Freepik publishes a keyword count range, a sorting rule, a singular-form rule and a named list of practices it treats as spam. Most contributors know roughly one of the four and improvise the rest, which is why keyword-related rejections read as arbitrary when they are not. What follows is the enforced version, taken from the contributor documentation rather than from forum habit.
Where the rules live now
Requests to the old Freepik contributor help centre now redirect to the Magnific domain: the company consolidated its AI products under that name and the metadata guidelines travelled with them. The rules themselves did not change in the move, and both names are still in circulation, since contributors and buyers overwhelmingly still say Freepik. If you need the field-by-field version of what has to be filled in and where it has to live, that is covered separately in the Freepik metadata field reference. This page is narrower: it is only about the keyword and title rules, and about which of them a reviewer will actually act on.
Five minimum, fifty maximum, twenty is the working number
The documented range is a minimum of five keywords and a maximum of fifty. Both ends are real: a resource submitted with four keywords fails the count check, and a list longer than fifty is truncated rather than negotiated. The interesting part is what sits between them. The same guidance states that twenty relevant keywords are sufficient, and adds, in plain language, that more keywords are not equal to more downloads.
That sentence is the one worth internalising, because the usual instinct is to fill the ceiling. Padding a list from twenty solid terms to fifty means the last thirty are weaker by definition, and every weak term is a chance to trip one of the spam rules below. A tight twenty that survives scrutiny is a better submission than a full fifty that invites it.
Relevance order is an instruction, not a preference
Keywords are to be organised by relevance, most relevant first. The documentation asks for this directly but does not explain how the order is consumed on the platform side, so there is no point theorising about weighting. Treat it as a requirement and satisfy it in a way that is useful regardless: write the first five or six terms so that they describe the asset completely on their own, then let the rest add detail. A reviewer skimming the head of your list should be able to picture the file without opening it.
Singular, English, comma-separated
Three mechanical rules that batch tools break more often than people do.
- Use the singular form always, except for words with irregular plurals. The documentation's own example is leaf becoming leaves. Automatic pluralisation is a common default in keywording scripts and it quietly burns slots on duplicated meaning.
- Write keywords in English. The exception is proper nouns — festival names, traditional dishes, place names — and even those should use the English spelling where one exists.
- Separate keywords with commas, one concept per entry. Special characters, missing separators and words run together without spacing are all listed as format violations, and so is padding a list with determiners, prepositions or pronouns.
What Freepik counts as spam
This is the section that produces surprises, because several of the named practices feel like ordinary optimisation until you see them written down as violations.
- Repetition of identical keywords. Not synonyms, but the same term appearing twice, which is exactly what happens when two keyword sources are merged without deduplication.
- Campaign keywords unrelated to the actual content. Attaching a seasonal or promotional term to an image that does not show it is treated as spam rather than as reach. If the asset has nothing to do with the campaign, the term does not belong in the list.
- Listing every colour visible in the file. The guidance asks for the main colour, or for colorful where the image genuinely is, instead of a colour inventory.
- File types as keywords. JPG, PSD, EPS10, illustrator and their relatives are excluded. A buyer filtering by format does it with a filter, not with your keyword list.
- Generic filler. Background, image and concept are named directly as irrelevant tags. They describe the medium rather than the subject, and they appear on so many assets that they carry no discriminating information.
- Things that are not in the frame. Food resources are singled out here: ingredients that do not appear in the shot must not be keyworded, and neither must a season the image does not depict. The same principle covers everything else, it is just most tempting with food.
Keywords have to match the format, not only the subject
The underlying requirement is that keywords describe only what is visibly present in the resource, or its concept. The documentation's own example of getting this wrong is a landing page template tagged with background or texture. The words are not false, exactly: a template does contain background areas. But they describe a component rather than the asset, and a buyer searching for a background will be shown something they cannot use. On Freepik that counts as a mismatch, and mismatches are what reviewers are looking for.
The test is simple enough to apply mechanically before you send a batch: for each keyword, ask whether a buyer who typed it would be satisfied to receive this specific file. If the honest answer is that they would be looking for something else, the keyword is working against you even though it is technically accurate.
Title rules that get enforced
Titles carry a recommended length of 35 to 100 characters. The lower bound is the one contributors underestimate: a three-word title clears the technical check but fails the actual instruction, which is to answer who, what, when and where about the asset. English, correct spelling and correct grammar are requirements rather than style notes, and a title written in another language is a rejection reason on its own.
