The best photo books can offer a great way to make the most of all those images you’ve snapped over the years, moving them out of the cloud and into the lives of friends and family. Finding the right photo book service for your needs is easier said than done, though – there are so many available online, varying widely in terms of price and how easy they are to use. But this guide is here to help you cut through the noise.
My team and I have tested all of the best photo book services ourselves, and I’ve written recommendations based on comparing them to each other directly. I created TechRadar’s standardized review process to make sure we can consistently assess what you’ll get from every service. This means you can trust that every photo book service listed here has been thoroughly tested for ease of use, the strength of its editing tools, the quality of its printed products, and its value.
With Mother’s Day looming in the US – falling on May 11, 2025 – the best photo books are a fantastic way of celebrating all the memories you’ve shared. You’ll be able to find the perfect service to create a beautiful gift book here. Some platforms offer a vast range of preset templates to plug your images into to make it easy, while others offer precise, granular control to create your own designs – whatever level you’re at, I have an option for you.
Print quality is also a vital consideration, with some offering flawless high-res prints and others showing image grain, artifacts or scuff marks when delivered to us – I’ve reported on all that as well, and you can get a good look at the results of these photo books in our professional photography of the results.
The quick list
The best photo book service for most people
Offering a perfect blend of flexible design tools, print quality and value, Blurb is the best option for most users, whether you're looking to whip up a photo book to show off your pics, or as a gift for a loved one.
Read more below
The best photo book service for fun design tools
With a good number of layout options and a staggering variety of drag-and-drop stickers and image masks, this is the photo book service to use if you want lots of options but don't need the precise design of Blurb.
The best photo book service for ease of use
Placing all the tools you need right at your fingertips, this is the ideal photo book service for you if you want polished results without spending tons of time working in design tools.
The best photo book online services
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The best photo book service overall
Blurb sits right at the sweet spot between all of the things you’d expect from the best photo book services. First off, it offers truly flexible design: you can either upload PDFs from professional design tools such as Adobe InDesign, or create your photo book using Blurb’s own BookWright tools. Blurb’s app is really easy to use – it offers an enormous library of 188 pre-made layouts that you can quickly drag and drop your photos into.
And yet, what impressed us most in our testing was how accurate you can be. As we remarked in our review, we were “able to replicate TechRadar’s photo book test template with surgical precision, thanks to the detailed properties menu”, which enables you to meticulously control everything from photo frame dimensions to RGB color values – but only if you want to get that granular.
On top of this, its printed books are top quality. Colors in our sample photo book looked lush and vibrant; for example, the pinks and greens of an aurora were breathtaking, without looking remotely overblown or artificial. Images came out wonderfully crisp and showed no hint of grain or printing errors. And the cover and paper options feel soft yet premium; I’m confident the finished product should last a long time, even with your nearest and dearest pawing over it regularly.
Despite its excellent features, Blurb is also actually one of the cheapest photo book services we’ve used. Costing $87.71 / £59.75 for a 28-page, 12 x 12-inch photo book, it came at a much lower price than other premium options such as Printique at $145.78 (roughly £112) and even some mid-range services like Printerpix at £90 (about $115). When you consider how strong its design tools are and the quality of its printed products, this price is a bit of a steal and makes Blurb a shoo-in for the best photo book service. It’s the service I’d choose.
Read our full Blurb photo book review.
The best photo book service for fun design tools
VistaPrint’s strongest feature is its easy-to-use, versatile design tool that lets anyone make something unique. It offers 119 different layout templates that allow you to quickly drag and drop your images into a wide variety of arrangements.
If you’re hoping to precisely set the dimensions of photos or set shapes to specific RGB or Hex colors, you might be left wanting. It does, however, offer a broad array of stickers and masking options that enable you to add clip art and tweak the shape of frames to more fully customize your designs. So, for the average person, it's simple yet powerful – advanced designers might prefer Blurb, though.
The finished photo books offer generally excellent results. Not only are the printed images accurate, featuring no blurring or artefacts, but they’re also bright and colorful, looking especially spectacular across double-page spreads. We found there were occasional alignment issues with the plates, with some elements having slight outlines, and there were the odd printing marks here and there. These were tiny enough the average user is unlikely to be bothered by them, but real nitpickers, like myself, will prefer Blurb’s flawless prints.
The only significant issue we experienced was that our photo book took some damage to its spine during delivery, something that would have been easily preventable with some bubble wrap or padding to protect it. But you may not experience this same problem.
VistaPrint’s photo books are also good value. A 12 x 12 inch photo book starts from $50 / £49.99 for 24 pages but the service offers periodic sales, meaning you can often get it even cheaper. Ours was reduced 40% in the UK, so even with four additional pages and a photo cover, it only cost £35.69, while in the US it retailed for $61. We could only access Economy delivery, but while this was estimated to take 10 working days, in practice we found it arrived several days earlier. Taking into account all our testing, I found this to be a competitive price, especially for a photo book that offers overall impressive results.
Read our full VistaPrint photo book review.
The best photo book service for ease of use
Printerpix’s design software is undeniably no frills. You can’t view the exact measurements of image frames and elements, and you also can’t manipulate the proportions or color of any clip art you place.
But it’s also staggeringly straightforward to use: the user interface places every tool right at your fingertips, sub-menus pop up only in the context they’re needed, and adding elements is only ever a case of dragging and dropping to the relevant page – as we remarked in our review, this “ease-of-use is what makes Printerpix a delight to use for creating a custom photo book”.
Its 18 different themes and 163 layouts make it easy to quickly mix and match premade elements as you see fit, making it a great fit for non-designers who’d rather just focus on placing their favorite shots rather than endlessly nudging boxes round the frame.
