It doesn’t matter whether you are a digital artist, video editor, web developer, or graphic designer; as long as you work in fields that require digital assets, it’s guaranteed you have heard a lot about Envato Elements and Freepik. These two websites are among the most popular and frequently used digital asset marketplaces available on the internet.
If you are looking for stock images, sound effects, videos, or vectors; these two websites will never fail to provide you with the best option. Which makes many of their customers wonder which is the best marketplace for them. Moreover, both sites have high-quality items, which makes this competition even tougher and increases the confusion among their customers.
Of course, you can use both marketplaces if you have enough money, but newbies have limited money and options, so they must choose the best one. So, if you are one of those people, then make sure to read this article till the end since here we are going to do a complete comparison between Envato Elements and Freepik!
Envato vs Freepik: Main Difference
Although both Envato Elements and Freepik are digital asset marketplaces, both have some things that make them different from each other. Here are some of the main differences between the two sites:
Envato Elements
- Often used for photos, videos, sounds, and music
- Has better mockups
- A better option for fonts
- Has its own designing tool known as Placeit
Freepik
- Well-known for stock images and vectors
- Not a good option for mockups
- Doesn’t have a design tool
- Has cheaper prices and subscription plans
What is Envato Elements?
Envato Elements is a popular design service with 60 million monthly visitors that provides its customers with thousands of digital assets. From images, stock videos, audio, music, mockups, and fonts, every digital asset is available in this marketplace for designers and web developers.
Furthermore, it’s a subscription-based website, which means you need to buy an Envato Elements subscription to get access to its best assets and services. However, a free version is available as well, but it doesn’t have as many options as the paid version, so purchasing the premium version is a must if you want unlimited items.
What Is Freepik?
Just like Envato, Freepik is another famous digital asset market that has provided its customers with thousands of stock photos, vectors, icons, and videos over the years. However, unlike Envato, it’s mainly known for its free images because of its name and because it used stock photos at the start.
Freepik has a free version, but the assets provided in it don’t actually belong to you since others can use them as well. That’s why their premium version is often used, which has assets limited only to their subscribers. An interesting fact about this website is that it’s often used by newbies and people who have just started learning design because it has a huge amount of free resources to use.
Pricing & Plans: Envato vs Freepik
As mentioned earlier, both platforms are subscription-based marketplaces, so to get their best services, you must subscribe. Let’s take a look at their plans and pricing.
Envato Elements
Envato offers only a single plan, which starts at $16.50/month. This plan provides you access to:
- Daily unlimited with no limits
- Resources and assets for commercial and personal use
- Access to millions of assets
- Can be canceled anytime
Further, Envato’s plan divides into three different plans, which are:
- Individual Plan
The individual plan is especially for freelancers or people who work alone; with this subscription, you get two choices: monthly payment or annual payment. If you choose the monthly plan, it costs $33/month and lasts for one month. while the annual plan is $16.50/month.
- Student Plan
The student plan is especially for students, where you get a 30% discount and it costs $11.50/month. But you need to verify that you are a student to get this plan.
- Team Plan
Great for groups, teams, and companies. However, its cost depends on the number of team members; the more members you have, the cheaper it is. It can go anywhere from $1.75/month to $14.50/month.
Envato offers a 7-day trial plan too, which is free to use and allows access to almost everything you will receive in their normal plans. All this easily proves the annual plan of Envato is a way better option than other plans because it easily saves a lot of money.
Freepik
Unlike Envato, Freepik has two straightforward plans that provide the following benefits:
- Thousands of free assets
- Premium stock pictures and videos
- In-built icon editor
- Thousands of vectors, icons, and stickers
- Unlimited downloads and collection
The two plans of Freepik are a monthly plan starting at $16.09/month and an annual plan at $115/month. Unlike Envato, Freepik’s monthly plan is better because it’s way cheaper than the annual plan and provides the same resources.
Lastly, Freepik doesn’t have a free or trial plan, but you can use the platform as a free user. However, this idea is not recommended as it has a lot of limitations.
Pricing And Plans: Results
Envato easily wins this because it has cheaper annual and monthly plans, you get an excess of many useful items, and buying it with a team greatly decreases its amount.
No. Of Files & Downloads: Envato vs Freepik
The number of files also matters when you are working on large projects, so here’s how many files you can download from both websites in a day:
Envato
As a subscribed user, you can easily download unlimited fonts, images, videos, and music without any limits. You can download them anytime and as many times as you want.
Freepik
Users who haven’t registered on Freepik get to download only images per day; free users get only 10 downloads a day, while premium users get 100 image downloads per day. which easily tells us Freepik has more limitations.
No. Of Files & Downloads: Results
Envato obviously wins this, as no matter what plan you are using, you are allowed to download unlimited images and other resources. Freepik allows really limited downloads of resources, which can be a problem for those who work on bug projects often but may be a good option for newbies.
License: Envato vs. Freepik
Licenses allow you to freely use these platforms’ content for your own work, so let’s see which market has the best licenses!
Envato
With the Envato license, you can:
- Permission to use your asset for lifetime
- Permission to keep licenses even after subscription ends
- Use any asset for commercial and personal use
Things you can’t do with an Envato license:
- Can’t be resold as an item or resource
- You cannot claim an item’s rights
- You can’t use items that aren’t registered for a specific project
Freepik
Freepik licenses are way more straightforward when compared with Envato, since if you are a free user on Freepik, you can use their items for personal or commercial use, but you must give them credit. However, if you are a premium user, you don’t need to do this and can use the items however you want.
License: Results
Since Freepik has almost no limitations with their license, they easily win this round. Envato’s license is good too, but after your subscription ends, you need to deal with many limitations.
Envato vs Freepik: Final Verdict
Although both platforms try their best to satisfy their customers, only one can be the winner, and that is Envato!
Envato doesn’t only have quality resources but also better pricing and an unlimited number of downloads, which easily keep it standing out from the crowd.
But that doesn’t mean Freepik is bad; it’s a great option for stock images, icons, and vectors and has way better licensing than Envato. So if you are an experienced team or freelancer, then you should go for Envato, and if you are new to the design world, then choose Freepik.
Frequently Asked Questions
In terms of prices and better resources, yes! Freepik is a better option for stock images and vectors.
No, you need to buy their monthly or annual subscription to get the benefits of their services. But there’s a free 7-day trial plan too, which allows you to use almost all the services you will receive in the premium plans.
Unfortunately, you cannot use Envato for merchandise like T-shirts. If you use Envato, then you must make sure you don’t use their items as the main value.
Yes, Freepik images are completely free to use for commercial and personal purposes, but you need to give them attributes.
