20 Sites for Free Stock Photos

Free stock photos are an easy way to add appeal to your website. There are many libraries with royalty-free images for commercial use.

Here is a list of sites with free stock photos for commercial websites. There are small, curated collections and large stock-image search engines. Be sure to verify the licensing of any content before use.

Burst

Burst is a free stock photo platform powered by Shopify. Its library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images shot by a global community of photographers. The library was created for Shopify stores, but the images are free to use on any platform.

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Unsplash

Unsplash started as a simple tool to provide creators with imagery. The site has over 3 million curated images and an active community of nearly 300,000 photographers. Its API powers BuzzFeed, Squarespace, and Trello.

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Canva

Canva is a platform for creating visual content. The site has a library of 1.7 million free stock photos (and 86 million premium), videos, graphics, audio tracks, and more. —

Freerange

Freerange provides quality free stock images to 800,000 registered users. The images’ license is for general commercial use without attribution. Freerange has sourced thousands of old 35 mm slides and offers the best, for free, at Vintage Stock Photos.

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Picjumbo

Picjumbo is a free stock photo site created in 2013 by designer and photographer Viktor Hanacek, the first person to sell photos on Creative Market, a marketplace for community-generated design assets. Browse by popular tags, or subscribe to the Picjumbo newsletter for new free stock photos in your inbox. Over 8 million images have been downloaded from the site.

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StockSnap

StockSnap curates quality images from a pool of submissions and makes them available for browsing. New photographers are limited to submitting five images to keep standards high. Use StockSnap’s tag-based category system to locate suitable items. Downloads are free.

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Pexels

Pexels provides quality, free stock photos licensed under the Pexels license. All images are tagged, searchable, and easy to find through its discover pages.

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Gratisography

Gratisography offers free quirky-and-funny images. The site has just 700 to download and use for commercial projects. But the images are unique — you will not find them elsewhere on the web.

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ISO Republic

ISO Republic provides over 6,500 royalty-free Creative Commons license stock photos. Download for free, use on both personal and commercial projects and edit or share without needing permission or attribution.

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Pixabay

Pixabay is a community of creatives sharing over 2.6 million royalty-free images, illustrations, videos, and musical elements. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, making them safe to use without attribution, even for commercial purposes.

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Picography

Picography is a curated collection of approximately 1,300 striking high-resolution images with a Creative Commons license. Browse or search by tags.

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Kaboompics

Kaboompics has more than 26,000 free, quality images with over 36 million downloads. The site includes a blog with helpful content on photography, digital marketing, email strategies, and more.

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Shot Stash

Shot Stash is a free stock photo site for creative professionals. It has a curated collection of approximately 7,000 images, available under a Creative Commons license with no restrictions.

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Skitterphoto

Skitterphoto was launched in 2014 by amateur photographers from The Netherlands. The site offers global photographers the opportunity to display and share their work. Browse by category, age, featured, or admin picks.

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Negative Space

Negative Space allows photographers to share their free high-resolution images with visitors without restrictions. Categories include abstract, animals, art and design, business, fashion, food, travel, typography, and virtual backgrounds.

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LibreShot

LibreShot provides free stock photos for private and commercial use without attribution. Categories include business, architecture, nature, people, technology, and close-up. Images are by Martin Vorel, a photographer and search engine marketing consultant.

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Startup Stock Photos

Startup Stock Photos is a library of free images that relate to startup businesses. The photos focus on office scenes, laptops and smartphones, whiteboards, and cityscapes.

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FreeImages

FreeImages launched in February 2001 as an alternative to expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creatives could exchange photos for inspiration or work. The site has roughly 2.5 million registered users and around 400,000 images.

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Depositphotos

Depositphotos is a commercial platform that brings authors of quality, licensed stock photos, graphics, vectors, and videos together with appreciative buyers. The site has a curated library of nearly 70,000 free files, which require attribution.

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New Old Stock

New Old Stock is a library of vintage photos and collections — black-and-white and color — from the public archives. There are no copyright restrictions.

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