Artgrid alternatives
Artgrid sells consistency: footage shot in series, curated hard, and licensed cleanly, at a price that assumes you bill clients. If the price is the problem, the honest question is which part of that you can give up. Six alternatives below, including ours, sorted by what you keep and what you lose.
We run one of the libraries listed, so treat our entry with the scepticism it deserves. We have tried to describe its limits as plainly as everyone else's.
1. Storyblocks
Paid subscriptionVolume for the price of polish
Strong: Unlimited downloads on a subscription that costs less than Artgrid, with a much broader catalogue of everyday subjects: offices, food, cities, screens.
Weak: The catalogue is a marketplace, not a curated set, so quality and style swing clip to clip. You trade Artgrid's consistency for breadth and have to grade your way back.
2. Envato Elements
Paid subscriptionFootage plus everything around it
Strong: One subscription covers stock video alongside templates, music, graphics and fonts, so a whole project can be assembled from one account.
Weak: Footage is one aisle of a very large shop, and the video catalogue is shallower than a footage-first library. Licensing is tied to registering each use while subscribed.
3. Pexels
FreeThe free option to try before paying anyone
Strong: Free for commercial use, no account, no attribution, and the biggest free catalogue there is. For common subjects it can stand in for a paid library entirely.
Weak: No curation and no series: every clip comes from a different shooter, so building a sequence that looks like one production takes a long search. The opposite of what Artgrid sells.
4. Mixkit
FreeA small free library that leans cinematic
Strong: Curated rather than dumped, with plain licence terms and a noticeable lean toward moody, graded footage. The closest free approximation of the Artgrid look.
Weak: The catalogue is small, so it runs out fast on specific subjects. It also exists partly to funnel you toward Envato Elements.
5. Coverr
FreeBackground loops without the licence anxiety
Strong: Curated short loops that sit well behind titles and interfaces, downloadable without an account.
Weak: Narrow by design. If you came to Artgrid for story-driven footage of people and places, Coverr does not have it.
6. Supareels
FreeMatched sets of a scene, free
Strong: 66 hand-picked HD clips across 8 collections, free with no account and no watermark. Clips are generated per scene rather than gathered from many shooters, so a collection cuts together the way an Artgrid series does, and several scenes come in day, sunset and night versions of the identical framing.
Weak: A small library with a narrow range: outdoor scenes, atmosphere and overlays. Clips are AI-generated, so there is no documentary footage of real places or people, which is a large part of what Artgrid is for.
Browse the collectionsHow to choose
- Client films where the footage is the product? Stay on Artgrid, or move to Envato Elements if you also buy templates and music every month. The consistency is what you are paying for.
- Volume work: social, ads, faceless channels? Storyblocks covers more subjects for less. The style mismatch between clips matters less at social pacing.
- Atmosphere shots for a handful of projects? Go free first. Mixkit for the graded look, Pexels for coverage, and our collections when several shots of one scene need to cut together.
More comparisons: Storyblocks alternatives · Videvo alternatives · Envato Elements alternatives
Free clips, no account
Read the licence terms or compare the free b-roll sites.