Excluded from titles: file types, dates, and numbers in general. The exception is a number that is part of the subject, such as a holiday like 4th July. Self-promotion is out too, which rules out studio names and watermark-style credits in the title field.
There is one rule in the submission requirements worth planning around rather than merely complying with: content containing a year is accepted only when that year coincides with the current one. A dated calendar, planner or year-in-review design therefore has a single submission window and becomes unsubmittable once the year turns. If the design works without the digits, leaving them out converts a seasonal asset into a permanent one.
Photos and vectors need different keyword mixes
For photographs, the guidance asks for conceptual and abstract terms alongside the descriptive ones: friendship, happiness, lifestyle sitting next to the literal subject. Vector tagging leans the other way and relies more on describing the elements that are actually drawn. The distinction reflects how the two are bought. A photograph is usually licensed for what it expresses; a vector is usually licensed for what it contains and can be edited into. If you keyword both the same way, one of them will be under-described. The general principles behind that split are covered in more depth in our guide to choosing keywords for stock photos.
A pre-send check for a Freepik batch
Most keyword rejections are caught by seven questions asked before upload rather than after. Run them over the batch, not over individual files, because the failures that matter are the ones a tool applied uniformly to two hundred assets. The rejection side of the same coin is covered in Freepik rejection reasons and how to fix them.
- Is every file between five and fifty keywords, with the working target closer to twenty than to fifty?
- Do the first five or six keywords describe the asset completely on their own?
- Are all terms singular apart from genuine irregular plurals, and all of them English apart from proper nouns?
- Has the list been deduplicated after any merge, so no term appears twice?
- Are there any file types, colour inventories, generic fillers or campaign terms that the asset does not actually depict?
- Does every keyword survive the buyer test, meaning someone who searched it would be satisfied to receive this file?
- Is every title between 35 and 100 characters, free of dates and file types, and does it answer who, what, when and where?
Where automation helps and where it hurts
Almost every rule above is mechanical, which is exactly why generic keyword generators fail on Freepik. They optimise for volume, pluralise by default, and happily return background, concept and a colour inventory because those words are statistically common in training data. A tool built for stock work has to hold each agency's banned and mandatory terms separately and apply them per destination, since the same keyword set going to Freepik and to another agency needs different treatment. That per-agency rule handling, along with delivery and the ability to roll a bad batch back, is what Rastock AI is built around.
It delivers to 10+ agencies over FTP and SFTP, keeps IPTC and CSV export open so nothing is locked in, and takes no share of your royalties. There is a 14-day free trial with no card required if you want to test it against a batch you were about to send anyway — the current plans are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
How many keywords does Freepik allow per resource?
The contributor documentation sets a minimum of five keywords and a maximum of fifty. It also states that twenty relevant keywords are enough, and says plainly that more keywords do not equal more downloads. A set below five is a hard stop at submission; a set padded to fifty with weak terms passes the count check but dilutes the description reviewers and buyers read.
Does keyword order matter on Freepik?
Yes, and it is written as an instruction rather than a suggestion: keywords should be organised by relevance, with the most relevant first. The documentation does not explain how that order is used internally, so the practical approach is to make the first five or six terms a complete description of the asset on their own, and treat everything after them as supporting detail.
Should Freepik keywords be singular or plural?
Singular, with one exception. The guidance is to always use the singular form except for words with irregular plurals, and it gives leaf and leaves as the example. This matters for batch tools that pluralise automatically, because a set full of unnecessary plurals reads as machine output and duplicates meaning across a list that is already capped at fifty.
What keyword practices does Freepik treat as spam?
Repeating identical keywords, using campaign terms unrelated to the actual content, and listing every colour in an image instead of naming the main colour or using colorful. Format violations sit alongside them: special characters, missing comma separation, words run together, and determiners, prepositions or pronouns added as keywords.
How long should a Freepik title be?
The recommended range is 35 to 100 characters. Titles must be in English with correct spelling and grammar, and should answer who, what, when and where about the asset. File types, dates and numbers are excluded, with a narrow exception for numbers that are part of the subject itself, such as a holiday like 4th July.
Can I upload a design that shows a year?
Only if the year matches the current one. The submission requirements accept content containing a year when that year coincides with the present year, which means a dated calendar or planner design has a single selling season and becomes unsubmittable afterwards. Undated versions of the same design avoid the restriction entirely.