25 Free Stock Photo Websites For Every Situation 2024
Free stock photos are tough to find. Professional companies hold a great share of the stock photo market; sometimes, they charge more than $50 for a single photo. Even if you manage to go through all that hassle and find a good HD stock photo with no watermark, you still can’t be sure it’s free. Someone might upload a copyrighted image somewhere, and you download it thinking it’s free. You just unwittingly committed copyright infringement! In some situations, you might have to call a lawyer. To avoid those situations, Colorlib has curated a list of websites that use Creative Commons license (CC license), meaning you can use them freely for personal or commercial purposes.
Best Free Stock Photos Sites For Commercial Use
1. Unsplash
Unsplash adds ten new photos every ten days. With hundreds of thousands of photos, you will probably find something interesting while browsing Unsplash. It is a guarantee that Unsplash will deliver all the necessary imagery for your website. All the pictures on this free stock photo website are of the highest quality. Unsplash is a massive online space that came out of an idea to create a solid resource for photographs, which, back in the day, was not that easy to find. Today, Unsplash is one of the leaders in space.
Visit Unsplash2. Moose
If you are looking for a stock photo resource to find free images on all popular subjects, check out Moose. With its easy-to-use search and categories, you can get the photos you need in seconds. Additionally, you can choose the size and format for a photo you want to download. You can also customize the image by changing its background color. So, you’ll get an image that can’t be found anywhere else. Moose offers both free and premium photos. But free ones always come first in search results. And they are marked as “free”. Please note that you need to link back to Moose to use them in your projects.
Visit Moose3. Picjumbo
Picjumbo markets itself as a “totally free photos for your commercial & personal works” website. Over a thousand free stock photos, backgrounds and images in the highest resolution are there to take to your full advantage. Bear in mind that Picjumbo has its free stock images broken down into more than a dozen categories. That means there is something for everyone. Speaking of categories, Picjumbo covers summer, food, business, abstract, nature, fashion, technology and fitness photography, to name a few. Also, with millions of downloads since its inception, Picjumbo is one of the greatest free stock photo depository sites. Decorate your online space with fantastic pictures and make a strong first impression.
Visit Picjumbo4. Pixabay
Pixabay offers over a million free photos, vectors and art illustrations (videos, too). Use their extensive search engine to specify the tiniest details while searching for your photo; we are sure something will come up to satisfy your needs. Or, you can start discovering outstanding content in different categories. These include animals, architecture, education, emotions, people, and religion. What’s cool about Pixabay is that you can also specify by the image size and transparency, black and white, and other color-specific content. Find the right material for your next compelling article and shine online.
Visit Pixabay5. StockSnap
StockSnap says they have hundreds of high-resolution images added weekly. Yes, each week! A bundle of hundreds of photos gets added to their massive collection for you to benefit from. One glance at their website and see that they are sincere. If you do not find that perfect photo on your first visit, return next week, and you will have hundreds of new photos. If you do not want to miss any updates and other news, subscribe to StockSnap’s newsletter and be constantly updated. If you are a photographer, you can submit your work to this outstanding free stock photo website.
Visit StockSnap6. Pexels
Pexels adds ten new free stock photos every day. Every photo on the platform also includes metadata and details, like size, aspect ratio, camera, shutter speed, etc. Talented creators and photographers from all over the globe share their masterpieces with the world for free. And you can now get your hands on all this content at any given time of day without paying a single penny. Additionally, you can see who the most popular photographers from the past thirty days are and even join yourself. When downloading an image, you can specify a custom size so you do not need to edit it afterward.
Visit Pexels7. ISO Republic
ISO Republic markets itself as a depository of “High quality, free photos for creatives.” ISO Republic is a free stock photo website with several different categories of high-res CCO content. You can also browse popular tags and see popular searches. Of course, you can also play the functional search feature and go specific. By the way, you can choose between photos and videos or browse all. Another handy feature of ISO Republic is the collections section. You can find all sorts of useful information on ISO Republic’s blog. Lastly, add yourself to their email list and get the best of the best delivered straight to your inbox.
Visit ISO Republic8. SplitShire
SplitShire offers over a thousand high-quality free stock photos in over twenty categories. Speaking of categories, you will find abstract, animals, fashion, street, wedding, landscape, interiors and more. Bear in mind that SplitShire also has quite a decent collection of mockups. It is periodically updated and has decent-sized depositories. Fun fact, SplitShire is run by one person who happens to have a ton of content laying around and decided to start uploading it for others to profit (nope, you cannot sell the images). With more than two million downloads and images seen on many notable news sites, you know you can find a ton of beauty and wonder on SplitShire for you to manipulate.
