Search the Shutterstock image, video, and audio libraries with keyword, boolean (AND/OR/NOT), and localized queries
domain: api.shutterstock.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Authenticate with either HTTP Basic auth (consumer key/secret) for search-only calls or an OAuth Bearer token if licensing state is also needed
Send GET https://api.shutterstock.com/v2/images/search (or /v2/videos/search, /v2/audio/search) with a URL-encoded query parameter
Combine boolean operators in the query string, e.g. 'dog AND cat', 'dog OR cat', or 'mountain NOT camping', using parentheses to group terms
Localize results by adding language (e.g. fr, es) and region (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code) parameters
Page results with page and per_page (up to 500 per page for most endpoints) and control result depth with view=minimal or view=full
Set sort and sort_order to control ordering (e.g. sort=popular, sort=newest, sort_order=desc)
Known gotchas
Searches are capped at 2,000 total results by default; beyond that the API returns a 'Too Many Results' error requiring narrower query parameters rather than deeper pagination
Wildcards such as '*' are not supported in the query parameter at all
Which media library (curated vs. full 250M+ catalog) a search can reach depends on the account's API subscription tier, not just the authentication method used
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