Dreamstime publishes its full royalty table in public, which is rarer than it sounds, and the table confuses people for a reason that has nothing to do with the numbers in it. Most agencies tie your earnings to your own career total. Dreamstime ties them to each individual file's download history, so two photographers with identical portfolios can be paid very differently on the same day.
The level belongs to the file, not to you
Dreamstime's own contributor page states the rule plainly: when a file is approved it enters the database as a Level 1 file, and as it gets downloaded it moves to a higher level and sells for a higher price. There are six levels, 0 through 5. Level 0 is defined on the same page as an image with zero downloads that is older than six months, which makes it the shelf where files that never found a buyer end up.
This is the structural difference worth internalising before you read a single percentage. On Depositphotos the tier is account-wide and set by your lifetime download count, so every file you own pays the same rate on the same day. On Dreamstime a portfolio of five thousand images can be spread across all six levels simultaneously. There is no single number that answers "what do I earn per download" for your account.
The headline Dreamstime publishes is a range: 25% to 50% revenue share for non-exclusive contributors, calculated on the net amount for each transaction rather than on a list price. Exclusive files receive an additional 10% bonus, and exclusive contributors sit at a flat 60% for all sales.
What a Level Zero file actually pays
The bottom rung is the one Dreamstime documents in the most detail, and it is worth reading closely because it contradicts an assumption most contributors carry over from other agencies. At Level 0 the earning percentage is 25% for a non-exclusive file, 27.5% for an exclusive file and 60% for an exclusive contributor.
Then comes the part people misread. A credit sale of a Level 0 file pays $1.25 to a non-exclusive contributor at Extra Small, at Small, at Medium, at Large, at Extra Large and at Maximum. Six size tiers, one figure. Buying the biggest available file does not pay you more at this level. The exclusive-file column is $1.38 across the same six sizes, and the exclusive-contributor column is $3.00.
Format does change the figure, and this is where the table gets more generous than it first appears. A TIFF sale pays 150% of the royalty for the maximum size. A vector or RAW file pays double the maximum-size royalty. Those multipliers sit on top of the level, so an illustrator uploading vectors is working from a different baseline than a photographer uploading JPEGs, at every level.
Subscription sales run on their own lines. A Level 0 file on the All-in-one subscription pays 25% to 45% non-exclusive, on All-at-once it pays a flat $2, and on Monthly-dose it pays $0.35. Since subscriptions carry most of the volume on any microstock platform, the Monthly-dose figure is the one that quietly governs a lot of portfolios.
One honest gap: the per-level breakdown for Levels 1 through 5 sits behind an interactive control on Dreamstime's page that does not render for a visitor without a session, so the exact step between each rung could not be read from the primary source for this article. What Dreamstime does state publicly is the ceiling — 50% for non-exclusive work — and that the level rises with downloads. Treat any site quoting precise per-level percentages without showing you Dreamstime's own page with scepticism.
Exclusivity, the 10% bonus and the upload bonus footnote
Dreamstime runs two separate exclusivity mechanics and they are easy to confuse. The first applies to individual files: mark a file exclusive to Dreamstime and it earns an additional 10% bonus, which is why the Level 0 column reads 27.5% instead of 25%. The second applies to you: become an exclusive contributor and every sale pays 60%, regardless of the file's level.
Exclusive contributors also collect an upload bonus of $0.20 for each approved submission, and this is the clause most summaries of Dreamstime's programme drop. The bonus is awarded for the first 100 approved files in all circumstances, and beyond that only for the first 10,000 approved files if your download rate is higher than 0.1. In other words, past the first hundred files the bonus is conditional on your work actually selling.
That threshold deserves a moment. A download rate above 0.1 means roughly one download for every ten approved files. Contributors who upload in volume without checking what sells will drift under it and lose the bonus without any notification that it happened. If your rate is sitting near that line, the problem is usually discoverability rather than image quality, and the reasons a portfolio stops selling are worth working through before uploading another batch.