The quality of Printerpix’s final product is more of a qualified success than some of the others mentioned here. Colors are still rich, making everything look enticing while still being accurate, while the images weren’t subject to any pixelation or resolution issues. However, there was one pretty big exception: several of the images exhibited banding, showing hard divisions between color tones in what should have been smooth gradients, and giving everything a posterized effect.
This is harder to ignore at this kind of price. Costing $88.35 / £88.66 for a 10.6 x 10.6 inch photo book (the closest size the service does to the usual 12 x 12 inch we use for our testing) with 28 pages, it’s not the most expensive photo book service we’ve tested by any means, but it’s also not the cheapest, with services like Blurb and VistaPrint coming in at around half the price. Fortunately, Printerpix also has sales scheduled ahead of some of the big gifting days – in the lead up to Mother’s Day, it’s had this price reduced to $56.37 / £53.68, which is definitely a sweeter deal.
Despite the image issues mentioned above though, I still recommend Printerpix because it’s so easy to use that it’s a great option for anyone intimidated by more complex services. If you’re looking for a gift or memento that's very personal but won't take forever to put together, don’t let yourself be put off by a bit of color banding.
Read our full Printerpix photo book review.
More photo book services we've tested
Snapfish: When Snapfish’s photo books are on sale, they’re a bit of a bargain. The rest of the time, the clunkiness of its design tool can be frustrating, while the slight wonkiness of its printing and washed out images make it a harder sell. Check out our Snapfish photo book review for more detail.
Mixbook: Not only is Mixbook’s design software pretty easy to use – it’s child's play to add drag-and-drop layouts or set the color using RGB sliders or hex values – its prices are competitive. More care could be taken over the finished results though: as you can see in our Mixbook photo book review, clamp marks and other dents from the printing process slightly undermined the otherwise high-quality finish.
Shutterfly: While it’s possible to achieve decent quality results using Shutterfly’s service, it’s not always the smoothest journey getting there. As we found in our Shutterfly photo book review, its design tool is prone to glitches, with elements exhibiting odd behavior or moving after you leave the page. Ultimately, it’s just outshone by everything else here.
Photo book services FAQ
What is the best size for a photo book?
Sorry, we're going to completely sit on the fence on this one and say... it depends! If it's just cheap photo gifts that you have in mind, then keep the costs down by going for not much bigger than 8 x 8 inch. That's more than enough space to create an enduring keepsake.
But if you're after something more special, then crank things up. Taking things up to a larger size means that you'll get larger (or more) photos to cherish and can turn your photo book into a stunning talking point to put on your coffee table.
We order 12 x 12-inch photo books for our testing (or as close to it as possible), which are often reasonably priced and provide plenty of space for multiple photos on a page, or one really splashy one.
Can I make a photo book on my phone?
We expect the majority of your photos are taken and stored on your phone – who can blame you, given how good the best camera phones are these days – so it only makes sense to make your photo book on your phone. The majority of companies have a smartphone app so you can do just that.
Of course, there are some advantages to creating your photo book on your laptop instead of your phone. Some people might find the smaller screen of a smartphone harder to work on when rearranging photos or editing your images. If you prefer to work on a bigger screen so you can see more detail, you can always opt for the companies' website on your laptop instead instead – though there are options that require you to use an app.
Photo book hints and tips
If you've never made your own photo book album before then it can look like a daunting task. The best photo book sites give you myriad options and features to tailor-make your ideal book and that can be overwhelming at first. But it doesn't have to be… here are some things to keep in mind if you need a bit of direction:
Keep it simple: You could spend hours and hours creating your perfect photo book, with the trimming and bordering of every page and photo custom designed and a different font for every occasion. Could. If you're new to photo book creation, we'd suggest starting with one of the hundreds of themes that each service provides. That way, you still get a beautiful book, but need only think about what photos you want where without having to get hung up on every last detail. Themes usually range through every event you can think of: Christmas, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, graduations, Bar Mitzvahs... the list goes on!
Size matters: As with anything; the more you pay, the more expensive it becomes. And the price really can escalate, especially as your pages mount up. If you just want a keepsake of an event or holiday and are after something tangible rather than scrolling through your photos, then keeping it small can also keep the costs down. But if it's a special holiday you're commemorating, or perhaps a wedding or christening – a book that will live out on your coffee table - you may wish to crank up the size as a photo book can be a very special object to keep forever.
Matte, glossy or lustre: The finish of the pages are purely personal preference, but it can be tricky to decide. Glossy is usually the most affordable option and is most like a traditional photo album of old, so you can't really go wrong – it also makes your colorful snaps look even more vibrant. But going for Matte lends a certain air of luxury to the product and some services will make these pages thicker, too (which is reflected in the cost). If you need to hedge your bets, a few photo book sites will give an option somewhere in between called something like Lustre or Semi-Gloss.
Pimp your photo book: If you're a bit of a photo book pro (or have the time to be a bit more daring), then the likes of Mixbook and Snapfish have some frankly awesome customization options. Every single detail is at your disposal, from the positions of the snaps, background detailing, front and back cover design and personalized text to accompany each and every photo.
Be careful of timings: In the age of Amazon Prime, we've got all too used to ordering something one day and it arriving the next. Not so with photo books. OK, so you can pay extra for expedited delivery, but generally you're looking at at least a week before your handsome photo book drops on to your door mat. So we seriously advise planning ahead, especially around peak times like Mother's Day.
How long does it take to deliver a photo book?
In a world where we’ve become accustomed to next day delivery, or even same day in some cases, a seven working day wait might seem like a lifetime. However, these photo books are highly customizable, with each one being personal to you so they do take a little longer to be delivered - and by that we mean a few days, which really isn’t long at all!
Most services have a delivery time of around a week but you can expect a longer wait for some of the larger and more luxe photo books.
