Frequently asked questions

PixGuard looks for signals that an image may belong to someone else and combines them into a risk score from 0 to 100. Account scans check EXIF, IPTC and XMP copyright fields, watermark text and logos from 7 stock agencies (Shutterstock, Getty Images, Adobe Stock, iStock, Alamy, 123RF and Dreamstime), tiled watermarks, error level analysis and an AI-generation estimate, and compare each image against a database of reference image fingerprints. The score is a prompt to investigate, not a legal finding.

Paste a web page URL and PixGuard opens that one page, picks the 3 largest of its first 30 images and checks them for watermark patterns, a stock-photo look and unusual pixel patterns. It needs no account, allows 3 checks a day and usually returns results in under a minute. It does not read metadata or compare fingerprints, and results are not saved to an account. A free account adds those checks.

The check reads the HTML your server sends and does not run JavaScript, so images a page adds with scripts after it loads are missed. Bot protection, such as a Cloudflare challenge, can also return a challenge page instead of your content; if the site is yours, allowing PixGuardBot in those settings usually fixes that. Some pages, often homepages, simply have few images, so try an article, gallery or product page instead.

PixGuard gives risk estimates, not verdicts. A high score means an image shows signals worth investigating, such as a stock-agency watermark or a copyright notice in its metadata; it is not a finding of infringement. A low score is not permission to use an image, because many protected images carry no visible signals at all. Each result lists the signals behind its score so you can judge them yourself.

Up to a limit, with a free account. A website scan follows links on your site across up to 50 pages and scores the images it finds. Each scan analyzes up to 10 new images on Free, 500 on Pro and 2,000 on Business; images already analyzed are shown from cache at no cost, so running the scan again picks up more. The crawler reads page HTML without running JavaScript. For the manual side, see how to check your website's images.

A free account includes 30 image scans with no credit card; they expire 30 days after signup. Pro is $29 a month ($290 a year) for about 250 images a month, and Business is $79 a month ($790 a year) for about 1,000 images a month. One image scan uses one credit, and images already analyzed are free to rescan. Image packs of 85, 270, 750 and 1,700 images cost $20, $60, $150 and $300 and never expire. See plan limits and prices.

A reverse image search finds copies of an image online. PixGuard looks for copyright risk signals in the image itself, such as copyright metadata, stock-agency watermarks, fingerprint matches and signs of AI generation, and gives it a risk score with the reasons behind it. Use a reverse image search to see where an image appears; use PixGuard to decide which images on your site to investigate first. Neither tells you whether you hold a license.

TinEye is excellent at finding where an image appears online. PixGuard answers a different question: which images on your site carry copyright risk signals. It reads copyright metadata, looks for watermark text and logos from major stock agencies, flags signs of editing with error level analysis, estimates whether an image is AI-generated and compares it against a database of reference image fingerprints. See the full PixGuard vs TinEye comparison.

Account scans include an estimate of whether an image is AI-generated, shown alongside the other signals. Treat it as one signal, not proof: no detector is always right. The no-signup page check does not run this estimate.

PixGuard analyzes images to produce a risk score. For a website scan, it downloads each image to analyze it and doesn't keep the file. It keeps the image URL, a fingerprint and the analysis result, which is how images it has already analyzed are shown again without using credits, and it keeps your website scan history for a year. For images you upload from your dashboard, it also keeps a small preview copy. The no-signup page check deletes each image after analysis and doesn't save results to an account. Some checks send a copy of the image to third-party services: Google Cloud Vision can read watermark text, including in the free watermark detector, and on Pro and Business it looks up where a matching image appears online. Vision models reached through OpenRouter run AI vision review on Pro and Business, and the no-signup page check can fall back to one. The privacy policy covers what is stored and who processes it; for anything it doesn't answer, email [email protected].

Yes. The Chrome extension and the WordPress plugin connect to your PixGuard account with an API key from Settings, and each image they check uses your account's image scans. Business plans include API access: a REST API with API-key authentication for scanning an image by upload or URL, fetching reports and managing monitoring.

Each image gets a risk score from 0 to 100 and a severity band: Safe (0 to 9), Low (10 to 24), Medium (25 to 44), High (45 to 69) or Critical (70 to 100). The result lists the signals behind the score, such as watermark text from a stock agency or a copyright notice in the metadata, with a suggested next step. You then decide whether to keep, license, replace or remove the image.

The no-signup page check usually returns results in under a minute. A website scan runs in the background, and how long it takes depends on how many pages and new images it finds; images already analyzed come back from cache. You can leave the page while it runs; by default, PixGuard emails you when the scan finishes.

Yes. A website scan follows links across up to 50 pages and analyzes up to 10 new images per scan on Free, 500 on Pro and 2,000 on Business. On Pro and Business you can also upload a PDF of up to 25 MB, and PixGuard checks up to 50 images inside it. Single-image uploads in the dashboard take one JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF at a time, up to 10 MB, and use one image scan each.

Yes. Cancel from the Credits page in your dashboard. Your plan keeps working until the end of the billing period you have paid for, then your account returns to the free tier. Image packs you bought stay in your account and never expire. Monthly plan scans don't roll over into the next billing period.

A free account includes 30 image scans with no credit card required. They expire 30 days after signup. Use them to scan part of your website or upload individual images before you choose a plan. Without an account, you can also check the 3 largest images on one page, up to 3 times a day.

Scores are estimates, and some will be wrong: an image you have licensed can still score high, and a protected image can show no signals at all. Each result lists the signals behind its score so you can check them. Single-image results have thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to mark a result as accurate or a false positive, and you can email [email protected] with the image URL.