The honest read on exclusivity: 60% against a non-exclusive range topping out at 50% is a real gap, but it applies to one agency's sales volume while your files stay off every other platform. For most contributors the multi-agency total beats the single-agency rate. Exclusivity only starts making sense once Dreamstime is already producing the bulk of your income on its own.
Extended licences pay on a different scale
Extended licences are where a single sale can be worth more than a month of subscription downloads, and Dreamstime prices them as fractions of a full rights sale. SR-EL1 grants one year of exclusivity to the buyer and is priced at a quarter of the SR-EL price. SR-EL3 grants three years at three fifths of the price. SR-EL is the full sell-the-rights transaction. Across all three, a non-exclusive contributor earns 50% and an exclusive file or exclusive contributor earns 60%.
The everyday extended licences pay in fixed amounts at Level 0. Unlimited Seats, Web Usage and Print Usage each pay $12.50 non-exclusive, $13.75 on an exclusive file and $30.00 to an exclusive contributor. The Extended License Subscription line pays $13.00, $14.30 and $26.40 respectively. Against $0.35 for a Monthly-dose download, one extended licence can be worth several dozen ordinary sales.
Free images sit at the other end of the scale and work on a donation model: the buyer may choose to contribute, and Dreamstime states that 100% of those royalties go to the contributor. Alliance and partnership distribution applies only to selected content and pays differently depending on the alliance, so it is not something you can plan a month around.
Zero Gravity: the plan that only pays files nobody has bought
Dreamstime's unlimited-download plan, sold to buyers as Zero Gravity at $40 per month, has a contributor mechanic that has no direct equivalent elsewhere. The plan draws only on Level Zero media. A buyer downloads a Level Zero file once, that file is reclassified as Level One, and it leaves the plan permanently.
Contributors are paid from a monthly royalty pool, and each contributor's share is sized by the percentage of total Unlimited Plan downloads their media received that month. Dreamstime states this directly: only Level Zero downloads under the Unlimited Plan generate royalty payouts, and Level One files do not qualify.
Read that alongside the level ladder and an unusual picture emerges. The files sitting unsold in your portfolio — the ones a contributor would normally write off — are the only ones earning from this pool. The moment one of them records a download it graduates to Level One, starts earning on the standard ladder, and stops contributing to the pool. Dreamstime notes one exception: where several buyers lightbox the same file at the same time, it may allow multiple Level Zero licences before reclassification.
The plan carries a daily download cap for fair use, with limits raised on request for verified good-faith usage, and Dreamstime prohibits bulk downloading without intent to use, automation tools, stockpiling for use after the subscription ends, and account sharing.
Getting to $100
Dreamstime pays on request once your balance reaches $100, submitted from the My Account section. Unlimited Plan royalties use the same threshold and are paid monthly once the balance is there and payment details are set up.
It is worth doing the arithmetic on that threshold with the published Level 0 rates rather than assuming it is trivial. A portfolio living mainly on Monthly-dose subscription downloads at $0.35 each needs close to three hundred of them to reach a first payment. Credit sales at $1.25 get there in about eighty. Extended licences at $12.50 get there in eight. The threshold is not the problem; the mix of licence types is. Dreamstime's $100 sits above Depositphotos at $25, and roughly in the same territory as how Alamy structures its payment cycle, so if Dreamstime is one of several agencies you deliver to, expect it to pay out less often than the others rather than less in total.
What the level system means for how you upload
If the level travels with the file, then the single most consequential event in a Dreamstime file's life is its first download. That one sale moves it off Level 0, starts it up the ladder, and determines whether it ever earns anything beyond the pool. Everything upstream of that first sale is discoverability, and discoverability on Dreamstime is decided by the description and keywords you attach at upload.
