---
title: 'Best Stock Video Footage Sites for Royalty-Free Video: Complete Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=HXIWcTjIM_I'
video_id: 'HXIWcTjIM_I'
date: 2026-07-29
duration_sec: 1082
---

# Best Stock Video Footage Sites for Royalty-Free Video: Complete Review

> Source: [Best Stock Video Footage Sites for Royalty-Free Video: Complete Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HXIWcTjIM_I)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive review of free and paid stock video footage sites, including Pexels, Pixel Bay, Envato Elements, Artlist, and Storyblocks. The host compares their libraries, licensing, and pricing, and also introduces Runway ML as an AI video generation tool. The goal is to help content creators find high-quality, royalty-free clips for their projects.

### Key Points

- **Free Stock Video Sites: Pexels and Pixel Bay** [00:01] — Both offer extensive libraries of royalty-free videos with simple licensing: free to use without attribution, though giving credit is appreciated. Users can download various quality levels for each clip.
- **Paid Option 1: Envato Elements** [03:11] — All-in-one subscription ($16.50/month) with 5.8 million stock footage clips, plus video templates, music, sound effects, and graphics. Licensing is straightforward: one commercial license for all items, but clips must be registered per use.
- **Paid Option 2: Artlist** [07:14] — Originally a music site, now offers cinematic stock footage. Features advanced filtering (theme, shot type, people count). Two plans: Social ($9.99/month for music/SFX) and Pro ($65.80/month for client work). Best value is Artlist Max ($39.99/month) for footage, music, and AI voiceovers.
- **Paid Option 3: Storyblocks** [10:48] — Offers stock footage, templates, music, and SFX. Notable for Adobe Premiere plugin that integrates directly into the editing workflow. Pricing: Startup plan (5 HD downloads/month), Unlimited All Access ($30/month), and Unlimited Plus with plugin ($35/month).
- **Recommendations Summary** [13:48] — For free, use Pexels or Pixel Bay. For paid, choose based on library relevance to your niche: Envato Elements for templates, Artlist for cinematic quality, Storyblocks for Premiere integration. Consider the included music and templates.
- **AI Video Generator: Runway ML** [15:09] — Generates unique video clips from text prompts or images, offering full creative control. Examples include creatures, firefighters, and beach sunsets. The technology is rapidly improving and can complement or replace stock footage.

### Conclusion

Whether you choose free sites like Pexels and Pixel Bay or paid subscriptions like Envato Elements, Artlist, or Storyblocks, there are excellent options for royalty-free stock footage. For unique clips, AI video generators like Runway ML offer a futuristic alternative.

