Artgrid, Artlist, Envato Elements and Motion Array all advertise "unlimited downloads" — but they split video and music into separate contracts in different ways, cap downloads per day, and treat your finished projects very differently after you cancel. This guide compares them on the license, not the marketing.
Billed annually — Artgrid is annual-only. Music is not included at any tier.
Music & SFX Social, billed annually. Client work needs a Pro plan; footage is a separate plan or the Max bundle.
Core plan, billed annually ($198/year). One subscription covers video, music, photos, graphics, fonts and templates.
Video Templates plan, billed annually (templates only). The Everything plan with footage and music is $24.99/mo billed annually.
| Artgrid | Artlist | Envato Elements | Motion Array | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What the subscription is | Stock footage only | Music/SFX and footage sold as separate plans, or bundled in Max | All media in one: video, music, photos, graphics, fonts, templates, 3D | Video-production assets: templates, footage, music, SFX, photos, plugins |
| Entry price (annual billing) | Junior $19.99/mo ($239.90/yr) | Music & SFX Social $9.99/mo ($119.88/yr) | Core $16.50/mo ($198/yr) | Video Templates $15.99/mo; Everything $24.99/mo |
| Price to get video + music together | Not possible — no music at any tier; you'd need a second service | Max from $39.99/mo ($479.88/yr), or two plans totaling $682.92/yr | Included in Core at $16.50/mo — no second contract | Included in Everything at $24.99/mo ($299.88/yr) |
| Monthly billing | No — annual only | Only on the Social plan ($14.99/mo); Pro plans and Max are annual-only | Yes, at a higher monthly rate than the annual plan | Yes — Everything $39.99/mo, Video Templates $23.99/mo |
| "Unlimited" downloads — the fine print | Marketed as unlimited; the license documentation references a cap of up to 100 downloads per day | Daily caps by category (e.g. up to 100 footage clips, 40 songs, 100 SFX per day, per published help information) | Unlimited stock downloads, subject to the fair use policy; AI generations are capped separately by tier | Terms of service cap downloads at 150 items per day; bulk downloading for future use ("warehousing") is prohibited |
| Client work & paid ads | Covered by the universal license on all tiers | Only on Pro plans and Max. The $9.99 Social plan is your own channels only — no client work, no paid ads | Covered under the single commercial license, per registered project | Covered on paid plans; you deliver finished work, not the raw asset files |
| Broadcast (TV / radio) | Published license describes coverage for all platforms, including broadcast | Covered on Pro plans (websites, broadcast/TV, film per the published license tiers) | Music cannot be used for broadcast presentations under the subscription license; check each asset category — sound effects are treated differently | Ads and broadcast use are broadly included in the terms, with exceptions (e.g. broadcasters themselves, out-of-home/billboard ads); companies with 50+ employees need the Business license |
| After you cancel | Marketed as lifetime use of downloaded clips — but read the current license text before relying on it (see detail section) | Projects created and published while subscribed stay covered. Downloaded assets cannot be used in new or unpublished projects | Projects you licensed and completed stay covered. You cannot use downloaded items in new projects, or re-use an item in a different project | Projects completed and published while subscribed stay covered. Downloaded assets cannot be used in new or unpublished projects |
| Ownership note | Artgrid, Artlist and Motion Array are all part of the same group (Artlist Ltd; Motion Array was acquired in 2020). Artgrid and Artlist draw on the same footage catalog — subscribing to both duplicates footage. | Envato Elements is independent of that group | ||
Prices are USD, before tax, as published in November 2026. Artlist Max is tiered by AI credit allowance, so $39.99/mo is the starting tier. Envato Elements restructured into Core / Plus / Ultimate tiers in 2026; the tiers differ mainly in AI generation credits, while stock downloads and the license are the same — this guide compares the Core tier. Plans and license terms change — always confirm the current price and license text on the vendor's site before you buy. This summary is not legal advice.
