Pricing
Per-Gallery Pricing vs a Subscription: What Photo Delivery Actually Costs
The per-gallery model has largely disappeared from this category. Here is the arithmetic anyway, the storage variable that decides it in practice, and the ladders as published today.
Updated 23 September 2026
If you are weighing paying per gallery against paying a monthly fee, check first that the per-gallery option still exists. On the platforms photographers actually shortlist, it mostly does not.
PASS is the platform most associated with per-event pricing, and its pricing page today has no per-gallery and no per-event price on it at all. It sells five subscription tiers. The per-event extension figure that circulates in comparison posts belongs to Pass Classic, the platform PASS sunset on 30 June 2024, and appears on no live official page. Pixieset and ShootProof have never sold per gallery. So the honest version of this question is narrower than it looks: at what volume does any subscription beat paying per job, and what makes the subscription number move once you are on one.
Every PASS and Pixieset figure below is from an official page fetched on 4 September 2026. Every ShootProof figure was re-fetched on 23 September 2026, the day ShootProof replaced its photo-count plans with GB-based ones. All of it is listed in Sources. Anything computed is labelled as arithmetic on those published rates.
The finding: per-gallery pricing has mostly left this category
PASS publishes Starter, Basic, Standard, Unlimited and Platinum. Each is a recurring monthly or annual charge with a storage allowance. There is no line item for one event, one gallery or one wedding.
The reason the old number persists is that Pass Classic really did work that way, and affiliate roundups copied each other for years afterward. PASS itself draws the line by URL: a gallery link containing pass.us is Pass Classic, and a link containing passgallery.com is the current platform. Pass Classic was sunset on 30 June 2024, and PASS states that all Pass Classic galleries, migrated or not, are deleted on their expiration date. The ten-year hosting promise attached to that era survives only as a retrieval request to support. If a comparison quotes a per-event price for PASS, it is quoting a platform that no longer runs.
That leaves the real decision between paying per job to someone who still offers it, such as a file-transfer service billed per send, and paying a platform a flat recurring fee. The arithmetic below works for either.
The arithmetic, done openly
Per-event pricing wins at genuinely low volume, for one reason: you pay nothing in the months you do not shoot. A subscription bills in February whether or not February had a wedding.
Subscriptions win as soon as volume is regular, for the opposite reason: the per-event fee recurs with every job, and the subscription does not. Two galleries in a week cost twice as much on a per-event plan and nothing extra on a subscription.
The break-even is one division. Take the annual subscription price, divide by the per-event fee, and round up. That is the number of galleries a year at which the subscription starts costing less.
Because no major platform publishes a per-gallery price today, the three fees below are illustrative brackets, not any platform's published rate. Substitute whatever a per-job service actually quotes you.
| Galleries a year | At 15 $ a gallery | At 25 $ a gallery | At 35 $ a gallery | Flat 110 $ a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 30 $ | 50 $ | 70 $ | 110 $ |
| 4 | 60 $ | 100 $ | 140 $ | 110 $ |
| 7 | 105 $ | 175 $ | 245 $ | 110 $ |
| 10 | 150 $ | 250 $ | 350 $ | 110 $ |
| 20 | 300 $ | 500 $ | 700 $ | 110 $ |
| 40 | 600 $ | 1,000 $ | 1,400 $ | 110 $ |
Every cell in the three per-gallery columns is arithmetic: the fee multiplied by the gallery count. The last column is clientgallery.io's published annual price.
Now the same division against the published entry rungs. Annual figures marked as arithmetic are the published monthly rate multiplied by twelve, because Pixieset publishes no yearly dollar total. Counts are rounded up to a whole gallery.
| Plan and annual figure | Break-even at 15 $ | At 25 $ | At 35 $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| PASS Basic, 72 $ published | 5 galleries | 3 | 3 |
| Pixieset Basic, 96 $ arithmetic | 7 galleries | 4 | 3 |
| ShootProof Starter, 99.99 $ published | 7 galleries | 4 | 3 |
| clientgallery.io, 110 $ published | 8 galleries | 5 | 4 |
| Pixieset Plus, 192 $ arithmetic | 13 galleries | 8 | 6 |
| ShootProof Standard, 199.99 $ published | 14 galleries | 8 | 6 |
| PASS Standard, 240 $ published | 16 galleries | 10 | 7 |
| PASS Unlimited, 456 $ published | 31 galleries | 19 | 14 |
Read the table as a rule of thumb. Around three to eight galleries a year, entry subscriptions and per-job fees cost about the same. Above that, per-job billing loses and keeps losing, because it scales with your work while the subscription does not.
