generally restricted |
| Best for | High-volume commercial | Balanced commercial creators | Editorial, premium licensing |
| Worst for | Premium pricing | Hyper-niche editorial news | Volume sellers |
Shutterstock: The Volume Play
Shutterstock built the modern microstock model. The platform indexes hundreds of millions of assets and runs on volume. Contributors who treat it like a numbers game tend to win - those who upload 50 hand-picked images and wait expect to be disappointed.
The commission structure is tiered. Earnings per download scale with the contributor's lifetime download count, with several earning tiers and a separate on-demand purchase structure that pays more per asset. Subscription downloads - by far the most common - sit at the low end. A single download might pay cents, not dollars. The math only works at scale.
Where Shutterstock pulls ahead is keyword surface area. The platform accepts up to 50 keywords per image and runs heavy internal search relevance updates. According to IPTC.org, the metadata fields most stock platforms read are Keywords, Description, Title, and Caption - Shutterstock leans hardest on Keywords. Get the first 7 right and you've done 80% of the work, because relevance models weight early keyword positions more heavily than later ones.
Practical detail most contributors miss: Shutterstock's contributor metadata pipeline reads embedded IPTC fields on upload. If your file already carries 50 well-ordered keywords, an IPTC Description, and a clean Title, you skip the manual web-form retagging entirely.
Best for: Lifestyle, business, food, travel, isolated objects on white. Commodity content with broad commercial use. Avoid if: You shoot one-off art pieces and expect to set your own price. Verdict: Treat it as the high-volume base of your distribution. Bulk-upload, keyword aggressively, optimize the title once, let the catalog earn passively.
Adobe Stock: The Creator-Friendly Choice
Adobe Stock plays a different game. The royalty structure is simpler - a flat 33% commission on most photo, video, and illustration licenses. The integration into Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator) means designers buy assets without leaving their workflow, which tilts purchase intent toward higher quality and considered selections rather than thumbnail-scrolling.
Metadata handling on the Adobe Stock contributor program follows the Adobe XMP specification - unsurprising, since Adobe wrote it. Adobe Bridge and Lightroom embed XMP directly into the file's metadata block, and Adobe Stock reads these fields natively at upload. Contributors who keyword in Lightroom before export skip the manual web-form retagging entirely. That's a real time saving when you're processing 200 images a week.
The platform also accepts up to 50 keywords, but Adobe's relevance model is reported to weight semantic clusters more than raw keyword count. Stuffing synonyms tends to underperform versus deliberate concept grouping: subject + setting + mood + use-case.
One detail most contributors miss: Adobe Stock approval flows are notoriously strict on technical quality (focus, noise, chromatic aberration) but more lenient on subject novelty. A clean technical execution of a "common" concept often outperforms a creatively ambitious but slightly soft shot. The implication for keywording is straightforward - describe the subject and the commercial use precisely; don't oversell the concept.
Best for: Designers selling design-friendly imagery, lifestyle, business, abstract concept work, and AI-generated content with proper disclosure. Avoid if: Your portfolio is editorial-heavy news or sports. Verdict: This is the best per-image return for the average commercial contributor in 2026. Make it the primary, not the secondary.
Getty Images: The Premium Gatekeeper
Getty Images operates on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where Shutterstock optimizes for volume, Getty optimizes for licensing value. A single licensed editorial photo on Getty can clear three to four figures for the contributor. The catch: getting in is hard, and the platform demands a different kind of discipline.
Getty runs two contributor entry points: Getty Images (premium, curated, often invite-only for non-editorial) and iStock (the lower-friction sibling, which Getty acquired and still operates). Both feed through the same licensing infrastructure but at very different price points.
Commission rates depend on exclusivity. Non-exclusive contributors typically earn in the 15–20% range on royalty-free licenses; exclusive contributors earn meaningfully more, and exclusive rates climb further for rights-managed editorial work where licenses scale by usage, geography, and duration. The trade-off is binding - exclusive content can't appear on Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, or anywhere else.
The Getty Images contributor track cares less about keyword stuffing. Their editorial team often re-tags submissions and prefers tight, accurate descriptive metadata over the 50-keyword shotgun. Your IPTC Description and Caption fields matter more than Keywords here. For editorial work, captions must follow Getty's strict format: who, what, when, where - with names spelled correctly and verifiable.