Catalog sizes don't tell you what you'll pay per finished video — your output volume does. Here is the arithmetic on published annual prices, using one stated workload so you can rerun it with your own numbers: 8 videos a month (96 a year), each using 5 footage clips, 1 music track, 2 sound effects and 1 template — 864 assets a year.
| Contract pattern | Annual cost | Cost per video | Cost per asset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Envato Elements Core (everything included) | $16.50 × 12 = $198.00 | $2.06 | $0.23 |
| Motion Array Everything (everything included) | $24.99 × 12 = $299.88 | $3.12 | $0.35 |
| Artlist Max, starting tier (everything included) | $39.99 × 12 = $479.88 | $5.00 | $0.56 |
| Split: Artgrid Creator (footage) + Artlist Music & SFX Pro (music) | $359.88 + $299.04 = $658.92 | $6.86 | — |
| Split inside Artlist: Footage & Templates + Music & SFX Pro | $383.88 + $299.04 = $682.92 | $7.11 | — |
Two conclusions fall out of the published prices alone. First, splitting contracts is the expensive pattern: buying Artlist's footage and music plans separately costs $682.92 a year, while the Max bundle that covers both starts at $479.88 — a difference of $203.04 a year, before counting the plugins and AI credits Max adds. Second, volume flips the verdict: at only 2 videos a month, the same annual fees work out to $8.25 per video on Envato Core, $12.50 on Motion Array Everything and $20.00 on Artlist Max. A subscription is a bulk discount — it only behaves like one if you publish enough to spread it.
One more check on the same workload: 40 footage clips and 8 tracks a month sits far below every service's daily cap, so for normal production pacing the caps don't bind. They bind on exactly one behavior — stockpiling downloads for later — which is also the behavior several licenses prohibit outright.
Artgrid sells one thing: stock footage, organized as individual clips and multi-clip "stories" shot as sets. The three annual-only plans differ by file format, not by license. Junior ($19.99/mo billed annually) is HD only. Creator ($29.99/mo) adds 4K–8K clips plus ProRes and DNxHR files. Pro ($49.92/mo) adds RAW and LOG footage for your own color grading. All tiers carry the same universal license and access to the full catalog, and Artgrid markets lifetime use of downloaded clips with coverage for all platforms worldwide, including commercial and client work. Two context points matter before you subscribe: Artgrid and Artlist now draw on the same footage catalog (over 400,000 clips per the group's own documentation), and Artgrid is being folded into Artlist — so an Artgrid subscription plus an Artlist footage plan is paying twice for the same clips. Also note the tension described in the FAQ below: Artgrid's "lifetime use" positioning is broader than the publish-while-subscribed rule its sister service now publishes, so for long-lived client work, read Artgrid's current license text itself rather than relying on the headline.
Artlist started as a music licensing service and it still prices like one: the catalog is split into separate stock contracts. Music & SFX Social ($9.99/mo billed annually, $14.99 monthly) covers music and sound effects for your own channels only — one channel per platform, no client work, no paid ads. Music & SFX Pro ($24.92/mo billed annually) is where commercial use starts: client projects, paid ads, websites and broadcast, up to three channels per platform (a music-only Pro variant is published at $16.58/mo). Footage is a different plan — Footage & Templates ($31.99/mo billed annually) for footage up to 8K, templates and LUTs, with RAW/LOG as a paid add-on — or the Max bundle (from $39.99/mo billed annually), which combines the full stock catalog with plugins and AI generation credits and undercuts buying the two stock plans separately ($682.92/yr) by about $203 a year. Artlist also sells separate AI generation plans; those are not stock subscriptions and aren't compared here. The license rule to plan around: coverage attaches to projects you create and publish while your subscription is active. Published work stays covered after you cancel; assets sitting in an unfinished project do not.
Envato Elements is the broadest library here and the simplest contract: Core ($16.50/mo billed annually, $198/year) includes unlimited downloads across stock video, music, sound effects, photos, graphics, fonts, video templates, presentation templates and 3D assets — video and music are not separate contracts, and there is no footage-format upsell. The 2026 tiers above Core (Plus, Ultimate) mainly add AI generation credits; the stock library and license are the same, so most video creators comparing stock subscriptions are comparing Core. The license is a single commercial license with one structural rule that shapes how you work: it is licensed per project. An item is licensed for the specific project you use it in; using the same item in a second project means licensing it again for that project, which you can only do while subscribed. Projects you licensed and completed stay covered after cancellation, but you can't start new projects with downloaded items. And the limit that matters most for marketers: subscription music cannot be used in broadcast presentations (TV/radio-type use) under the published license terms — online video and ads are a different question from broadcast, so check the license for your exact use rather than assuming the single license covers everything equally.
