If you produce content, you will need high-quality royalty FREE stock photos – Here are the Best FREE Stock Sites worth exploring
If you are a content creator, blogger, design, marketer or a small business owner promoting your own business you will definitely need to use free stock photos from time to time.
Even if you are handy with a camera and are able to take great photos, there will be times when you need something extra.
There is no shortage of places to find stock photos but finding free stock photos is a must. If you have to use only paid stock images then creating content is going to become very expensive.
There was a time when finding free stock images was exceedingly difficult. The other problem was finding images that were of good quality.
A common question from new bloggers, who are still learning about how to start a blog, is where to find free stock images.
I remember, some years ago, being continually frustrated as finding very poor quality images. I would then end up having to go grudgingly buy expensive stock images.
Luckily, today there are many fantastic websites where you can access great quality free stock photos.
So let me get on with the list.
PS: Be sure to let me know your thoughts on these websites…
Pixabay
Pixabay is my go-to for free stock photos. They have a massive collection of over 1 million photos, vectors, illustrations, and even free videos.
Great quality copyright-free images are now super easy to source. Pixabay offers an easy to use search tool which makes it easy to find what you are looking for.
While it is not always possible to find exactly the right image from a free stock photo website, Pixabay certainly comes close to providing for most of your stock image needs.
Pixabay also has collections of videos, illustrations as well as vectors. This makes it a really valuable site to keep bookmarked.
Read Pixabay’s Licensing Terms
Pexels
Pexels is another excellence free stock photo & video website. I often search Pexels at the same time as Pixabay.
You will find both these sites cross-publishing the same images to some degree but both have considerable numbers of free stock images you won’t find on other free stock sites.
One of the things I particularly like about Pexels is the quality of their photos. They really do take care to make sure only the very best stock photos make it onto their site.
One thing I really like about Pexels is their ‘Collections’. Collections are photos that have been grouped by theme.
This makes it really easy to quickly find a number of photos for your new blog post or design project.
Collection themes include: Rural Living, Vegetarian Life, Discover the World, Confectionery, Fashion, etc.
NegativeSpace
NegativeSpace is another fine example of a free stock photo website that cares about image quality.
They have conveniently organized image by categories. So you can easily find photos for your blog article, website design or print project.
I also really like NegativeSpace’s colour tags, which help you find images by colour theme.
While I personally don’t use this free stock image site as much as the previous two sites, I still think it is a great site and well worth using.
Read NegativeSpace’s Licensing Terms
Unsplash
Unsplash was one of my early free stock photo finds. They are a great source of royalty-free quality images.
Unsplash offers its users a variety of ways to search for images. You can use the traditional search tool or browse by collection or category.
If you are looking for high-quality free stock photos then Unsplash is definitely a website worth visiting.
Read Unsplash’s Licensing Terms
StockSnap.io
StockSnap is another excellent source of great free stock photos. They offer an ever-growing collection of royalty-free images.
StockSnap’s quality is also really good. So you will have no excuse for using poorly composed images in your next blog article or design project.
As with most stock image sites, you can search by category or just type in exactly what you are looking for.
Read StockSnap’s Licensing Terms
Death to Stock
Death to Stock does free stock photos a little differently from the above-mentioned stock sites.
Death to Stock offers a free stock image option and a premium option.
If you want free images then you will need to signup with your email to receive them. Death to Stock will email you free images each month.
If you want the ability to browse or do a search for photos and images then you will need to purchase a premium plan.
While this may not give you the ability to search for and access tons of free photos, Death to Stock does have some very good imagery.
If you are looking for something specific it is certainly worth seeing what they have to offer.
Read Death to Stock’s Licensing Terms
Vecteezy
Vecteezy is a great website providing a wide range of free and premium stock photos, vectors, and videos.
The website is very easy to navigate and the search functionality and filtering options are super easy to use.
Vecteezy offers some really good quality stock and is definitely worth exploring when you need images, vectors or video for your next project.
Read Vecteezy’s Licensing Terms
Fancy Crave
Fancy Crave focuses on free stock photos covering travel. While other stock sites cover a variety of photographic categories, Fancy Crave has chosen to specialize.
This means if travel and exploration of the world is your thing, Fancy Crave may just be your stock site.
Fancy Crave offers both free stock photos and also a premium collection of super high-quality images.
Read Fancy Crave’s Licensing Terms
Startup Stock Photos
Startup Stock Photos is also a very niche stock photo site.
While their free stock photos are rather limited right now, if you need photos specifically related to startups then they might be worth taking a look at.
Read Startup Stock Photos Licensing Terms
Rawpixel
Rawpixel has a collection of excellent premium and free stock photos.
Not only will you find great quality photos but also Vector images and PSD (Photoshop) mockup templates.
Rawpixel has also organized its photo collections really well which makes finding the image you need that much easier.
Read Rawpixel’s Licensing Terms
Picjumbo
Picjumbo is a free stock photo website created by Designer & Photographer Viktor Hanacek.
Picjumbo offers lots of free images and also some great design resources. However, it is Viktor’s Premium collection that is well worth checking out.