The variable the roundups skip: storage is a stock, not a flow
The break-even table is where most comparisons stop, and it is where they go wrong. It treats the subscription as a fixed line. It is not. On every platform in this category except a flat one, the subscription is a storage meter, and storage does not reset in January.
A per-event fee ends when the event ends. You paid for that wedding, the money is spent, and the wedding never bills you again. A storage meter keeps counting every gallery you have ever delivered, for as long as it is online. Year three is not charged at year-three volume. It is charged at the sum of years one, two and three.
Pixieset states the mechanism plainly: all uploads count toward your account's available storage, and the remedy offered is to delete collections, photos or videos to free up space, or upgrade. Deletion there is permanent and cannot be undone. ShootProof meters the same stock in gigabytes, stating that its plans "are billed either monthly or yearly and are determined by the amount of GB storage needed." PASS is blunter about what happens at the ceiling, and this is worth reading twice, because it is the real cost of a metered plan: "When your account exceeds its storage limit, two things happen: All new uploads are blocked. After 30 days, galleries will be deleted (oldest first) until your account is within its storage limit." On a downgrade, that window shortens to one week.
Here is what the stock does over five years. Assume 25 delivered galleries a year at 4 GB each, so 100 GB added annually. The gallery count and the gigabytes per gallery are assumptions; every price is published, and every yearly total is arithmetic on those published rates. The ShootProof column uses the GB-based structure ShootProof publishes today.
| Year | Stored total | Pixieset tier and year cost | ShootProof tier and year cost | PASS tier and year cost | clientgallery.io |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 GB | Plus, 100 GB, 192 $ | Standard, 100 GB, 199.99 $ | Standard, 100 GB, 240 $ | 110 $ |
| 2 | 200 GB | Pro, 1 TB, 288 $ | Professional, 1000 GB, 319.99 $ | Unlimited, 456 $ | 110 $ |
| 3 | 300 GB | Pro, 288 $ | Professional, 319.99 $ | Unlimited, 456 $ | 110 $ |
| 4 | 400 GB | Pro, 288 $ | Professional, 319.99 $ | Unlimited, 456 $ | 110 $ |
| 5 | 500 GB | Pro, 288 $ | Professional, 319.99 $ | Unlimited, 456 $ | 110 $ |
| Five years | 1,344 $ | 1,479.95 $ | 2,064 $ | 500 $ |
Now put the per-event line beside it. Twenty-five galleries a year at 25 $ each is 625 $ every year and 3,125 $ over five, and that line never moves. It does not compound with the back catalogue, because there is no back catalogue to pay for. It is simply high, at this volume.
That is the honest shape of the trade. Per-event billing is flat and expensive. Metered subscriptions start cheap and climb with your archive. The only line that is both flat and cheap is one that does not meter storage at all, and the price of that is what it will hold, which the next section states.
The published ladders
PASS, in US dollars. The annual column is what PASS prints as a per-month rate when billed annually, and its yearly total where one is published. PASS advertises a 1 $ first month on Basic, Standard and Unlimited. Platinum carries an eligibility check and no published annual figure.
| Plan | Annual, per month | Annual total | Monthly | Storage | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 $ | not published | 8 $ | 10 GB | 15%, PASS branding stays |
| Basic | 6 $ | 72 $ | 8 $ | 20 GB | 15% |
| Standard | 20 $ | 240 $ | 24 $ | 100 GB | 0% store commission, 3% when PASS handles payment |
| Unlimited | 38 $ | 456 $ | 44 $ | Unlimited | 0%, the 3% payment fee applies |
| Platinum | not published | not published | 125 $ | Unlimited | 0%, eligibility check |
One caution on that commission column. PASS's own pages disagree with each other. The pricing page prints 15% on the two entry tiers, 0% store commission on Standard and above, and "There will be a 3% card processing fee charged when using Pass as the seller", which PASS states is the default option. A knowledge-base article about downgrading instead mentions 6% rising to 8% on Pass+ Collections. Nothing on either page reconciles the two. The pricing page figures are the ones quoted here, and the discrepancy is worth resolving with PASS before you sell anything through it.
