Decorating your blog with images can be tricky. You can’t just google a keyword and download the image you like. First of all, you would need a high-quality picture, secondly, you should consider legal restrictions on when you can use them without permission. That’s where free stock photo websites come in handy.
There is a considerable number of websites that can provide you with high quality and high-resolution photos. While many sites charge for the right to use that picture of a delicious cupcake, there is a wide range of sites out there that allow free access to stock photos for personal and commercial use.
Don’t look any further. I’ve curated a list of awesome websites with exceptional stock images that aren’t out of focus and which you can use for free.
This list of free stock photo websites would be a useful resource for bloggers and site owners who are in constant search for high-quality pictures to use them for website designs, banners, adverts, social media posts, blog posts, publications, guest blogging, and many other different projects.
Most of the photos you’ll find on these websites are free from copyright restrictions which means you can freely copy, modify, distribute, and use those images even for commercial purposes. Though royalty-free, some photos have stipulations that require attribution.
Now, let’s dive into our awesome list of the best free stock photo websites!
1. Pexels
Pexels has a wide range of images from sports to vivid landscapes and fashion to abstract images. Most images on Pexels are free to use both for personal and commercial uses.
2. Designers Pics
This platform offers high-resolution photos for your personal & commercial use. What’s more, is that you are free to download the images right away, no attribution required.
3. Splashbase
Splashbase is a library of free high-resolution photos and videos.
4. Startup Stock Photos
Startup Stock Photos comes with high-quality photos focused on the subjects of startups, small businesses, and the entrepreneur community, all with an authentic style that shows diversity and realness.
5. Jay Mantri
This is a Tumbler page of the photographer Jay Mantri where he displays his images, which are free for anyone to download and use. You’ll find photos with special attention to detail — more for brands with an artistic aesthetic.
6. Moveast
Moveast was created by a Portuguese designer to share his travel photos with the world. All the photos are free of charge.
7. Travel Coffee Book
Travel Coffee Book is a library of user-submitted travel photos that anyone can access for free. All photos are listed under CC0 which means you can do whatever you want with them.
8. Unsplash
Unsplash offers a range of high-resolution, original free photos. They have their own custom license, enabling free use in commercial projects with no attribution required (just like a Creative Commons Zero) but forbidding image compiling.
9. Death to the Stock Photo
This platform provides you with the most authentic stock photos and videos, with unlimited downloads and new work added every month. You’ll need to be signed up to receive royalty-free photos and images in your email every month.
But since it has launched a paid service, they claim that email subscribers “will occasionally get free photo packs to kick off new projects.”
10. Foodie’s Feed
It’s one of the best resources for highly visually appealing free food photos in high resolution. It’s hard not to get hungry browsing Foodie’s feed library of user-submitted stock photos.
11. Mazwai
Mazwai comes with free, high quality, cinematic style stock footage, that can be used in a wide range of creative projects. All of our royalty-free video clips have been hand-picked by their team of video experts, bringing you an unrivaled selection of quality visual content with simple, and most importantly, safe licensing.
Mazwai has all the necessary permissions to be used in your own projects, on a royalty-free basis.
12. Jéshoots
Jeshoots comes with free stock photos available for download with no attribution necessary. All the high-resolution photos are submitted by photographer Jan Vasek. Photos are for 100% free and are guaranteed that there are no 3rd parties that could have some licenses.
13. Picography
This photobank is one of the top sources for gorgeous, high-resolution, free photos. You can use any of their free stock photos however and wherever you like, with no attribution required. All photos are CC0 licensed.
14. Pixabay
Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright-free images and videos. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist – even for commercial purposes.
Pixabay has more than 1.5 million free stock images and videos. You can also find vectors, illustrations, and graphics.
15. Magdeleine
Magdeleine has tons of free photos. Some photos may require attribution.
16. Little Visuals
This photobank comes with a sizeable selection of nature imagery. Plus, you can get seven high-res images sent to your inbox every week if you subscribe.
17. Styled Stock
Styled Stock is a small collection of free photos with a defined feminine style – the fashion and beauty industry. Here you can find high-resolution pictures of makeup, clothes, and feminine office aesthetic.
All the photos are free to download and use in commercial projects.
18. Splitshire
Daniel Nanesou, the photographer behind SplitShire, displays, and shares a wide amount of artistic and very professional styled photos. You can download the photos and use in your work free of charge.
19. Skitterphoto
It is a platform that provides its users with free stock photos of high quality on plenty of styles and subjects. All the photos are ready to be downloaded for free.
20. New Old Stock
New Old Stock is another great source for antique-looking, royalty-free stock images. They have a very distinctive style and they are all copyright-free images available to download.
21. Picjumbo
This photobank is one of the larger collections on the web today. Created by stock photographer Viktor Hanacek, PicJumbo is the perfect place to find high-quality, commercial-ready, royalty-free stock images for free.
22. Life of Pix
This photobank provides its users with hundreds of thousands of very artsy and high-quality photos covering a variety of popular themes. All files have been submitted by photographers, and are totally free to download and use.
23. Gratisography
Gratisography is arguably the most interesting free stock image website on the list, coining themselves as “the world’s quirkiest collection” of images.
Graphic and web designer Ryan McGuire is the owner of Gratisography, a site of high-resolution photos. Everything on the site is royalty-free and free to use under Creative Commons Zero.
