Photography has always been an integral part of design. Unfortunately, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing tacky stock images of people in suits shaking hands. Not only are these stock photos overused, but they cost a lot of money.
Thankfully, there’s a great selection of websites with beautiful stock photography, and best of all, they’re free!
In this post, we’ve curated a list of the best free stock photo sites.
Quick Note About Licenses
Many of these photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication. This means you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
However, some photos may require attribution. We’ve done our best to identify which license they fall under but we still advise you to do your own research and determine how these images can be used.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into our top picks for free stock photos.
1. StockSnap
StockSnap.io has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high resolution images. The site also has a very handy search feature making it easy to browse through the thousands of images available. In addition, the site tracks views and downloads so you can find the most popular photos available.
StockSnap adds hundreds of images on a daily basis and all photos are released under creative commons public domain – no attribution required.
2. Pexels
Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. All photos are tagged, searchable, and easy to find through their discover pages.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and has become one of the best resources for stock images. The Unsplash team combs through new submissions frequently to feature the best photos on their homepage. All photos are released for free under the Unsplash license.
4. Burst (by Shopify)
Burst is a resource from Shopify that provides free stock photos for entrepreneurs. Some photos are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 while others fall under Shopify’s own photo license.
Burst was launched to help entrepreneurs make better products, websites, and marketing campaigns. Most of the pictures are original photos that were taken in-house and are themed around trending business niches — everything from DIY beard oil to LED sneakers. You can also find more general photographs as well.
5. Vecteezy
Vecteezy has over a million free stock photos and a curation team that manually reviews every image submitted to the site. Their search features are powerful – you can filter the images by color, orientation, style, number of people, age of people, and more.
Vecteezy requires attribution but includes signed model and property releases for every free photo. This protects you (and your projects) from legal risks.
6. Pixabay
Pixabay offers a large collection of free stock photos, vectors and art illustrations. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.
Want an in-depth review of the best stock photo sites? Check out our video where we showcase the top websites for free stock photos:
7. Reshot
Reshot is a great resource to use if you’re looking for free icons and illustrations. All items covered under the Reshot Free License can be used for commercial and non-commercial projects.
8. FoodiesFeed
FoodiesFeed offers thousands of realistic free food pictures in high resolution. It’s the perfect stock photo site for food bloggers.
9. Gratisography
Gratisography offers free high-resolution pictures you can use for your personal and commercial projects. Awesome new pictures are added weekly and are free of copyright restrictions. Several of their pictures were captured by Ryan McGuire of Bells Design.
10. Freestocks.org
Freestocks offers a wide range of high quality photos all released under Creative Commons CC0.
11. Picography
Picography contains beautiful free stock photos submitted by Dave Meier and several other photographers. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.
12. Foca
Foca is a collection of high resolution photos provided by Jeffrey Betts. Jeffrey specializes in photos of workspaces and nature. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.
13. Picjumbo
Picjumbo is a collection of totally free photos for your commercial & personal works. New photos are added daily from a wide variety of categories including abstract, fashion, nature, technology and much more.
14. Kaboom Pics
Kaboom Pics offers a wide variety of high quality free stock photos including abstract, city/architecture, fashion, food, landscapes and more. Photos can be used for commercial purposes but cannot be sold or redistributed.
15. SkitterPhoto
SkitterPhoto offers a great selection of free stock photos that are released under Creative Commons CC0. All pictures are authentic and curated by Skitterphoto’s owners.
16. Life of Pix
Life of Pix is a resource created by the LEEROY creative agency offering free high-resolution photos with no copyright restrictions.
17. Little Visuals
This mention comes with a bit of sad news. Nic, the owner of the site, has passed away. But the photos remain in his memory. All photos that have been posted were released under the creative commons license public domain dedication.
18. New Old Stock
New Old Stock features vintage photos from the public archives, free of known copyright restrictions.
19. Jay Mantri
New photos are released every Thursday under the Creative Commons CC0 license. Jay Mantri posts some really nice photos with a variety of different themes.
20. Picspree
Backed by Getty Images, Picspree provides a large selection of high quality stock photos that are completely royalty free. With easy searching and downloading, Picspree is an excellent resource for small businesses and online professionals looking for free high quality photos.
21. ISO Republic
ISO Republic offers a broad range of photos; they add new images every day for free under the CCo license.
22. StyledStock
Styled Stock offers free feminine stock photos for entrepreneurs. You can use their photos for personal and commercial projects.
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s a bunch of fantastic resources for free stock photography. These websites have become a blessing for designers, marketers and bloggers. No need to rely on cheesy stock photos anymore!
