About Trace Any Image
Trace Any Image finds where an image appears online and whether it needs a license. It's built for people who publish images and can't always say where they came from: site owners, marketers and the agencies that work for them.
Who runs it
Trace Any Image is a product of Wikivec Inc., a Delaware company. Write to us at support@wikivec.com.
How it works
Each image is shrunk to 1,024 pixels and sent to Google Cloud Vision, which finds pages and images that match it. Fixed rules then sort those matches into one of four verdicts: paid stock found, free source found, widely published with the owner unknown, or not found. No AI model decides a verdict, so the same evidence always gets the same answer, and every verdict links to the pages behind it.
How accurate it is
On our test of 30 recent stock and news photos from publishers who credit their sources, it flagged 27 as needing a license, including all 10 news photos. It flagged none of 30 photos that had never been posted online. It recognizes some free images less well: 11 of 15 Wikimedia photos came back as free sources.
What it can't tell you
- It never says an image is safe or free to use. Not finding an image online proves nothing about who owns it.
- Finding an image on a stock site doesn't settle who owns it: agencies also sell copies of public-domain photos.
- Photos of people get a verdict, but the pages they appear on aren't listed. It isn't a people search.
- Links to X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads and Pinterest aren't fetched. Save the image and upload it instead.
- Results are evidence of where an image appears, not legal advice.
Our guides
Our copyright guides describe US law, name the section they rely on and link to the US Copyright Office. They're general information. For a decision about a particular image or a demand letter, talk to a lawyer.
More detail: how it works, privacy and terms.