How HeadshotDB data is collected

A requirement is listed as official only if we can quote it from the organization that sets it, such as a platform’s help center, a government agency or a licensing body. Each quote links to its source and carries the date we checked it. We do not copy values from third-party guides, even widely repeated ones.

If an official source is silent on something (background color, attire, pixel size), we leave it blank and say so. Common advice is shown separately, labeled as convention, with the source that gave it. Sources that sell headshots are marked as such.

When an organization’s older and newer documents disagree, we report the newer one and explain the difference. ERAS’s 100 KB vs 150 KB file limit is an example.

Prices come from each provider’s own website, read on the date shown. We skip directories and marketplaces, because their prices are often out of date or show only a starting price. We record what the price includes, so that a $150 one-photo session isn’t compared to a $250 three-photo package as if they were the same thing.

Search volumes are US Google search estimates from Google Ads, retrieved through DataForSEO. Google reports them in rounded buckets, so read them as order of magnitude. Seasonality uses monthly history from October 2018 to September 2026. We index each month against the average month over 2023–2026, so 100 means an average month.

For trends we only use multi-year monthly history. Short 12-month windows from the same source can have gaps that look like sudden growth.

The AI headshot likeness test uses only fictional people generated from text descriptions, never real customers or scraped photos. Likeness is measured with open face-recognition models (YuNet and SFace from OpenCV Zoo) and checked against a blind side-by-side comparison, because an AI judge alone proved unreliable. We use the result to choose the model behind DIY Headshots, and say so on the page.

All HeadshotDB data is free to use under CC BY 4.0 with a link back. If something is wrong or out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it and note the change. Downloads are on the data page.