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