Lightdrift

Lightdrift is an image search service built for software and AI agents rather than manual browsing. An application describes the image it needs and receives ranked real images with hosted file URLs, source information, license details, permission flags, and attribution requirements. The service handles sourcing, captioning, indexing, hosting, and maintenance so a developer doesn't have to stitch together stock libraries, web search, file resolution, and inconsistent metadata. Each result includes a machine-readable rights answer and a ready-to-use attribution string as declared by the source. It is strictly a retrieval product. It doesn't generate images, sell assets through a marketplace, or treat a search result as a blanket guarantee that a file is safe for every possible use.

Search accepts natural-language text, an uploaded image, a public image URL, or image plus text. A known Lightdrift asset ID can also be used to find visually similar results or retrieve a selected asset. Uploaded inputs can be JPEG, PNG, or WebP files, which covers the common formats an agent is likely to encounter. The current Voyage index contains 1,852,370 captioned images at launch, while the broader collection includes about two million images and icons. Icons aren't part of the current captioned search index. Lightdrift says its hosted results are Creative Commons licensed, with public-domain material also visible in the collection, and it returns the source's stated permissions and conditions so an agent can evaluate the result before using it.

Under the hood, default photo search uses Voyage multimodal embeddings made from each image and its caption, followed by text reranking over the captions. Queries can describe a subject, recognizable name, visible text, mood, aesthetic, composition, or intended use. Hard filters cover commercial use, license, source, dimensions, orientation, format, and year. This gives an agent both semantic retrieval and concrete constraints in one request. The source and rights fields remain attached to ranked files rather than requiring a second lookup in another system. Coverage still varies by subject, and the documentation places negative constraints and additional design-direction filters on the roadmap, so precise exclusions may require reviewing the returned set.

Developers can connect through a conventional API or a hosted remote MCP server. The MCP service uses streamable HTTP and supports OAuth or an API key, making it available to compatible coding agents and assistants without installing a local image index. Search results provide the file and the context needed to choose it, while similar-image lookup can expand from a promising result. The public documentation includes a quickstart, endpoint reference, rights guidance, setup for the Images MCP, and an unauthenticated Docs MCP that can answer integration questions. Lightdrift also offers an interactive playground alongside its API key flow, giving a developer a way to inspect behavior before wiring search into a production agent. This makes the product practical for agent workflows where licensing metadata needs to remain machine-readable throughout the decision.

The clearest use cases are products that need accurate or attributable visuals on demand. Deck builders can retrieve an image for a specific slide, assistants can add sourced pictures to answers, and app or site builders can fetch a relevant hero or supporting image. A generation pipeline can use real references to ground a less familiar subject, while moodboard and research tools can collect visually related material. Lightdrift is especially relevant when generated imagery is unreliable for real species, people, or places. It is less suited to teams seeking editable synthetic artwork, a human-first stock browsing experience, or icons through the current main search index.

Pricing is usage based with no seat subscription. A new account receives $1 in starting credit without a card, and adding a payment method adds another $9 without requiring a purchase. Standard usage costs $5 per 1,000 searches and supports text, uploaded-image, combined image-and-text, and similar-image queries. Credit is prepaid and can use optional automatic refills. An enterprise tier offers custom volume pricing, rate limits, uptime agreements, support, onboarding, security review, and procurement. This makes access freemium for evaluation and pay as you go afterward. Lightdrift is a young service, and its own rights documentation is careful about the boundary between reported license data and legal assurance, but the combination of retrieval, provenance, attribution, API access, and MCP is unusually focused for teams building image-aware agents.