Motion Array is built around video post-production: templates and presets for the major editors, plus footage, music, SFX, photos, LUTs, plugins and workflow tools such as video review and a portfolio builder. Video Templates ($15.99/mo billed annually, $23.99 monthly) covers templates, motion graphics and presets only — no footage or music. Everything ($24.99/mo billed annually, $39.99 monthly) is the full library in one contract. The license covers commercial and client work in finished projects, and projects completed and published while subscribed remain covered after cancellation — the same publish-while-active logic as Artlist, which has owned Motion Array since 2020. Read the terms for the edges: downloads are capped at 150 items per day, downloading for contingent future use is prohibited, some uses sit outside the standard license (broadcasters themselves, out-of-home/billboard advertising), and companies with more than 50 employees are directed to the Business license rather than the standard subscription.
Footage only → Artgrid or a footage plan. Footage + music → you need either a bundle (Artlist Max, Motion Array Everything, Envato Core) or two contracts. Design assets too → only Envato Elements covers them in the same subscription.
Client work or paid ads rules out Artlist Social. Broadcast rules out Envato Elements music. Out-of-home ads and 50+ employee companies push Motion Array to custom terms. The cheapest plan that fails your main use case is not cheap.
Take last month's finished videos and the assets in each, then divide the annual fee by your yearly output, as in the table above. Below roughly two finished videos a month, per-item licensing or a monthly-billed plan can beat an annual subscription.
On Artlist, Motion Array and Envato Elements, cancelling protects published/registered work only — not your downloads folder. If you plan to cancel, finish, publish and register everything inside the subscription term. This page summarizes published terms and is not legal advice; the vendor's current license text governs your projects.
Not literally, on any of the four. Artlist publishes daily caps by category, Motion Array's terms cap downloads at 150 items per day, Artgrid's license documentation references a cap of up to 100 per day, and Envato Elements applies a fair use policy (its hard caps are on AI generations, by tier). For normal production — a few dozen assets a week — none of these bind. What they exist to stop is bulk downloading a library for later use, which several terms also prohibit by name.
On Artlist and Motion Array, projects you completed and published while subscribed stay covered; assets in new or unpublished projects do not. On Envato Elements, projects you licensed and completed stay covered, but downloaded items can't move into new projects. Artgrid markets lifetime use of downloaded clips, which reads broader — but its sister service Artlist now publishes the publish-while-subscribed rule, and the two services are being consolidated, so verify Artgrid's current license text before building a long-term catalog on that promise. In all cases, "download everything before cancelling" is not a strategy the licenses support.
It depends on which half of Artlist you use. For the all-in-one bundle, Motion Array's Everything plan is the nearest structural match (and is owned by the same group), while Envato Elements is the independent alternative and the cheapest annual contract. For footage alone, Artgrid sells the same footage catalog Artlist uses — so as an "alternative" it changes your contract and formats, not your clips.
Generally yes, with tier conditions. Artgrid's universal license and Motion Array's paid plans cover client work in finished deliverables. Envato Elements covers client projects per registered project. Artlist is the exception to watch: only Pro plans and Max cover client work and paid ads — the $9.99 Social plan is limited to your own channels. Broadcast and out-of-home advertising have their own carve-outs (Envato music excludes broadcast; Motion Array excludes billboard/out-of-home from the standard license), so match the plan to the campaign, not just the edit.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information — pricing pages, license texts and help documentation checked in November 2026 — not hands-on testing. Judgments on this page are arithmetic on published prices or direct readings of published license terms, shown next to the numbers so you can check them yourself. We don't rate footage or music quality we haven't licensed and used in real projects.