Pixieset, in US dollars. Pixieset publishes annual billing only as a monthly rate billed annually, and states that yearly plans offer up to a 20% discount compared to the monthly rate. No yearly dollar total appears anywhere on its pages, so the twelve-month column below is our arithmetic on the published monthly figure.
| Plan | Annual, per month | Twelve months, arithmetic | Monthly | Storage | Store commission |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 $ | 0 $ | 0 $ | 3 GB | 15% |
| Basic | 8 $ | 96 $ | 10 $ | 10 GB | 0% |
| Plus | 16 $ | 192 $ | 20 $ | 100 GB | 0% |
| Pro | 24 $ | 288 $ | 30 $ | 1 TB | 0% |
| Ultimate | 40 $ | 480 $ | 50 $ | Unlimited | 0% |
Pixieset's unlimited tier has a ceiling written elsewhere. Section 6 of its Terms, last updated 20 March 2026, reserves the right to charge additional fees above a fair usage amount "determined to be to be more than 20 GB per collection, and 100 GB of bandwidth per month". That is a per-collection cap and a monthly bandwidth cap sitting behind the word unlimited. The full tier-by-tier walkthrough is in our guide on what Pixieset actually costs per month.
ShootProof, in US dollars. ShootProof meters gigabytes: its help centre states that plans "are billed either monthly or yearly and are determined by the amount of GB storage needed." On Starter and Standard the allowance is a single pool shared between photo and video. On Professional and Premium the photo and video allowances are separate figures. Free carries no video at all.
| Plan | Photo storage | Video storage | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3 GB, photos only | Not included | 0 $ | 0 $ |
| Starter | 20 GB, shared with video | Shared with photo | 9.99 $ | 99.99 $ |
| Standard | 100 GB, shared with video | Shared with photo | 19.99 $ | 199.99 $ |
| Professional | 1000 GB | 50 GB | 31.99 $ | 319.99 $ |
| Premium | Unlimited | 150 GB | 60 $ | 600 $ |
One tier is missing from that table on purpose. ShootProof's help centre documents an Advanced plan at 2000 GB of photo storage and 100 GB of video for 51.99 $ a month or 519.99 $ a year, and the public plans page does not show it. It is documented rather than on sale.
Three ShootProof rules belong in any cost model. Changing plan is prorated: ShootProof states that on an upgrade it prorates your remaining plan time and applies it to the new bill, taking effect immediately, while a downgrade does not take effect until your next bill date. Archiving is a separate charge: a minimum monthly 2.99 $ for up to 25 GB, then 0.05 $ per additional gigabyte, billed monthly for the previous month's usage. Photo archiving is included on Premium; video archiving is not, and carries those same rates even there. And an archived gallery is not a cheaper live gallery: ShootProof states archived galleries become static and are not live for client viewing, and that unarchiving needs enough GB space free in the plan. ShootProof also states that sales tax is charged and remitted on subscriptions in a listed set of US states. Our ShootProof alternative page covers the rest of that structure.
Where a flat plan sits on the same curve
clientgallery.io is one plan: 10 $ a month, or 110 $ a year. There are no storage tiers, no per-gallery fees, no print store and no commissions, so there is nothing to model except the flat line. Galleries, photos and clients are unlimited under fair use, on your own subdomain, with no platform branding on any client-facing page.
Fair use, in figures, because a page arguing against storage caps owes you the numbers. Uploaded photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs, hosted for as long as the account exists. The tripwires are 1,000 photos per gallery and 500,000 photos per paid account. A free account holds one gallery of up to 1,000 photos. Full-resolution delivery is on every plan, free included and works differently: you upload a full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for 3 days per handoff and can be re-uploaded any time, with 100 GB of ZIP uploads a month per account.
Which is why the gigabyte column in the five-year table does not translate one to one. The same 25 galleries a year at 600 photos each stay well inside the 300 GB ceiling after five years, because the gallery holds web-sized proofs rather than masters. That is the shape of it, not a promise about your specific files.
The flat line also means the curve has no steps. On the break-even table above, 110 $ a year crosses per-job billing at the eighth gallery at 15 $ a gallery, the fifth at 25 $, and the fourth at 35 $. After that it stops moving, in year one and in year five, whatever the back catalogue weighs.
The trade is stated once and it is real: clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video. That is what keeps the price flat, and it is a reason to pick something else if RAW or video hosting is part of your delivery.
