I've been a little more vocal recently about our intention to build a premium image hosting service. We are still in the planning stage of that endeavor but I wanted to spend some time to perform market research on image hosting services currently available to people.
I've gathered a list of image hosting services and will be using this list as the foundation for our investigation.
Feature comparison
Comparing cheapest option for all paid services. There's an entire class of general purpose object storage services (S3, R2, etc.) that I do want to investigate but their pricing model (pay for use) are different from most of these so I'm going to ignore them for now. However I do want to acknowldege that they can be used for image hosting.
| service | price | file size | total storage size | num file types | ads | compressed | resized | bundled | permanent | api | hotlinks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| photos.google.com | $1.67/mo (1 yr plan) | 200MB | 100GB | 9 | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| dropbox.com | $10/mo (1 yr plan) | 100GB | 2TB | All | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| imgur.com | $5/mo | 20MB/200MB* | Unlimited | 14 | no | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | no |
| snap.as | $6/mo | 50MB | Unlimited | ?? | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| lensdump.com | $2/mo | 100MB | Unlimited | 5 | no | no | no | no | yes | yes | no |
| postimages.org | $3.49/mo (3 yr plan) | 48MB | Unlimited | ?? | no | no | no | no | yes | no | yes |
| flickr.com | $5.99/mo (1 yr plan) | 200MB | Unlimited | 4 | no | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes |
| photobucket.com | $5.41/mo (1 yr plan) | ?? | 25GB | 4 | no | no | no | no | yes | no | yes |
| imageshack.com | $3.16/mo (1 yr plan) | 25MB | Unlimited | 5 | no | no | no | no | yes | no | yes |
| catbox.moe | Free | 200MB | Unlimited | All - 5 | no | no | no | no | yes | yes | no |
- *imgur: 20MB img, 200MB gif
Summary
Out of all of these services and considering their overall aethetic, price, features, and ease of use, there's a couple that I like.
snap.as
I really like the aesthetic. This is very close to what we are probably going to implement. A very minimalist web site that shows the essentials that also nicely integrates with their other services.
catbox.moe
As far as I can tell this service is being run by a single person, on their own hardware, in a colo. Their monthly bill is reaching $1k/mo and a good portion of it they are funding themselves. I'm definitely impressed by this service.
Pricing
- photos.google.com
- $1.67/mo (1 yr plan)
- imgur.com
- $5/mo (via Coil)
- snap.as
- $6/mo billed annually or
- $9/mo month-to-month
- 0x0.st
- Free
- lensdump.com
- $2/mo
- $7/mo
- $18/mo
- postimages.org
- Free
- $3.49/mo (3 year plan)
- $6.99/mo (1 year plan)
- $11.95/mo (1 month plan)
- cubeupload.com
- Free
- Donate
- flickr.com
- $8.25/mo (plus tax)
- $5.99/mo, total $71.99 (plus tax, 1 year plan)
- $5.54/mo, total $132.99 (plus tax, 2 year plan)
- photobucket.com
- $6/mo (or $65/yr)
- $8/mo (or $87/yr)
- $13/mo (or $141/yr)
- imageshack.com
- $3/mo (or $37.99/yr)
- $29.99/mo (or $285.99/yr)
- $99.99/mo (or $953.99/yr)
- kek.gg
- Free
- imgchest.com
- Free
- catbox.moe
- Free
- Donation
- $900/mo server bills
- vgy.me
- Free
- Donation
- imgbox.com
- Free
- imgpile.com
- Ads
- bayimg.com
- Donation
- BTC
- Donation
Premium Features
- imgur.com
- Ad-free
- Permenant
- snap.as
- Purchased via write.as pro
- For professional photographer or hobbyist
- Share photos on the internet
- Photo albums
- Captions
- No ads
- CLI
- Permenant
- 0x0.st
- Max file size: 512.0 MB
- Blocked file types: application/x-dosexec, application/x-executable, application/x-hdf5, application/java-archive, Android APKs and system images
- Files are valid between 30 days and a year depending on the size of the file
- lensdump.com
- $2/mo
- You get good karma in return
- Every penny counts
- Helps us stay ad free
- Skip automated image moderation
- $7/mo
- Everything in prev plan
- Hotlink image assets as CDN
- Commercial usage allowed
- $18/mo
- Sharex and API access
- $2/mo
- postimages.org
- Free
- Advertising enabled
- Hotlinks downscaled to 1280px
- Max 24Mb file size
- Premium
- Unlimited Image Hosting
- Advertising disabled for you and visitors of your images
- Hotlink images in original resolution
- Max 48Mb file size
- Free
- cubeupload.com
- At the moment we accept .JPG, .PNG, and .GIF
- 5MB in size
- Never compress these formats or mess with your image
- .BMP and .PDF are also accepted, but they convert them to .PNG
- flickr.com
- Unlimited storage
- Full resolution
- Ad-Free Browsing
- Advanced Stats
- Partner Discounts
- Stats on your photo views
- Ad-free browsing and sharing on Flickr
- Desktop & Mobile Auto-Uploadr automatically backing-up images
- Ability to use specific commercial activity to promote your business and products
- Premier Product Support
- Advanced Stats on Mobile
- 6K Photo Display Option
- 10-Minute Videos
- Share more of your photos in Groups. Post your photo in up to 60 groups when limits are posted. Free accounts have a 30 group limit.
- photobucket.com
- No compression
- Private encryption
- Visibility controls
- EXIF data removal
- The embed link means you keep control of your photos, no matter where they end up.
- $6/mo (or $65/yr)
- 25 GB
- $8/mo
- 250 GB
- Unlimited hosting
- $13/mo
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited hosting
- imageshack.com
- 25MB file size per image
- Privacy controls
- Easy to grab links
- Image stats
- Unlimited space
- Ad and spam free
- Embed photos on other websites
- Free mobile app
- Basic
- Unlimited Space
- Direct Linking
- Image Stats
- Watermarking
- Automatic Backups
- Mobile App
- Pro
- Everything in Basic plan
- Between 30Gb to 1Tb of bandwidth per month, equivalent to up to ~1 million views of a 1Mb file.
- Dedicated Support
- Dynamic Image Resizer
- API Access
- Premium
- Everything in Pro plan
- Between 1Tb to 4Tb of bandwidth per month, equivalent to up to ~4.2 million views of a 1Mb file.
- kek.gg
- EXIF Data is removed
- does not use cookies
- does not associate user data with images
- does not use Google Analytics or any third party tracking service
- Albume hosting
- imgchest.com
- Upload 20 pictures at one time
- API
- 60 requests per hour
- Sharex integration
- Ad-free
- https://www.patreon.com/imagechest/creators
- catbox.moe
- 200MB filesize
- The following file types are currently not allowed: .exe, .scr, .cpl, .doc*, .jar
- API
- ShareX
- vgy.me
- API
- 20 MB per image
- No videos
- EXIF data removed
- jpg, jpeg, png, gif
- ShareX
- imgbox.com
- 10 MB per image
- jpg, jpeg, png, gif
- Unlimited storage space
- Unlimited storage time
- imgpile.com
- Hotlinking
- 100 MB file size
- Served via CDN
- bayimg.com
- 100 MB file size
- 140 different file extensions
- Uncensored