Dreamstime's own submission guidance is blunt about this, asking contributors to add a relevant description to increase a file's relevance in searches and warning against all-caps names and descriptions. The practical work sits in two places: how Dreamstime wants keywords structured and the field and file requirements it enforces — JPEG in RGB, at least 3 megapixels, up to 1 GB, with vectors accepted as .ai, .eps, .cdr or .svg.
A file that is rejected never enters the ladder at all, so the reasons Dreamstime refuses submissions are the first gate, not the last. Model releases are required for every recognisable person, filenames on those releases must use letters and numbers only, and traced illustrations need the original uploaded in the property release area.
There is a second consequence that only shows up in multi-agency portfolios. Because the level is per file rather than per account, the same image can sit at Level 4 on Dreamstime and earn a flat subscription rate somewhere else on the same day. Comparing agencies by headline percentage alone will mislead you. What matters is the per-file history on each platform, which means you need upload and sales records you can actually read.
Running Dreamstime alongside everything else
Dreamstime is rarely anyone's only agency, and each platform it sits beside wants its metadata shaped differently — different keyword counts, different description limits, different category systems. Rastock.ai writes that metadata against each agency's own rules and delivers the files to 10+ agencies over FTP and SFTP, with upload status tracked per destination rather than guessed at. Banned and mandatory keyword handling and rollback are part of the same pass, so speed does not come at the cost of control.
There is no revenue share, no claim on your files, and IPTC and CSV export stays open, so nothing about the arrangement changes what Dreamstime pays you. The plans and the 14-day free trial are on the pricing page; the trial does not ask for a card.
Every figure in this article comes from Dreamstime's own contributor and plan pages as they read in September 2026. Royalty tables change, and the per-level detail behind Levels 1 to 5 is only fully visible from inside a contributor account, so check your own dashboard before making a decision about exclusivity on the strength of a published range.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Dreamstime pay per download?
Dreamstime states a revenue share of 25% to 50% for non-exclusive contributors, calculated on the net amount of each transaction. At Level 0 the published earning percentage is 25%, and a credit sale pays $1.25 at every size from Extra Small through Maximum. Subscription sales pay differently: $2 on the All-at-once plan and $0.35 on Monthly-dose. The share rises as the individual file accumulates downloads and moves up the level ladder.
What is a Level Zero file on Dreamstime?
Dreamstime defines Level 0 as an image with zero downloads that is older than six months. New approved files enter the database at Level 1 and climb from there as they sell. Level Zero media is also the only content included in the Zero Gravity unlimited plan, and a file leaves that plan as soon as it is downloaded once and is reclassified as Level One.
Is Dreamstime exclusivity worth it?
Exclusive contributors earn a flat 60% revenue share on all sales plus $0.20 for each approved submission, against 25% to 50% for non-exclusive work. Individual exclusive files earn a 10% bonus without full contributor exclusivity. The arithmetic favours exclusivity only if Dreamstime already produces most of your income, because the rate applies to one agency while your files stay off every other one.
What is the Dreamstime minimum payout?
You can request payment once your balance reaches $100, submitted from the My Account section. Unlimited Plan royalties follow the same threshold and are paid monthly once the balance is reached and payment details are in place. The threshold is higher than several competing agencies, so a small portfolio living mostly on subscription downloads can take a long time to reach a first payment.
Do Zero Gravity downloads pay contributors?
Only Level Zero downloads under the Unlimited Plan generate royalty payouts. Contributors earn a share of a monthly royalty pool, sized by the percentage of total Unlimited Plan downloads their media receives. Level One files do not qualify, which means a file stops earning from the pool the moment it records its first download and is reclassified.
Does Dreamstime pay more for TIFF, vector or RAW files?
Yes. A TIFF sale pays 150% of the royalty for the maximum size, and vector or RAW files pay double the maximum-size royalty. Those multipliers apply on top of whatever level the file currently sits at, so format choice changes earnings independently of download history. Vector uploads are accepted as .ai, .eps, .cdr and .svg files.