Not only are the images absolutely top quality, but his presentation of each collection is terrific.
Be sure to check out some top-notch photography and marketing design at the same time by visiting this site.
Read Picjumbo’s Licensing Terms
Jay Mantri
Jay Mantri provides many of his images as free stock photos. “free pics. do anything (CC0). make magic.” Jay’s words.
Be sure to take a look at Jay’s site and see if his images are the perfect fit for your next project.
SplitShire
SplitShire is a small but growing free stock photo website by photographer Daniel Nanescu offering some excellent quality images.
What SplitShire lacks in volume it makes up in quality. You can also find some nice free stock videos.
Read SplitShire’s Licensing Terms
Stokpic
Stokpic sends its subscribers 10 new free stock photos every two weeks.
Ed Gregory is the talented photographer who has made his work available for free.
You have the option of browsing free stock images by category or search bar.
Some of my favourite free stock photos were taken by Ed so do go take a look at his work.
Read Stokpic’s Licensing Terms
Freerange
Freerange is a more recent free stock photo website find.
While I have yet to use any of their images they do look like good quality to me.
You can search for images fairly easily and generally you will get quite a large set of results.
Read Freerange’s Licensing Terms
Picography
Picography offers a nice collection of good quality free stock images.
Their collections are neatly organized into categories for easy search and there is also a search bar.
If you are finding it hard to find the right image be sure to browse Picography’s collection of free stock photos.
Read Picography’s Licensing Terms
Life of Pix
Life of Pix has some pretty unique free stock photos.
While not as large as some of the other sites, Life of Pics is worth exploring when you need good quality photos.
Kaboompics
Kaboompics is a really nice looking cleanly designed free stock photo website.
I particularly like their colour palette system that gets generated for each image. This is a really nice touch.
Kaboompics is also easy to browse and you can also view images grouped together by photoshoot.
Read Kaboompics Licensing Terms
Morguefile
Morguefile has been around for quite a while. They were one of the first free stock photo sites I came across years ago.
Morguefile has a focus on providing images for use as reference material for illustrators, artist, and designers. As such, a lot of the photos you will find cover everyday life and objects.
Read Morguefile’s Licensing Terms
New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a great website to visit if you are looking for old vintage free stock photos.
Cole Townsend has gathered a great collection of historical photos. These photos are in the public domain and thus royalty-free.
For a look back in time, a new journey into the past, go visit New Old Stock.
Read New Old Stock’s Licensing Terms
ISO Republic
ISO Republic is yet another stock image site that has good quality photos and so makes it onto this list.
Besides good quality images neatly organized into collections. ISO Republic also offers a library of free video stock.
Read ISO Republic’s Licensing Terms
Skitterphoto
Skitterphoto provides a library of quality photos for use in personal and commercial projects.
Like the other sites on this list, all images are royalty and attribution free.
This site has good search functionality. It also has conveniently organized photos into commonly searched for categories.
Read Skitterphoto’s Licensing Terms
LibreShot
LibreShot is a free stock photo website by photographer Martin Vorel.
This site features a wide range of good quality interesting photographs. You can freely use them in both personal and commercial projects.
Read LibreShot’s Licensing Terms
Gratisography
Gratisography claims to have, “The world’s quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures, comprised of the world’s best, most creative images – photos you just won’t find anywhere else.“
After browsing this site I am inclined to agree.
If you are looking for out of the ordinary, strange or funny free stock photos then you’ve hit the mother-load.
Read Gratisography’s Licensing Terms
Jeshoots
Jeshoots is a photo bank where you can download original thematic photos and mockups by Jan Vasek for free.
Here you will find a well-organized collection of good quality photos. Jeshoots also offers a nice collection of mockup images.
Bara Art
Bara Art by Bara Cross provides free images for personal and commercial projects.
While this site does not have a massive photo library, it does have some interesting images. The quality is also good and you can browse images by category and tag.
Read Bars Art’s Licensing Terms
Magdeleine
Magdeleine offers curated photos for download. The license terms include creative commons licensing as well as attribution required licenses.
While also not a large free stock photo website, Magdeleine does have some unique images worth exploring.
The site also has a nice colour palette feature and is fairly well organized.
MMT
MMT has a nicely organized collection of stock images. You can browse photos by category, tag, colour or collection theme.
MMT also features free video stock and a neat wallpaper generator.
Trunklog
Trucklog by photographer Magnus Jälthammar, provides a free to use photo library of Magnus’s work.
There are some quite unique images on this site. It is worth browsing if you are looking for something a little out of the ordinary or perhaps extraordinary.
RGBStock
RGBStock features free stock photos created by more than a thousand different photographers.
You will find a wide variety of high-quality images on this site. The contents are well organized and it is easy to search for images.
Read RGBStock’s Licensing Terms
Pikwizard
Pikwizard is a simple and neatly organized free stock image website.
You can easily browse for photos by category, search bar, and popularity.
Read Pikwizard’s Licensing Terms
So that brings an end to this list of the best free stock photo and image websites on the net.
I will, of course, continue to update this post as I discover new sites worth sharing.
If you know of any great stock sites that should be featured let me know in the comments below.