Best for: Editorial photographers, sports, news, documentary, premium commercial portraits, brand-driven work. Avoid if: You shoot commodity volume and want passive scaled income. Verdict: Worth pursuing for any photographer with genuine editorial access or premium commercial output. Don't sign exclusivity unless the math justifies losing the other platforms.
Good to know: All three platforms read embedded IPTC and XMP metadata at upload. Tagging once in your file means tagging once across all three. The AI metadata injector workflow bulk-embeds up to 50 IPTC keywords plus description, copyright, and creator fields directly into JPEG and TIFF files - skipping the per-platform web form entirely.
IPTC Keyword Limits Per Platform (Side-by-Side)
Keyword limits aren't just numerical ceilings - they're hints about how each platform's search model weights metadata.
| Field | Shutterstock | Adobe Stock | Getty / iStock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords (IPTC) | 50 max, first 7 most weighted | 50 max, semantic clustering preferred | Curatorial, typically 10–30, quality-weighted |
| Description (IPTC) | Optional, indexed | Required, indexed | Critical, often rewritten by editors |
| Title / Headline | Indexed, important | Indexed, important | Indexed, mandatory |
| Creator (IPTC) | Auto-attributed | Auto-attributed | Required for editorial |
| Copyright Notice | Auto-embedded on sale | Auto-embedded on sale | Required pre-upload |
| Location data | Optional | Optional | Required for editorial (city, country) |
The pattern is clear: Shutterstock rewards width, Adobe Stock rewards relevance, Getty rewards journalistic accuracy. A photographer running all three needs metadata that scales across all three philosophies, not three separate uploads with three separate tag sets.
This is where the stock photo metadata requirements guide becomes useful. Embedding the metadata once into the file, rather than typing it three times into three web forms, means each platform reads what it weights most, and your throughput jumps.
Earnings Math: What Each Platform Pays in 2026
Public earnings data is uneven across the three platforms, and individual contributor results vary wildly with portfolio size, niche, and upload cadence. What follows is directional, not promissory.
Shutterstock. Contributors report subscription-download earnings in the cents-per-download range at lower tiers, scaling modestly with lifetime downloads. On-demand licenses pay more per asset. A portfolio of a few hundred images at the low end might earn a single-digit-to-low-double-digit monthly figure; portfolios of several thousand quality images can clear meaningfully higher.
Adobe Stock. The flat 33% on most licenses produces a more predictable per-image return. Average per-download earnings tend to land higher than Shutterstock subscription downloads, particularly because Adobe's buyer base (Creative Cloud subscribers) skews toward considered commercial use over thumbnail scrolling.
Getty Images and iStock. The widest spread. iStock non-exclusive earnings sit in roughly comparable territory to other microstock. Getty editorial licenses can produce single-image earnings 10–100× higher than microstock equivalents, but the gating is real - most contributors will not access true Getty editorial pricing.
The honest summary: nobody gets rich on a single platform anymore. The math works for diversified contributors who upload consistently, tag well, and let scale and time compound. Multi-platform portfolios consistently outperform single-platform holdouts by a wide margin, primarily because each platform catches a different buyer-intent moment.
Metadata Workflow That Wins on All 3
The platform-specific guidance above only matters once your file-level metadata is correct. Here's the workflow that scales across all three:
- Shoot RAW, export to high-quality JPEG or TIFF. Both formats fully support IPTC and XMP metadata. PNG and WebP have known metadata limitations - avoid for stock submission.
- Keyword once in the file, not three times in web forms. Use Lightroom, Bridge, ExifTool, or a bulk tool to embed up to 50 IPTC keywords, the IPTC Description, Title, Creator, and Copyright Notice fields directly into the file.
- Order keywords by relevance. The first 5–7 keywords carry the most weight on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock. Lead with the dominant subject, then setting, then mood, then commercial use-case.
- Write the IPTC Description as a natural sentence. Not a keyword dump. Adobe Stock and Getty both penalize keyword-stuffed descriptions during review.
- Embed Copyright Notice in every file. This is your IP signature, and it survives platform downloads, screenshots, and reverse-image-search audits. The IPTC metadata fields breakdown details which fields each platform reads natively.