When you should not pay us, or anyone
At genuinely low volume, do not buy any of this. Under about five galleries a year, the free tiers win outright, because they cost nothing and your break-even against a 110 $ annual plan sits at four to eight galleries depending on what a per-job service would charge you. Pixieset Free is 3 GB with 15% commission on store orders and Pixieset branding on the gallery. ShootProof Free is 3 GB of photo storage with no video, and 0% commission. PASS Starter is 1 $ a month billed annually with 10 GB and PASS branding that cannot be removed on that tier. clientgallery.io has a free account too, at one gallery of up to 1,000 photos. A photographer delivering four small galleries a year should take a free tier and spend the 120 $ elsewhere.
One caveat inside that advice. PASS's free storage rule, announced effective 22 August 2023, is 10 GB for six months from signup and 2 GB after six months, and over the limit "Your galleries will begin being purged from your account until we reach the 2GB storage limit." A free tier that shrinks is not a free tier for a back catalogue.
And if you sell prints, stop comparing subscriptions. Price the commission instead. 15% of print revenue dwarfs the gap between any of these monthly figures. A studio doing 4,000 $ of print sales a year on a 15% tier pays 600 $ in commission, more than the most expensive annual plan in any table on this page, and Pixieset charges that 15% on the subtotal before discounts, coupons, taxes or shipping, stacked on top of the payment processor fees that Pixieset names at 2.9% plus 0.30 $ and 3.49% plus 0.49 $. Against that, ShootProof states it never charges a commission on your sales on any plan, and PASS drops store commission to 0% from Standard upward while charging 3% when it handles the payment. For a print-led studio the right question is which platform takes the smallest slice of the print, and the subscription is a rounding error. clientgallery.io is not in that comparison at all, because it has no store.
Same for a studio that lives inside a print lab and a CRM. If your bookings, contracts, invoices and lab orders all run through Pixieset or Pic-Time, the subscription is buying a business system, not gallery hosting, and moving to save 110 $ a year is a bad trade. Stay.
Sources
Every price, cap, policy and quotation above comes from these pages. The PASS and Pixieset pages were fetched 4 September 2026. The ShootProof pages were fetched 23 September 2026, and each help-centre article carries the date ShootProof last updated it. Figures marked arithmetic are computed from those published rates and are identified as such where they appear.
- PASS pricing (five tiers, storage, commission rows, no per-gallery or per-event price), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.passgallery.com/pricing
- PASS Classic migration FAQs (uploads blocked and 30-day oldest-first deletion over the limit, the pass.us and passgallery.com distinction, Pass Classic sunset on 30 June 2024), fetched 4 September 2026, https://servicehub.passgallery.com/pass-classic-migration-faqs
- PASS downgrading your plan and its effects (one-week deletion window on downgrade, branding and custom domain removed, the 6% and 8% figures that disagree with the pricing page), fetched 4 September 2026, https://servicehub.passgallery.com/downgrading-your-plan-and-its-effects
- PASS free plan update, effective 22 August 2023 (10 GB for six months, 2 GB after, galleries purged over the limit), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.passgallery.com/blogs/free-plan-update
- PASS store settings and payments (the 3% card processing fee when PASS is the seller, and that this is the default), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.passgallery.com/blogs/store-settings-payments
- Pixieset pricing (five tiers, monthly and annual rates, storage, commission), fetched 4 September 2026, https://pixieset.com/pricing/
- Managing your Pixieset subscription (yearly plans offer up to a 20% discount compared to the monthly rate), fetched 4 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003816812-Managing-your-Pixieset-subscription
- Uploading to Client Gallery (no photo cap, all uploads count toward available storage), fetched 4 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003740132-Uploading-to-Client-Gallery
- Checking your Client Gallery storage (delete collections, photos or videos to free up space, or upgrade), fetched 4 September 2026, https://website-help.pixieset.com/en/articles/7944254-checking-your-client-gallery-storage
- Deleting a photo, video or collection (deletion is permanent and cannot be undone), fetched 4 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001106771-Deleting-a-photo-video-or-collection
- Pixieset commission (0% on paid Client Gallery tiers, 15% on Free), fetched 4 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002975072-How-does-the-0-commission-fee-work
- Cost of goods sold application fee (15% on the subtotal before discounts, coupons, taxes or shipping, in addition to the payment processor fees Pixieset names at 2.9% plus 0.30 $ and 3.49% plus 0.49 $), fetched 4 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003793352-What-is-the-cost-of-goods-sold-application-fee
- Pixieset Terms of Service, section 6, last updated 20 March 2026 (fair usage: more than 20 GB per collection and 100 GB of bandwidth per month), fetched 4 September 2026, https://pixieset.com/terms/
