Large, beautiful photos are essential for grabbing the attention of your audience. If you are running a blog, they can be important for making a point or illustrating a concept. Unfortunately, eye-catching photos and illustrations are usually expensive unless you have the know-how to capture your own. Well, there is an answer - free stock photo sites!
These sites allow you to use public domain photos without charge on your web site or in any project where you have a need for high-quality photos. Most of these sites offer an upgrade to membership where you can access a much larger collection of images for a fee. They also offer higher quality images as part of a paid membership. However, all of these sites offer fantastic free photos to get your started on your project without expense.
Best Sites for Free Stock Photos
These are the best sites to get free stock photos for commercial use. These sites are obviously also great for personal projects as well. Lets check them out:
Unsplash
Unsplash
Unsplash is a fantastic photo site that has over 3 million high-resolution images taken by professional photographers that basically donate them for free commercial or personal use. There are less images than what you might find on a site like Pixabay, but the quality of the photos is very high. You can sign up for a free account and be a contributor or a user of their photos.
Reasons To Use
- Amazing API that is used in an ever growing number of apps
- Extremely high quality photos
- Excellent search tool
- Available iOS mobile app
Reasons To Avoid
- Though most of the images are very high quality, there are some that are lower in resolution.
Stockvault
Stockvault is an archive of high resolution photographs that photographers, designers and students share and use for their personal and non-commercial design projects. These photos are also great for business and professional use. Stockvault also offers web layouts and logos. Currently they offer over 138,000 free stock photos with new ones being added every week.
Reasons To Use
- Beautiful website that is easy to navigate and use
- Large collection of photos
- Featured Image Collections
- Helpful blog with articles to help contributors
Reasons To Avoid
- None
Stockvault
141.854 free stock photos, textures, backgrounds and graphics for your next project. No attribution required.
Pexels
Pexels is a fantastic curated archive of free stock photos and videos that is very popular among creatives. They even offer a powerful API that is currently being used by Canva, TypeForm, Sketch, and AirTable, which lets you use their image and video library without leaving your application or website.
Reasons To Use
- Beautiful website that offers both photos and videos
- API that can be integrated into other apps
- Handy Leaderboard that shows the creators with the most views
- Monthly challenges for contributors that offer cash prizes for the winners.
Reasons To Avoid
- More emphasis on creators seems to put less emphasis on business and professional use photos.
Pixabay
Pixabay is a community of creators based in Germany offering royalty-free photos, videos, sound effects, and music. They have over 2.7 million free images in their library that can be used for personal or commercial use free of charge. One advantage to using Pixabay is they also offer illustrations, vector graphics, and gif's in their massive archive.
Reasons To Use
- Easy to use website and search engine
- Massive collection of over 2.8 million photos
- Website also offers videos, illustrations, and vectors, music, and even GIF's
Reasons To Avoid
- More emphasis on a wide range of products than simply offering stunning photos
Pixabay
Over 2.8 million+ high quality stock images, videos and music shared by our talented community.
Reshot
Reshot is a website primarily dedicated to free icons and illustrations. This is unique as they leave the free photos to others that have a much larger library of images and instead focus on a more focused audience that needs vector illustrations and SVG icons. Their library of assets was built by the same designers as Envato Elements.
Reasons To Use
- One of the best on the web if you are looking for Icons and Illustrations
- Simple website that offers a very fast search engine
Reasons To Avoid
- If you are looking for high-quality stock photos for commercial or business use, you will have to look elsewhere.
Reshot
Free Icons & Illustrations. Design freely with instant downloads and commercial licenses.
Morgue File
Morgue File is a free photo archive "for creatives, by creatives" and has over 400,000 images in its library. It was originally created as a resource and free image exchange for creatives and teachers to use in their work, which is a departure from some of the rest of the stock photo sites. They offer photos, videos, vector illustrations, and photo templates.
Reasons To Use
- Community based free image exchange originally created for creatives and teachers
- Website offers Photos, Videos, Vectors, and Templates
- Handy Recent Photos menu option that allows you to browse only their new contributions.
Reasons To Avoid
- Much smaller collection of photos with just above 400,000 files.
Morgue File
Morguefile is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.
Rawpixel
Rawpixel is a site out of the UK that offers free images, graphic templates, PNG elements, and design addons. Their mission is to offer the most diverse and authentic range of assets to the creative community.
Reasons To Use
- Curated Topics collections that allow for easy navigation of photos
- Website offers Photos, Illustrations, PNG elements, and backgrounds
- Premium photo collection offering that offers higher quality photos and resources. This collection can be accessed for $8.99/month.
Reasons To Avoid
- Free collection only offers 5 downloads per day.
- Not the best option for pure public domain and free images.
Rawpixel
Free images, PNGs, stickers, backgrounds, wallpapers, graphic templates and PSD mockups. All safe to use with commercial licenses.
Picjumbo
Viktor Hanacek
Picjumbo is a site started and owned by Viktor Hanacek. Started in 2013, it has grown to be one of the largest databases of free photos and design resources on the web. You can use many of the assets for free or opt to donate a small sum using his "Buy me a coffee" option through PayPal. Like many of these sites, Picjumbo also offers a Premium Membership that offers access to a larger collection of photos that you can download in large batches for use.
Reasons To Use
- Curated Topics collections that allow for easy navigation of photos
- Design Resources section offers other resources useful for creatives such as icons, mockups, themes, and UI kits
- Blog offers some great stories about creatives and new collections
- Premium options available and listed below:
Reasons To Avoid
- Smaller collection of photos than some of the larger stock photo sites.
Picjumbo
Picjumbo is free stock photo site created in 2013 by designer & photographer Viktor Hanacek.
Final Words
Most of the images on these free stock sites have a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means you can pretty much do what you want with them — without requiring any kind of consent. However, almost all of these sites will try to get you to join by offering popups after you download an image. Feel free to join them if you found some images you were able to use. Even though I am not affiliated with any of them, it is the least you can do to pay them back for providing such outstanding stock photos for free!
Paid Options
Of course if you have the means and are looking for a site with the highest-quality images, you might wish to use a paid site such as Shutterstock or istockphoto. These sites will provide subscription options depending on your image needs and offer some of the largest image libraries on the web.