- Bulk export and bulk upload. All three platforms accept FTP or bulk web upload. The metadata travels with the file, so you tag once and upload many.
- Verify after upload. Spot-check the platform's displayed metadata against your file's embedded fields. Discrepancies usually mean a field-name mismatch - for example, IPTC "Keywords" versus XMP "Subject."
This workflow turns a 60-minute-per-image manual tagging session into something closer to 5 minutes per image, at scale. The throughput gain is what makes multi-platform distribution viable for solo contributors.
The Multi-Platform Strategy Most Contributors Miss
Here's the analysis stock photography blogs almost never publish: the three platforms aren't competing for the same dollar at the same moment. They're picking up different buyer intents.
Shutterstock catches the marketing-team-needs-an-image-by-Friday rush. Volume, speed, broad relevance.
Adobe Stock catches the designer-already-in-Photoshop moment. Considered selection, higher per-image willingness to pay, design-savvy buyer.
Getty catches the publication-needs-an-editorial-image-with-clean-rights moment. High-stakes, high-pay, high-bar.
A photographer who uploads only to Shutterstock chooses to compete against millions of contributors for the lowest-margin dollar. A photographer who uploads only to Getty chooses to compete for the highest-margin dollar but accepts a much smaller addressable market and stricter gating. A photographer who uploads to all three - without exclusivity - captures three intent moments from one production effort.
The reason most contributors don't run this pattern isn't strategic disagreement. It's friction. Triple-tagging every image in three web forms is exhausting. Embedding metadata at the file level - IPTC, XMP, EXIF - collapses that friction. The same image, with the same embedded fields, gets read correctly by all three platforms' ingestion systems.
That's the move. One file, correctly tagged, three revenue streams.
FAQ
Which platform pays photographers the most in 2026?
Per-license, Getty Images leads on premium editorial and rights-managed content. Per-image at volume, Adobe Stock's flat 33% commission tends to outperform Shutterstock subscription downloads. The highest total earnings come from contributors who upload to all three platforms non-exclusively.
Can I upload the same photo to Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and Getty?
Yes, provided you don't sign exclusivity with any of them. Non-exclusive contributors can submit the same content across all three platforms simultaneously. Exclusivity at Getty (or any platform) typically pays more per sale but locks the file out of competitors entirely.
Do all three platforms read IPTC and XMP metadata at upload?
Yes. Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and Getty all read embedded IPTC and XMP fields on JPEG and TIFF uploads. Keywords, Description, Title, Creator, and Copyright Notice are the most consistently read fields. PNG and WebP metadata support across the three platforms is uneven.
How many keywords should I use for stock photos?
Up to 50 on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock - but quality beats quantity. The first 5–7 keywords carry the most weight in the platforms' relevance models. Getty prefers fewer, more curatorially accurate keywords (often 10–30) with a strong IPTC Description.
Are AI-generated images accepted on stock platforms?
Adobe Stock accepts AI-generated content with disclosure and integrates Adobe Firefly. Shutterstock accepts AI-generated submissions through their AI program. Getty Images has generally restricted AI-generated content from its main library, with some evolving policy. Always check the current submission guidelines per platform before uploading.
What metadata fields matter most for stock photo SEO?
IPTC Keywords (first 7 most weighted), IPTC Description, Title/Headline, and Creator. Adobe XMP fields mirror most IPTC fields. Embedding these once into the file means all three platforms read them natively without re-tagging in web forms.
Should I shoot for stock exclusively for one platform?
Only if the exclusivity bonus beats the lost income from the other two platforms. For most contributors below the top earning tiers, non-exclusive multi-platform distribution outperforms exclusivity. Run the math on your current monthly earnings before signing anything binding.
The bottom line
The "which platform is best" framing is the wrong question. The right question is which combination - with which workflow - captures the most intent moments for your specific portfolio. Shutterstock for volume. Adobe Stock for per-image return. Getty for premium licensing. Metadata embedded at the file level, not retyped per platform, is the operational unlock that makes a three-platform strategy realistic instead of exhausting.
Stop tagging the same image three times. Embed IPTC keywords, Description, Creator, and Copyright Notice directly into your files in bulk, then upload everywhere at once. Compare all plans and pick the right tier for your portfolio volume - built specifically for multi-platform stock contributors in 2026.