## Transcript

sites right now from free stock video options right up to premium paid subscriptions here's where to find awesome royalty-free videos for YouTube stick around cuz I'll also share with you my number one AI video generator
tool as well which you can use to generate short video clips to use as b-roll or overlays in your video so jumping right in looking at the free options I've got two options for you the first one is pixel Bay the second one is
pixels both of these are really really good free options there's so many similarities between these two and unlike a lot of the free options out there these two make the whole licensing thing really really easy and that's
content especially stuff that we want to monetize and know that we're not going want to make sure that you're compliant with all of the legal licensing stuff so over here to our drop down we want to make sure we got video selected and then
we just go ahead and search for what we're looking for so let's go Beach Sunset so we can see here we've got 44.9 th000 search results here and these this clip here we could just come up
here to free download and we got a bunch of different options in terms of quality and these are on a clip by clip basis so some of them might be lower quality some going to come down to that individual clip likewise with pixel Bay very very
similar we're not just limited though to images or videos you can see that there are photos illustrations vectors videos music sound effects gifts on here as well so we're going to pick videos let's go to beach sunset in this case it says
we got 9,000 results here for this specific search you do want to watch out sponsored so these ones here are paid got the royalty free videos which are from this provider and we just put our
those clips for us so here's a nice Beach Sunset shot we can click on that again we've got our options to download very very similar we pick our download quality and we can download the clip in terms of the licensing side of things we
can see here free for use under the pixel Bay content license if we click on this then we can see here the content is free for use we can use the content here without having to attribute the author but it does say although giving credit
and you also have the ability to modify or adapt the content into new works you can't do it's pretty much on selling or using it in a way that's illegal or
immoral but I like how straightforward this is and this is exactly the same for pixels as well go back to our clip here we can see this one here is free to use all photos and videos on pixels are free to use attribution is not required but
it's a nice thing to do it's appreciated and you can modify the videos and photos from pixels be creative and edit them as you like again same sort of things for what you can't do but I like how simple and how streamlined this is all right so
now normally the biggest differences you'll find with the free versus paid is on the paid side the search functionalities are far more detailed control but also generally you'll find that they have much larger libraries and
choose from and in a lot of cases as well they can be higher quality so for this category I've actually got three top picks or three top recommendations the first one option number one is invado elements and this is so much more
can see here we got stock video video templates photos royalty-free music as well sound effects templates for graphics 3D stuff presentation templates
stuff on here so we're going to come up the top here though we're going to go to stock video let's go to stock footage so we got our search box at the top here and we can see that our stock footage Library here is 5.8 million Clips so
there's a lot in there let's go again Beach Sunset and we can see now that we can refine this search even more so there's building things there's corporate business lots of different categories we can also specify the
that we're looking for also the frame rate and how long the clips go for we but I normally like to leave it on relevant cuz it's what they think is we've just done so you can see there's a lot of results here in terms of Beach
over them and you get to preview these suggestions for Searchers down here as well for different tags that might be you're searching for but again the process for downloading is very much the
can preview it big now I'm not even signed in here at the moment but we have the ability to download a preview so we can download the clip with the watermark on it here so we can actually use it in our edit we can make sure that this clip
is exactly what we want and that it works with the rest of our video and then we can come back in here and we can subscribe or purchase this clip to then use it but I also like that you can add them to collections so you could have
folders with different clips that you're favoring so you can access them really really quickly and in terms of pricing to purchase these clips then you can see here they have unlimited downloads from $16.50 per month where you're able to
access 19 plus million premium assets and templates video audio graphics and photos more with a lifetime commercial license and you can cancel any time because again it's not just the stock footage here there's a bunch of other
things that you get access to in here and this is why we absolutely love inv element is things like even the video templates are awesome like this is our top recommended site if you're looking for animated text or video intros or
that you can download you can customize up you can see here video templates Da Vinci resolve there's lots of awesome stuff that you can just download install on your computer and use in your videos and the other big thing again is the
licensing site these guys make it really really easy you can see here they even say making it easy it's one simple commercial license all items on invado elements have the same simple license terms you get broad commercial rights so
you can use your items with confidence on work or personal projects one thing stock footage is that you can download and use the clips but you do need to register the items each time you use them so let's just say you downloaded it
wanted to use it on another you do need to log back in and you need to go to your downloads section here and you can just simply register that clip as another use for another video and one of the questions we get asked a lot in the
comments on these videos is what happens if I cancel my subscription well they have that here too future proof licensing even if you unsubscribe so if you're unsubscribed you can no longer use items from invado elements but any
registered and have already used like in your videos they're all covered so you're able to use this stuff while you have a license and for anything that you've made but once you cancel you can't use those clips and things in New
lot of these tools here so I think this is a great all-in-one subscription not just covering the stock footage but covering your music your sound effects templates so that was option number one option number two is Art list and this
one actually started as a music site and it's one of our top picks for where we go for music for our videos but they've also now got an amazing stock footage Library too as well as other things like sound effects like your video templates
like some amazing video editing PL plugins so lots of similarities to what we saw with invid elements so let's again come over here to footage and let's run our same search here Beach Sunset we can see that we got a lot of
related clips and I really like that these ones here like you can see that all of these clips here so far really are related to our search which is here and we can choose our video theme to again narrow this down our search we
can also specify our shot type I'll be looking for raw footage log footage for do we want something with movement closeup so this is next level filtering and there's also an option here to choose if we want people so we know no
people or what type of people do we want adult female elderly children one person two people there's lots of different ways we can categorize the footage that we're looking for here too but in terms of the footage itself I'll also say that
to me this is next level this is much more cinematic much more professional grade footage I mean look at this stuff this is awesome like this one nice movement uh let's keep going down all of these are exactly what we typed in this
one's got some people in it a nice like drone following shot so to me these are Next Level these are more cinematic grade clips even some time lapses here the licensing piece is really really straightforward really really simple
and there's two plans here to choose from social and pro and we can see where you can actually use these clips and how many social profiles and all of that suited for you so the social one here is
