Standard vs extended license for photos and videos

The standard vs extended license question comes up every time you see two prices on one stock photo or video clip. The short answer: Standard covers the photo or clip in your own work, and Extended covers the uses where the picture earns money on its own, reaches people through paid space, or ends up in someone else's hands. This guide shows where that line falls, using one real license table, and walks a small business through a set of everyday uses so you can sort your own.

Why stock photos and videos come with a license at all

A photo is copyrighted the moment it is taken. The U.S. Copyright Office's page on what copyright is lists photographs among the original works it protects, once they are fixed in a tangible form, and the same goes for audiovisual works. The owner holds the right to copy the work and to show it in public.

So when you download a stock photo, you do not buy the photo. You buy permission to use it in certain ways. Wavecrate's plans and licenses page puts it plainly for music, "You get a license to use it. We keep the copyright.", and it offers photos and videos the same way, under Free, Standard and Extended licenses. The license tier decides which ways you are allowed.

Standard vs extended license: the short version

Here is the license panel on one Wavecrate photo, Golden Hour Peaks, a landscape marked Free.

Read the three cards from left to right:

• Free: online and social posts, with credit text next to the photo or in the description. Only items marked Free have it, and a free account gets 3 free downloads a month.
• Standard, $9 on this page: your own websites, social, presentations and marketing, with no credit needed, and print up to 500,000 copies.
• Extended, $39 on this page: everything in Standard, plus paid advertising and TV broadcast, products for resale, unlimited print runs and client work.

Videos follow the same table. A video called Retro Neon Grid, a ten second Full HD motion background with no sound, showed Standard at $29 and Extended at $99, with the same wording on each card.

Paid licenses are not on sale yet: Wavecrate says purchases open soon, so these are the listed prices for when sales open. Items marked Free, like this photo, can already be downloaded with a free account.

What Standard covers

Standard is for your own projects, made for your own business or brand. On Wavecrate's photos and videos table, it covers:

• Websites, blogs and social media posts, including monetized channels.
• Apps, presentations and your own marketing.
• Print up to 500,000 copies.
• No credit line, which is the main step up from Free.

That is a lot of ground. A hero image on your site, a background on your sales deck, a motion loop behind the title of your YouTube video, and a few thousand printed flyers for your own shop all sit under Standard.

What only Extended covers

Four rows on the table are ticked only under Extended:

• Paid advertising and TV broadcast. The moment you pay to put the picture in front of people, it is an ad. Paying to boost a social post that shows the picture puts it in paid space, so treat that as an ad too.
• Products for resale. The table names merchandise, templates, prints and packaging. If people buy something because the picture is on it or in it, that is Extended.
• Unlimited print runs. Standard stops at 500,000 copies.
• Client work. If you are a designer or agency making something for a client, the job needs Extended, even if the client only posts it online.

A useful test: ask whether the picture is helping your own work, or whether it is the thing being sold, paid for as advertising, or handed over to someone else. The first is Standard. The second is Extended.

A worked example: one bakery, five uses

Say you run a small bakery and you want a warm landscape photo and a looping motion background for the launch of a new loaf. You filter the photos by color and orientation, pick Golden Hour Peaks, then hover through the videos and pick Retro Neon Grid for a playful promo. Here is what each use needs, by the table:

1. The photo on your website banner. Standard. With the Free license you could use it too, but you would need a credit line next to the photo.
2. 2,000 printed flyers for the shop counter. Standard. That is well under 500,000 copies, and print is not on the Free card at all.
3. The video loop on your own Instagram and YouTube. Standard for the video, listed at $29 on its page.
4. The same loop in a paid social ad. Extended, listed at $99 on its page, because paid advertising is Extended only.
5. Tote bags with the photo printed on them, sold at the till. Extended, listed at $39 on the photo's page, because merchandise is a product for resale.

So the photo needs Extended because of the tote bags, and once you hold Extended it covers the banner and flyers too, since Extended includes everything in Standard. The video needs Extended because of the ad. These are the listed prices those two pages showed on 9 October 2026, for when sales open; check the page of the item you pick, because prices are set per item.

The pricing page says that once purchases open, if you hold Standard and only later decide to run an ad or print merchandise, the Extended license will cost only the difference.

Check the files you get, not only the license

The license says where you may use a picture. The file decides whether it looks right there. On Wavecrate, previews carry a small watermark, and the item page says licensed files are clean.

• Photos come in more than one size. Golden Hour Peaks lists an Original at 4000 x 2667, a Medium at 1920 x 1280 and a Small at 1024 x 683, all JPG. Print work wants the Original; a blog post is fine with the Medium.
• Videos list their size, length, frame rate and sound on the page. Retro Neon Grid is 1920 x 1080 at 30 fps, ten seconds long, with no sound, and comes as a Full HD and a 720p MP4.

You can filter by resolution as well as color and orientation, so a 4K need can be settled before you open a single page.

Where a subscription fits

Wavecrate's Pro plan, listed at $99 a year ($8.25 a month billed yearly) or $12 month to month and not on sale yet, gives Standard licenses on the whole catalog. That suits someone who posts a lot of their own content: blog images, slides, social posts and motion backgrounds behind titles.

Pro never gives Extended. Every paid ad, product for sale, print run past 500,000 copies and client job still needs Extended for each item used, so a designer doing client work should plan on Extended per item, with or without Pro.

Whatever you choose, keep the license certificate. Every Wavecrate license comes with one, plus a code anyone can check on the verify page without an account, which helps when a client or a print shop asks where the picture came from.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a standard and an extended license?

Standard covers a picture in your own websites, social posts, presentations, apps and marketing, and print up to 500,000 copies. Extended adds paid ads and TV, products for resale, unlimited print runs and client work.

Can I use a stock photo on merchandise with a standard license?

Not on Wavecrate's table. Merchandise, templates, prints and packaging are products for resale, which only Extended covers.

Do I need an extended license for a boosted social post?

Paying to show a post is paid advertising, and paid advertising is an Extended use on Wavecrate's table. An unpaid post on your own account is covered by Standard.

Do I need an extended license for client work?

Yes. Client work is ticked only under Extended, and Wavecrate's Pro plan does not include it.

Get started

Browse Wavecrate: you can join free and download items marked Free now, paid licenses are not on sale yet (purchases open soon), and every download comes with a license certificate and a code anyone can check on its verify page. List where each picture will go before you pick a license, and the table above tells you which one you need.