shutterstock

About shutterstock

The Shutterstock API provides programmatic access to Shutterstock's media library, covering search, licensing, and download of images, videos, audio tracks, sound effects, and editorial (news) images and videos. It supports search-related features such as keyword suggestions, similar and recommended results, category listings, bulk searches, and computer vision-based search. Authentication is available via both basic authentication and OAuth, with OAuth scopes controlling access to specific functionality.

Beyond search and licensing, the API includes endpoints for organizing media into collections (create, rename, delete, list, and manage contents) across images, video, audio, and catalog assets, as well as endpoints for redownloading previously licensed media and retrieving download history. A Generative API (beta) allows generating images from text prompts, licensing generated images, and submitting them for IP review. A Users API exposes account-level details such as access token information and subscription data, and a Contributors API returns information about content contributors and their collections.

This reference is intended for developers integrating stock media search, licensing, and asset management into applications, including those using cURL, Node.js, or PHP, or accessing the API through a CLI.

Key features

• Search and license images, videos, audio tracks, and sound effects
• Computer vision search including image upload and similar-image lookup
• Generate images from text prompts via the Generative API (beta)
• Organize licensed media into collections
• OAuth and basic authentication with token refresh support
• Bulk and catalog search across multiple assets at once

Frequently asked questions