You can support the stock image site and the photographer with money for his coffee fund. According to Ryan McGuire, coffee allows this project to flourish, giving him the energy he needs to get things done.
The photos are very intimate and unique, far from the typical commercial stock, and of high quality.
24. IM Free
It is a collection of free resources. IM Free comes with graphics, icons, and other assets that are useful in website design and launches.
25. Cupcake
It’s a collection of free original images ready to use. Cupcake comes with an extended archive of photos, mostly themed around nature and food.
26. The Pattern Library
This is an ongoing project that compiles patterns shared by the most talented designers out there for you to use freely in your designs.
27. Get Refe
This photo platform focuses mostly on natural-looking photos, as opposed to the overly staged and edited stock photos that have become the norm.
28. ISO Republic
This platform provides thousands of good quality images to download and use, free of charge. It is mostly focused on sports and technology. And what’s more, they recently added free stock videos too.
29. Stokpic
Every other week, Stokpic sends ten new photos, free to use, to its email subscribers. All you need to do is to sign up on their site.
30. Good Stock Photos
This site offers a vast range of high-quality photos totally free to download and use. This is a collection of everyday life situations, social media-inspired shots, travel and landscapes, urban scenes, and more. And on top of that, it is totally suitable for commercial use.
31. Rgbstock
You’ll need to be registered to download over 100,000 free illustrations, wallpapers, and backgrounds for your website from this photobank.
The library spans across multiple popular and evergreen topics, mixing artsy shots with more commercial pictures.
32. Kaboompics
This library comes with free high-quality stock photos with a natural feel and multiple subjects.
33. Function
Founded by Liam McKay a simple Web & UI Designer from the UK, the Function platform offers its users design resources, handpicked collections of only the very best free photos found online that can be useful for designers.
34. Stock Up
It’s a library of 25K+ free stock photos aggregated from dozens of free stock photo websites.
35. StockVault
This is a free stock photo community where photographers & artists can share their own photos and artwork with people from all over the world. StockVault offers thousands of pictures and illustrations of people, animals, buildings and street photography, beautiful landscapes, plant & flower photos, objects from computers & electronics to food images and jewelry photos.
Moreover, this platform comes with a large collection of free textures ranging from grunge, dirt, paint, rock, plastic, wood, and liquid to metallic & rusty surfaces and backgrounds. You are free to browse their image collections – all their stock photos images & vectors are 100% free.
36. Freerange
This free stock photo website comes with a searchable database of free stock photos and illustrations and offers thousands of images available to download and use for free.
37. Foca
This platform updates its website with free photos and videos every week. The main focus is nature and urban imagery, but you can find office-related photos as well.
38. Picspree
This free stock photo site provides a large selection of high-quality stock photos completely royalty-free. With easy searching and frictionless downloading Picspree is an excellent resource for small businesses and web professionals looking for high-quality photos without the worry of licensing.
39. Burst
It’s a Shopify’s own free stock photo website. You can find plenty of images shot with eCommerce businesses in mind, as well as lots of diversity. This platform is ideal for e-commerce sites, blogs, personal websites, and business websites.
40. GRALLIM.com
It’s an awesome resource of good-quality royalty-free images for bloggers, writers, influencers, and business owners. The free stock photo site offers high-quality images over multiple categories including food, travel, animals, people, and nature but the site’s main focus is on fitness images that portray real people doing real workouts as well as images of the gym and exercise equipment.
41. ScatterJar
Scatter Jar is a great resource for food bloggers. It comes with royalty-free beautiful high-resolution photographs of food and drink. You can download any of the photographs and use them for both personal and commercial projects, free of charge.
42. StockSnap.io
This is a fast-growing curated collection of images and covers all sorts of categories from fashion, beach and dog photos to cityscapes, food, and nature images. All images on this platform have been released under CC0 license. which means you can download, copy, modify, and distribute the photos for commercial and personal use.
43. Snapwire Snaps
Seven snaps every seven days is this site’s motto. While the majority of their photo collection isn’t free, Snapwire releases seven photos every week under the Creative Commons CC0 license.
44. Fancy Crave
Owned by a commercial photographer, Igor Ovsyannykov, Fancy Crave offers tons of images free to download and use. The categories are geared towards travelers, but you’ll find a diverse selection of imagery.
45. Kivi Photo
It’s a collection of beautiful, high-quality photos under Creative Commons license.
46. MorgueFile
It’s an imagery library of high-resolution and free to use photos under creative commons cc0.
47. PikWizard
It’s a free stock photo website, full of high-quality images portraying multiple popular topics. You can use all the images for free.
48. Rawpixel
This photo platform offers its users thousands of unconventional, authentic, and high-quality images. Limited to 100 downloads per user per month, you can get your pick from this rich and varied collection for free.
49. Libreshot
This stock photo site comes with thousands of fine art photos by SEO consultant and photographer Martin Vorel. His images are of very good quality and cover various subjects too. And they’re all made available to use for free.
BONUS
50. The Stocks
A collection of the best royalty-free stock photos, videos, mockups, fonts, icons, and more. The Stocks searches 30+ of the best free stock photo sites and provides the users with the results in a single location.
51. AllTheFreeStock
AllTheFreeStock provides the users with images, videos, sound effects, fonts, icons, and more in one location. All offered images are listed under the Creative Commons Zero license, so you are free to use these images in commercial projects.