Looking for the best free images for your website? Images are essential parts of websites and marketing campaigns. They make your content more attractive and engaging.
Can you use any image that found on the web to decorate your blog posts and social media graphics?
No. They are bound to copyright restrictions and violating the same may lead to unexpected situations that no one can suffer. So you should use only royalty-free images on the website or blog.
Thanks to the Creative Commons(CC) license. It allows you to use high-quality images, music files, and videos by adding a short note of credit to the creator. It means you need not pay even a single penny for these free images.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization based in California, US. It has released several licenses to the public without any cost. CC is managed by a board of directors and an advisory board, both of them contain 15 members each. Currently, there are over 300 million works licensed under various CC terms and 100+ affiliates working in over 70 jurisdictions for CC activities around the world.
Today, we’re going to list 80 sites to download free images and videos for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
Best Places to Get Royalty-Free images and Videos (2023 Edition)
These are the top websites to download business stock photos, videos, music, and others for your online/offline projects. Most of them are free.
1. Pixabay
Pixabay is our favorite site to download royalty-free images and videos. Founded by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinbergerin 2010, they host over 4 million photo and other visual assets that you can use for personal as well as commercial projects.
They also offer thousands of free video clips, music tracks, illustrations, sound effects, and GIF files under Creative Commons license. Open a file and click on the download option to view available formats. Select a size and tap download again to save.
Sometimes, you may want to edit images and videos. If so, before downloading, click on Edit to connect to Canva. From there, you can apply effects and filters, add texts and elements, etc.
In 2019, Pixabay was acquired by Canva.
2. Unsplash
Unsplash is one of the best free stock photography websites. Launched in 2013, they feature 5+ million high-quality images across various categories.
Created by Canadian entrepreneur Mikael Cho, this platform was later acquired by Getty Images in 2021. Currently, more than 330000 photographers contributing to Unsplash. The images are available in multiple dimensions, and you can use them freely under the Unsplash license.
3. Pexels
Pexels is another best free stock photo website. Founded by Ingo and Bruno Joseph in 2014, they have over 3.2 million royalty-free images and videos.
You are allowed to use photos and videos with or without attribution, and modify them as per your requirements. It is a good place to find high-definition images for your web designing and content marketing projects.
They also conduct frequent photography challenges to collect beautiful photos and feature eligible pictures on the home page. In 2018, Canva acquired Pexels.
4. Kaboompics
Kaboompics has a decent collection of 28,000 stunning free images. Created by Lubień Kujawski, a Polish photographer, in 2014, this site contains photos in different genres.
They collect images from special photo shoots and provide them freely under modified Creative Commons license.
5. Vecteezy
Vecteezy is a popular place to download free stock photos. They have a huge collection of free vector, videos, and images that can be used for any purpose.
Free users should add an attribution note to all assets. Upgrade to their Pro plan to get access to the built-in image editor and use images without attribution.
6. Rawpixel
Rawpixel is a free photo stock site with free and premium membership plans. It allows you to download unlimited images from public domain collection and 5 images per day from thousands of free photos.
Attribution is required for free images. Their premium plan costs $8.99 per month to download unlimited photos, vectors, artworks, and templates.
7. Envato Elements
Envato Elements is a great place to download unlimited stock photos, videos, music, and other digital assets. They have 6.2 million photos, 4 million videos, and millions of other designing resources that you can use commercially under simple licensing terms.
It allows you to search images by keywords, color, and number of people in them. Unfortunately, they have no free plan. Their subscription starts at $16.50 per month with unlimited downloads.
8. Burst
Burst is another platform to download royalty free images. Powered by Shopify, it helps content creators, businesses, and designers to find beautiful photos for their projects.
They encourage users to give attribution, but it is not mandatory. Open a photo and choose either high resolution or low resolution format to download. You can use them for commercial use and even for offline marketing campaigns.
9. Reshot
Reshot offers 1,500+ free stock vector illustrations and 40,000+ icons. They are organized in various categories, or you can simply find them using keywords.
Download files in SVG, PNG, Vector formats, and edit them as you like. They are 100% free for both commercial and non-commercial use.
10. Life of Pix
Life of Pix provides high-resolution, royalty free images with no restrictions. Unfortunately, there is no option to select an image size. Owned by LEEROY web design agency, they also offer free videos and clips to beautify your websites and content.
11. Picjumbo
Picjumbo contains thousands of royalty-free images, backgrounds, and designing resources. It is possible to download photos individually or in bulk.
Their photos and collections are free to use. Picjumbo also offers a premium plan with exclusive access to 10,000 premium photos and receive 50+ new stock photos in your email inbox every month.
12. Freepik
Freepik is an all-in-one platform for royalty free images, free videos, fonts, and other designing assets. It contains thousands of free images and videos. But premium users will get access to over 20 million stock photos and other resources for just $12 per month.