Visit SplitShire9. Foodiesfeed
As the name suggests, Foodiesfeed focuses on free food stock images. Great photo selection that will make you crave for a snack while browsing through their photo selection. From coffee, cake and pizza to meat, healthy snacks and more, there is something for everyone on Foodiesfeed. Whether you run a restaurant, a food blog, or any other food-related project, healthy living and other whatnots, you can find the right images on Foodiesfeed. Moreover, if you regularly take photos of delicious dishes from different restaurants, you can also contribute to Foodiesfeed. As a food/recipe blogger, you can bring some tasty creations to Foodiesfeed for others to indulge in.
Visit Foodiesfeed10. Gratisography
With regular weekly updates, Ryan McGuire brings unique (and sometimes rather bizarre) free stock photos. Check out this website if you want or need something different. You will surely not find images like those on Gratisography anywhere else. So while you might see the free stock photo you use on your page on several other websites, this will not be the case if you use Gratisography’s content. A great imagery resource for bloggers, social media posts, and other content-driven web spaces. If you want to make an impression that lasts, Gratisography is the solution to make it happen.
Visit Gratisography11. Life of Pix
Weekly added photographs donated to the public domain. Hundreds of unique and high-resolution free stock photos for use regardless of the project you operate. You can spice up your website experience with any of Life of Pix’s photos. Whether you are hunting for nature, city, food, sea, people, animal or desk images, you will find many on Life of Pix. Another special feature of Life of Pix is the weekly photographer highlight. They choose a photographer each week and share some of their images on their social networks and websites.
Visit Life of Pix12. Free Nature Stock
Free Nature Stock is a free stock photo website dedicated to everything in nature. It makes life more beautiful by giving us one free stock photo daily. Flowers, fire, trees, birds, sunset, stars, you name it; Free Nature Stock covers it all. One guy, Adrian Pelletier, runs the entire project. As you will notice, Adrian is all around the place, regularly going outdoors. So you can now experience nature through Adrian’s lens and even use his images for your extraordinary projects. And if you are interested in Adrian’s gear, you can also find that on the website.
Visit Free Nature Stock13. Startup Stock Photos
Startup Stock Photos mainly focuses on startup and business environments but offers plenty more free stock photos. Bear in mind, even as a blogger, designer, developer, agency or any other publisher, Startup Stock Photos has a wide array of content for you to skim through. If anything sparks your interest, download the image of your choice and decorate your page with it. What once was just a simple idea has now become an online hub for free stock images that individuals and organizations worldwide can use. If you want to support Startup Stock Photos, you can always donate through Paypal.
Visit Startup Stock Photos14. New Old Stock
The “nos” in the website name stands for “New Old Stock.” It’s a website that offers free vintage photos from public archives. Now, you too can recapture history, free of charge. There is a lot of content available on New Old Stock in the best possible quality for you to get your hands on and implement into your blog or website. On the other hand, you can also use all the images on NOS to engage your social media followers on social media. Remember to subscribe to New Old Stock’s newsletter and get a dose of vintage straight to your inbox.
Visit New Old Stock15. Jay mantri
Jay mantri is a small, free stock photo depository run by a single person. What it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. If you are in for eye-catchy visual goodness, you better not miss checking out Jay mantri today. Knowing that the site is not well-known amongst daily users, you’ll realize that few use their images. With that in mind, you will appear more original, with excellent free stock images that not so many around the web sport. Make it special and exclusive, create a striking web appearance, and turn heads; you have it all under full control.
Visit16. Travelcoffeebook.com
Travelcoffeebook.com is all about sharing beautiful travel moments with its users. They also have a lot of coffee stock photos. Let’s just say the owner enjoys their cup of joe very much. You can download all the images you find on Travelcoffeebook.com and do whatever you want with them. You will notice that most shots do not look stock at all. In other words, it will feel almost like you took them. Also, additional details about the location and the gear they used are below each image.
Visit17. Picography
Picography might not be the largest free stock photo website, but all the content you find on the page is outstandingly appealing to the eye. They are hand-picked to ensure that every photo on the website offers something unique. In addition, all the photographs are CCO-licensed, and you can use them wherever you want. There are many different categories of imagery presented on Picography, and you can submit your work. Make your search more specific by typing your desired keyword in the search bar or browsing through popular searches.