for one social Channel per platform whereas the pro is up to three channels per social platform unlimited videos on any channel both of these can be monetized so you can use your clips and monetize that content but only the Pro
Plan here or the pro license is for client work for paid and promoted videos and for broadcast as well and the way they manage the licensing too is you'll just enter your social profiles like your YouTube Chanel Channel ID and Link
it with your art list account and then that keeps you compliant there make sure that you don't have any issues so in regards to pricing then there's actually what it is you're after or there is an all-in-one subscription offer which is
the best bang for buck so if you just want the footage and the templates it says here for Freelancers content creators and companies of up to 50 people then you can access just that for $29.99 per month build annually and that
includes the pro license cover so that's for footage and that's for video templates if you just want the AI voiceovers that's an option if you just want music and sound effects then you can choose here just the music and sound
effects at $9.99 per month on that social personal license or if you need social personal license or if you need the pro license then that's $658 a month want the music and sound effects the AI voiceovers and the footage and templates
this is where I think the best value is is the art list Max subscription giving you all of it for $3 9.99 per month build annually so again it's going to obviously your budget here as well but
art list is also one of our top picks for stock music sites and where we go for a lot of the music on our YouTube channel so being able to bundle that with amazing stock footage is a great option so that brings us then to option
this is another one that we've been using a lot on our channel for years so again this is very similar to what we saw with invado elements and also art list and art list Max in that yes it does have stock footage but also it's
can see at the top here we got stock media so we've got video so stock footage animated backgrounds we've got templates in here as well and there's royalty-free music and sound effects and images as well one of the standout
features for me though with story blocks is their Adobe Premiere plug-in so for premere this makes it really really quick and easy to integrate story blocks into your workflow to quickly find from within premere Clips audio files and
quickly into your timeline so personally I think that is an amazing feature but up here we got our search at the top we've got it on video let's run our same search Beach Sunset and we come down here and looking at these I mean these
are all exactly what we've typed in which is good and really it's a good mix there is some of the higher end more cinematic shots in here but then there's also some I guess more amateur style Clips in here as well coming back to the
top we can filter our search so if we hit filters up here we can change the something else we can specify our resolution HD or 4K we can also pick our frame rate and duration so we've got a good amount of filtering here not as
much as we had with art list and we can also change our sorting here as well and there's other suggestions here for our search to help us get better results if for clicking on a clip again we get options to download in all different
types of formats we can download the watermarked version here that we can use that it's a fit before we come over here and grab our license for it so you can see the workflow from all of these are very very similar but to me story blocks
probably has the most comprehensive library in terms of the stuff that I've for it's one that we keep coming back to and going to sound like a broken record but again of course the licensing is really straightforward too but in terms
of pricing there is a few different options there is a startup plan here which gives you five monthly downloads of HD footage on this plan though you won't be able to access the video templates or that awesome Adobe plugin
there up from that you've got unlimited all access which is $30 per month build annually this does give you unlimited downloads so it's a huge step up there 4K and HD all the music video templates and everything but it doesn't include
that plugin again if you're an adobe Premier user that plugin is awesome so for $5 extra a month and I do think if you're using it it is worth it you get the same the unlimited access but you also get the Adobe Creative Cloud
plug-in too so really quickly before we get to the AI video generator tool a quick summary of what my recommendations would be if you're after free stock footage then you really can't go wrong with either pexels or pixel Bay or both
and then from there narrowing it down your options really become invado elements art list or story blocks and really you can't go wrong with any one of these three but what I'd suggest you do from here to narrow this down is to
browse through the footage libraries of each of the different ones to see what types of Clips come up that would be relevant for you and the content that find the right footage that's going to
Services might have more results specific to your Niche your type of content than others so that would be my biggest determining Factor as to which one I went for here is how much of this footage am I actually going to be able
to use in my content and then second to that I'd look at the rest of the invado elements and story blocks are probably the two that are the most similar in terms of usability in terms of the library size the quality of the
content the included music and templates and all of that stuff the motion graphic templates I think a second to none on inv elements if you're after those then would be looking at I think in terms of stock music quality for invado and for
pretty much on par Maybe story blocks is footage at least for the searches that I've run whereas in my opinion art list on the other hand is probably a step up in terms of Music quality in terms of
footage quality as well I do think it is next level when comparing it to the video that I wanted to include in this video are some of the AI tools that are out there there's so many now that would generate amazing looking videos just
from a text prompt or just from an image that you upload so we've tried and tested so many of the top options out there we've got a full video breakdown of the different options I'll link down below but my top pick right now is
Runway ML and this is another one of those services that is so much more than just the video generation in this case there's lots of other tools and things their website and seeing some of the clips and examples and things on here
that are generated by AI either from text or from an image are just crazy so you might find that if you're looking for a specific clip that you want for your videos that this actually could could be a really good option for you
where you're creating something totally unique and exactly what you're after instead of trying to find it as a stock clip on one of those other sites so just creature walking through a corn field a gorilla walking through the jungle a
firefighter walking through a burning building an MMA fighter walking into the ring like pretty crazy that these are generated just from a simple text prompt like that and you've even got the ability in here to as they say direct
everything to really give specific Direction and instructions as to what you actually want to have happen in these clips so just for an example we'll beach sunset with waves breaking on the
shore again we could really specify is this a drone shot is this a cinematic shot what's the light doing are there people in it we could really get got back here for the beach sunset we just hit play on
obviously I can add extra context in here for this to be realistic oh wow it's actually going into night that looks pretty cool so for two words pause it there we can see all the stars and everything not a bad little clip
one here it kind of looks a little cartoony here to start with but let's cartoony here to start with but let's hit beach sunset with waves breaking on the shore and it actually does look pretty
want we could add words like photorealistic or cinematic and really AI technology I think it is going to change the game moving forward but already where this stuff is now versus where it was a year ago or even 6 months
ago it's crazy but also a little scary too but those are my top picks for stock the comments what's your top pick is there something that you're using that I if you're looking for the best stock music sites check out the video linked
on screen as always there's a bunch of other links and resources down in the further and I will see you in the next video