13. Stockvault
Stockvault has a good collection of stock free photos, illustrations, and vectors. Browse through their image library and download files to decorate your blog posts or marketing campaigns.
14. FreeImages
FreeImages offers 100% free royalty-free images for commercial purpose. Enter your keyword to locate photos, clip arts, PSD, and icons, download, and use them without any copyright restrictions.
15. Dreamstime
Dreamstime is another best place to download royalty-free images. They provide public domain and other high-resolution photos for free.
You should create a free user account to download files. A premium subscription is also available to access unlimited premium designing resources such as stock photos, videos, illustrations, and audio files.
16. Pikwizard
Pikwizard is a great site to download copyright free images. They have a massive collection of over 1 million photos and videos across different categories.
There is a built-in editor to edit your photos and videos. Click on download to save your file and use it for commercial use.
17. Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock contains over 200 million designing assets such as free stock photos, royalty free videos, illustrations, royalty free music, and more. They are freemium content. Some of them are free. To access all files, you should go for a monthly/annual plan or a credit pack.
18. Getty Images – Millions of free and premium photos
19. Bigstock Photo – Over 19 million photos, vectors available but mainly focusing on the premium users
20. Little Visuals – You will get 7 high-resolution images in the inbox every 7 days
21. Free digital photos – Huge gallery of photos and illustrations
22. Deposit Photos – Affordable site to buy business stock photos, videos, and music
23. Death to the Stock Photo – A premium membership website for stock photos
24. Morgue File – Free High-Resolution images for designers
25. Free range – Free Images for commercial and non-commercial use
26. Free Images – Huge collection of 4,00,000 photographs
27. Open photo – Photo-sharing platform offers thousands of images under CC license.
28. Splitshire – Free stock photos
29. Flickr – Yahoo-owned platform to host and download Creative Commons images
30. Photober – Free images for personal and commercial use
31. PDPics – Free public domain photos
32. Magdeleine – Handpicked free photos
33. Everypixel – Image search engine to search images from 50 stock photo agencies and websites
34. Image Free – Another popular site, Registration needed.
35. 123RF – Free photos and illustrations for commercial use
36. Veezzlee – Search engine for free images
37. Free Stock – Another free site for images
38. New Old Stock – Good vintage images from public archives
39. Noun Project – Free and paid photos with CC, non-commercial, and commercial licenses
40. Free Stock Photos – Nearly 15,000 free images available with commercial and editorial licensing
41. Shutter Stock – Millions of royalty-free stock photos
36. Gratisography – High-resolution images without copyright restrictions
42. Good Free Photos – Thousands of free public domain photos
43. Public Domain Pictures – Over 80,000 free images
44. Stock Free Images – More than 1 million free images
45. Canstockphoto – Premium site with professional quality images
46. Turbo Photo – 2000 free stock images
42. Deviant Art – Brilliant collection
47. Photo Rack – Over 25,000 free images
48. Negative Space – Stunning, high-resolution free photos
49. Photocase – Premium images
50. Wikimedia Commons – 100% free images for any purpose
51. Public Domain Archive – Good collection of HD images
52. Storyblocks – Premium resource of stock photos, audio, and video
53. Allegriphotos – Nice collection of images, wallpapers
54. Lost and Taken – Collection of patterns, textures for designers
55. Pngtree – Royalty free PNG images and backgrounds
56. Istock Photo – Free stock files every week and premium collection too
57. Stocksy – Another premium site for free royalty images
58. Image After – Collection of Photos, Textures, Paintings, Designs. Mainly using for 2D/3D modeling.
59. Pickup Image – Users can edit, distribute works without asking any permission.
60. Rgbstock – Free photos, backgrounds, and wallpapers
61. SkitterPhoto – A place to find, show and share public domain photos
62. Library of Congress – Free images with attribution links
63. Motion Array – Yet another premium resource with unlimited royalty free stock assets
64. Free large photos – Good collection of stock photos
65. Photofolio – Amazing photographs
66. Free Pixels – 5700 images in 40 categories
67. Google Images – Google advanced image search
68. USGS – Images from US Geological Survey Photographic Library
69. Sunipix – Over 15000 images
70. CC Search – Search required images in several sites at a time
71. NASA Image Galley – Links to several NASA image sources
72. Adigitaldreamer – 100% free, royalty-free images
73. Image Finder – Image search engine
74. Stock Up – Another image search engine that will show photos from 31 websites
75. Free Images. co.uk – 13,500 free stock photos in 85 categories
76. Historical Stock Photos – Wide range of photos from history
77. Freestocks – A free photo stock website
78. Picography – Thousands of royalty free images on various topics
79. ISO Republic – Free images and videos for commercial use
80. PxHere– Amazing free stock photos under CC license
Do you know any other free image sites? Let us know through the comment form below.
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