Creative Market is one of the most popular online marketplaces for digital assets that is well known for its high-quality design resources. But is it as good as Envato Elements? Let’s find out.

In this post, we are doing a side-by-side comparison of Envato Elements and Creative Market. The main goal is to figure out which marketplace offers the best value for your money.

We did a few comparisons of Envato Elements in the past. And the platform usually comes out on top, almost every time. Let’s see if it can also beat Creative Market.

What Is Creative Market?

Creative Market is an online marketplace for digital assets. Since its initial launch in 2012, the platform opened doors to thousands of designers and creators to open a shop and sell their design assets online.

The marketplace now offers various types of design resources under different categories. These include everything from fonts to Photoshop templates, stock videos, icon packs, Procreate brushes, and much more.

Everything on Creative Market is priced individually and you can buy one item at a time. However, the platform recently started offering a Membership plan with monthly free assets. More on that later.

Best Features

Creative Market uses a straightforward business model and offers benefits for both its sellers and customers.

Millions of High-Quality Digital Assets

Creative Market features a large collection of digital assets with millions of different items to choose from. The exact amount of items available is not quite clear. The pricing page on the website claims it has 25 million assets while the About page claims it has 4 million assets. It’s also worth noting that the majority of these items are stock photos and videos.

Photos, Videos, Fonts, Graphics, & Templates

The quality of the items available on Creative Market is impressive. Whether it’s fonts or Photoshop mockups, there’s a wide variety of designs to choose from. The stock photos and videos collection also includes millions of items.

In addition to all the graphics and templates, Creative Market also offers WordPress themes, UI kits, HTML templates, and lots of other types of resources as well.

Curated Collections

The curated collections section offers a better way to explore the best items available on Creative Market. These sections feature handpicked items that are essential for designers, like must-have items for Procreate users, Figma design items, assets for print-on-demand, and more.

Membership Discounts

Creative Market’s new Membership model offers more benefits for users. Every month, members will be able to download a “Drop” of free design assets worth up to $1,000. On top of that, members will also receive up to 25% discount on all items available on the platform.

Free Downloads Every Week

Even if you’re not a member, having a free account on Creative Market will qualify you to download a bunch of free items every week. Oftentimes, these free assets include hidden gems too.

Pricing Plans

The items on Creative Market are priced individually by their creators. These items have different licensing models and you have to purchase them based on your project requirements.

The Creative Market Membership plan starts at $9.95 per month. This plan will give you a 5% discount on items and it will also give you credits worth $9.95 to buy items on the marketplace.

To get that 25% member discount, you’ll have to subscribe to the $99.95 per month plan with an annual commitment. There are other plans in between as well.

What Is Envato Elements?

Envato Elements is a subscription-based online marketplace for digital assets. Unlike Creative Market, you don’t have to pay for each item individually to buy assets on this platform. Instead, you pay a single monthly subscription to get unlimited access to everything!

Envato Elements comes from the same developers behind ThemeForest, GraphicRiver, PhotoDune, and CodeCanyon. The marketplace features the best items from those platforms as well as many other unique assets, all uploaded by creative professionals.

This marketplace is an all-in-one place where you can find any type of digital asset you want for your project. For example, if you’re working on a social media campaign, you’ll find everything you need for the project from the fonts to post templates, stock videos, images, and music.

Best Features

There are many benefits to using Envato Elements. These are some of the best features of the platform.

Unlimited Access To More Than 18 Million Assets

The main selling point of Envato Elements is its subscription, which gives you unlimited access to its entire library. There are more than 18 million assets on the marketplace and you can download anything you want with the subscription.

Graphic, Photography, Video, & Website Templates

Envato Elements has multiple categories that cover almost every industry. There are items for graphic designers, artists, photographers, product designers, web developers, web designers, content creators, YouTubers, and more.

All-In-One Platform

Having access to a wide variety of design assets in one place will make your workflow much smoother. You won’t have to switch between different marketplaces or pay individually to buy assets. You can download everything for a single price.

High-Quality Fonts Collection

While the majority of the items available on Envato Elements have premium-quality designs, the highlight of the platform is its fonts collection. There are tens of thousands of beautiful fonts in various styles to choose from.

AI Search

Most of the time, you have to scour through multiple searches and pages to find the right items on online marketplaces. Envato Elements has introduced a solution to this problem with its AI Search function. It allows you to instruct AI to help you find very specific items instantly.

Simple Licensing Model

Every item on Envato Elements falls under one simple license model. Each item you download includes a commercial license. You can use them in your client projects and even in your monetized YouTube videos.

Free Monthly Downloads

Similar to Creative Market, Envato Elements also gives out free design assets every month. You don’t need a paid subscription to download these items. They are free for all users.

Pricing Plans

Envato Elements has a single subscription plan that costs $16.50 per month with an annual commitment. Or it’s $33 per month when paid monthly. Students can get an extra 30% discount on that price as well.

For teams and agencies, there’s a plan starting at $37.25 per month for up to 3 members.

Differences Between Envato Elements and Creative Market

The biggest downside to buying items on Creative Market is its licensing model. The default prices you see on the marketplace items are for the Personal license, which does not allow you to use items in commercial projects.

For that, you need to buy the Commercial license, which often costs twice the amount of the Personal license. Even this Commercial license has limitations as it only allows the asset to appear in up to 5,000 end products or 500k views.

In comparison, Envato Elements gives you the freedom to download any item under its monthly subscription and use it freely in your commercial and client projects. The only restrictions it has are for using the assets in things like merchandising, broadcasting, and adverts.

Creative Market also lacks proper organization. There are no categories for video templates for different software or sections related to photography. You have to manually search to find those items. Envato Elements has organized sections for each and every category with filters to narrow the search down to specific requirements.

Which Platform is Best?

When considering all the differences, benefits, and use cases, Envato Elements wins again. The value it brings with its $16.50 per month subscription is unmatched, especially considering all the different types of assets you can download on this marketplace. All that for the price you pay for just a single item on Creative Market.

Even when it comes to licensing, Creative Market makes things a bit misleading with pricing and restrictions on usage. However, Creative Market can be a good platform for people looking for quality items for their personal projects, like buying a good font for a greeting card or a template for a social media post.

For freelancers, content creators, and agencies, Envato Elements brings the best value.