10 Best Free Stock Photo & Image Websites
Are you an artist or graphic designer and looking for royalty free image resources or free stock photos for your next project? Photography or vector art for websites, mood boards, mock ups, newsletters, social media posts– whatever the case, in the current age of the internet, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re using permissible artwork as part of your projects, regardless if they’re for commercial purposes or not.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the term copyright law and the concept of royalty free images and stock photos that are available to prevent copyright violations. Royalty free images are images that have a specific license that allows you to use or display that image for business purposes without paying any additional royalties (additional sum of money) to the image’s owner. Many times stock photo websites have different types of licenses to purchase for the image depending on the usage terms and the cost can vary. By purchasing and using royalty free images, you are not only ensuring your legal right to use the image, but you’re also not unfairly using artists or creatives’ work as a part of your own project without their permission. In addition, you’re supporting the original artist who supplied the work for your use.
I’m all for fairly compensating artists and those who share their work within this niche, but I also understand the difficulty and small budgets of being a freelance creative too. Multiple images or licenses can add up to higher costs very quickly. So I continue to sift through the online search results and inquire: what are the best free stock image sources?
It’s essential to source images that are legally being distributed for stock image use and to not infringe upon the copyright of another person’s creative work. So, where can you find trusted website resources for stock photo references– and ones that you can download and use for free? I’ve made a list!
The disclaimer here is to make sure you read and know the type of license that is associated with the specific image itself or the website’s overall Terms & Conditions for these images. Then check what that specific license type legally allows you to do. All the websites I’ve listed have the license type described and have direct links to their licensing rules. Even though it may not be always required, you can also give credit to the original creator of the image in your own credits or description.
When searching through these image databases, I select Creative Commons Attribution or Public Domain license, or categories that state unrestricted, for commercial use, or similar. I also verify the individual license type and its terms for the selected image before I use it in any project.
Also, be aware of the ever growing AI-generated image categories— I sincerely suggest you exclude them from your search!
The 10 Best Free Stock Photo & Image Websites I've discovered:
Pexels offers stock photos and videos. If you’re subscribed to my email newsletter, you already know I love Pexels as a source for stock photos. I created all of the digital collages for my 2024 zine covers with images from generous talented photographers sharing their work on this website.
Burst, Shopify’s stock photo and image website, is another option. Click ‘Collections’ in the top main menu to view various categories if you’re browsing for topic inspiration.
Unsplash provides both photos and illustrations. They have multiple category options at the top of the webpage for narrowing down searches too.
Pixabay offers stock photos, illustrations, vectors, videos, music, sound effects, and gifs. They also have a search by category option.
Raw Pixel has sourced a large array of public domain art and design resources from their own collection and multiple international museums.
Wikimedia Commons has images, videos, and sounds to use for free. As of writing this post, there are 110,747,488 media files available.
Flickr is another photo resource, where you can filter images by Creative Commons license type. You can search directly or browse the most popular tags used for the images uploaded to that license type.
The J. Paul Getty Trust (Getty as in Getty Museum and Getty Images fame) has a vast database of Getty resources. Select the ‘Open content images’ link to search the images they have made available to download for free.
Vecteezy provides photos, illustrations, videos, and motion graphics. I like that you can search by image file type, such as PNG (Portable Network Graphics) or SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as well.
Heritage Type Co. is an independent type foundry and also supplies graphics for artistic design. They have created their own Heritage Library page on their website, where you can download free vintage illustration collections (with the curated images in both PNG and Vector format) for your private or commercial creative projects. There are 279 illustration collections currently posted!
I think these 10 websites are some of the best resources to find free stock photos, images, and other media, with easy to navigate search functions and straightforward licensing terms. All of these website’s image collections are extensive and most are expanding every day.
I hope this list is a helpful resource for your next artistic project (analog or digital). Keep creating.