- ShootProof plans (the five public tiers and their GB allowances, monthly and per-month annual rates), fetched 23 September 2026, https://www.shootproof.com/plans/
- How do your plans work (plans are billed monthly or yearly and are determined by the amount of GB storage needed; the annual totals of 99.99 $, 199.99 $, 319.99 $ and 600 $; the Advanced plan at 2000 GB and 100 GB of video for 51.99 $ or 519.99 $ that the public plans page does not show; the list of US states where sales tax is charged), article updated 22 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008189128-How-do-your-plans-work
- How do I change my plan (an upgrade is prorated and takes effect immediately, a downgrade takes effect at the next bill date), article updated 23 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008032207-How-do-I-change-my-plan
- What does archiving cost (2.99 $ minimum monthly for up to 25 GB, 0.05 $ per additional GB, billed for the previous month, photo archiving included on Premium and video archiving charged there), article updated 22 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008322408-What-does-archiving-cost
- How do I archive my galleries and remove them from Archiving later (archived galleries become static and are not live for client viewing; unarchiving needs enough GB space in the plan), article updated 21 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008322448-How-do-I-archive-my-galleries-and-remove-them-from-Archiving-later
- ShootProof FAQs (ShootProof will never take a commission, on every plan), article updated 22 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/360062280593-ShootProof-FAQs
- clientgallery.io plan and fair use (10 $/month or 110 $/year, unlimited galleries and clients, up to 500,000 photos, JPEG hosting, no print store, free account at one gallery of up to 1,000 photos), checked 4 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/
Frequently asked
Does PASS still charge per gallery or per event?
No. PASS's current pricing page lists five subscription tiers, Starter, Basic, Standard, Unlimited and Platinum, and carries no per-gallery or per-event price. The per-event extension fee that comparison posts still quote belongs to Pass Classic, which PASS sunset on 30 June 2024, and it appears on no live official PASS page.
At how many galleries a year does a subscription beat paying per gallery?
Divide the annual subscription by the per-job fee and round up. Against a 110 $ annual plan that is the eighth gallery at 15 $ a gallery, the fifth at 25 $, and the fourth at 35 $. Against PASS Standard at 240 $ a year it is 16, 10 and 7 galleries. Those counts are arithmetic on published annual rates.
Why does my subscription cost more in year three than in year one?
Because storage is a stock, not a flow. Pixieset states that all uploads count toward your account's available storage, and ShootProof states that its plans are billed either monthly or yearly and are determined by the amount of GB storage needed. Year three is billed at the sum of years one, two and three, so a steady shooting rate still pushes you up the ladder.
What happens if I go over the storage limit?
PASS publishes the clearest rule: all new uploads are blocked, and after 30 days galleries are deleted oldest first until the account is back within its limit, shortened to one week after a downgrade. Pixieset says uploading stops and offers deletion or an upgrade, and deletion there is permanent. ShootProof sells archiving at 2.99 $ a month for the first 25 GB then 0.05 $ per additional GB, and archived galleries are not live for client viewing.
Is a free plan enough if I only shoot a few times a year?
Often yes, and you should take it. Under about five galleries a year the free tiers cost nothing and beat paying 110 $ or 120 $ for a year of anything. Watch the shrinking ones: PASS's free storage rule is 10 GB for six months from signup and 2 GB after, with galleries purged over the limit.
I sell prints. Which number should I be comparing?
The commission, not the subscription. At 15%, 4,000 $ of print sales costs 600 $ a year, more than any annual plan on this page, and Pixieset charges that 15% on the subtotal before discounts, coupons, taxes or shipping, on top of processor fees. ShootProof states it will never take a commission, on every plan; PASS drops store commission to 0% from Standard up while charging 3% when it handles the payment.
How does a flat plan change the arithmetic?
It removes the storage variable. clientgallery.io is 10 $ a month or 110 $ a year with no tiers, no per-gallery fees and no commissions, and unlimited galleries and clients, up to 500,000 photos: web-sized proof JPEGs, 1,000 photos per gallery, 500,000 photos per paid account, free accounts at one gallery of up to 1,000 photos. Full-resolution delivery is a ZIP per gallery, live 3 days per handoff and re-uploadable, with 100 GB of ZIP uploads a month. It hosts JPEGs and does not warehouse RAW or master video, which is what keeps the price flat.
Your client galleries, under your name
Branded galleries, client selections and a Lightroom Classic workflow. Start with your first gallery, then compare the current plan. Full-resolution delivery is a separate handoff with its own limits and conditions.
See the one flat plan