Visit18. Dreamy Pixel
Dreamy Pixel is a free stock photo website that primarily dedicates its entire collection to landscape and nature images. When writing this, you can find about 400 photos for download and use for personal or commercial purposes. Furthermore, if you sign up for Dreamy Pixel, you can expect three new mind-bending images to drop into your inbox every Monday. All photos come in high resolution and are just a click away. You can browse by different categories or enter your keyword and hit search. Using Dreamy Pixel’s content, no one will tell it is a free image.
Visit19. FreeImages.com
FreeImages.com has a whopping collection of 300,000 free stock photos and royalty-free images. Yes, that is a lot! With that in mind, you will surely find what you seek. Architecture, design, and food to industrial, movie, cars, and religion; are some categories on FreeImages.com. Search by new photos and popular images and upload your own. Becoming part of the FreeImages.com community will never run out of image content. It is all there, regularly updated with new stuff, at your fingertips.
Visit20. Dreamstime
Dreamstime is yet another free stock photo website with an endless collection of content. You need to sign up to download free photos from Dreamstime. And if you need even more, you can always upgrade and go premium. With the number of images you will find on Dreamstime, it is safe to say that this is one of the biggest resources for stock photos. Even the pickiest users find their distinct taste-following images almost immediately. As a photographer, you can also become a contributor by submitting your superb photography.
Visit21. Good Free Photos
Good Free Photos is a large free stock photo website with thousands of public domain photos, including landscapes, objects, animals, plants, textures, etc. Predominantly, all the photos were taken by one man during his travels, hikes and random place visits. Of course, every once in a while, Good Free Photos is happy to share works from other remarkable photographers and offer even more variety of content. It could be you whose photos Good Free Photos will share in their collection of well over 25,000 thousand images, vectors, pics, and more. In short, you will discover many nature-inspired pictures along with people, cars, cities, and more.
Visit22. 4 Free Photos
4 Free Photos offers more than four photos, of course. The approximate number would be 7,000 free stock photos available for your convenience. If you would like to browse a free stock photo website where each photo gives a feeling an actual human being took it, 4 Free Photos is the place to be. You will rarely find a classic stock image on 4 Free Photos, rather a more amateur-ish vibe, although each picture is of the highest quality. If you want to go on a more personal level with your users, the chances are high that 4 Free Photos’ content will do the trick.
Visit23. FreeImages.co.uk
More than 18,000 free stock photos in 89 categories await you on FreeImages.co.uk. Great selection for all your needs regardless of your intentions. If you want to make your page or blog appear more professional, FreeImages.co.uk’s contribution can significantly impact the overall experience. Some featured categories are education, office, relaxation, technology, and backgrounds. If you build a massive collection of pictures on your website and social media, visit FreeImages.co.uk and expand your collection with more outstanding shots. FreeImages.co.uk has something for everyone – do not miss checking it out!
Visit24. Death To Stock
With a somewhat strange name for a website dealing with free stock photos, two rogue photographers from Death To Stock are trying to bring you more than excellent content directly to your email inbox. All the images and other creative content you find on the website are first-class. In other words, each picture is very premium-like, garnishing your webspace in the best possible light. Once you become a member of Death To Stock, you get instant access to thousands of images and many hours of video content. In addition, all subscribers receive a fresh new pack of media monthly.
Visit25. Dummyimage.com
So, you came all this far and still did not find what you looked for on any of the websites listed above? You cannot decide which free stock photo to use. Do you want a placeholder photo, but you do not want anything fancy? To make it simple for you, Dummyimage.com is the solution. Enter the size, background color, foreground color, format, and text. After that, you get the perfect custom placeholder image ready for use. Yes, it is as simple as it sounds, and you do not need any prior experience.
Visit
Hi, I’d like to submit the free (CC Attribution-ShareAlike) photo web site that I just started.
Giorgio,
Unfortunately, your website can’t be listed as there are very limited selection of images available and all of them are outdated. Above listed free stock photo websites does have much wider selection and all images are new and does have a much better quality.
Hi there,
I run a free CC0 stock photo email subscription service — thestockpile.net — that might be a good addition to this post if you guys update it at all or do a similar post in the future.
thanks for your consideration!
Hi,
Just to let you know that I’m sharing more than 4000 downloadable photos on Flickr, all available for free under the CC0 license :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cc0/
Franck
Hey Aigars,
Would you consider adding stockvault.net to your list?
It’s been around since 2004 and has over 112.000 free stock photos for personal, commercial and CC0 license.
Thanks for the consideration.
Regards, Bjorgvin
This is a great list. I thought I knew of all the free stock photo sites I would need. There’s a lot more out there than I realized. Thanks Damir!