So you are all finished designing your fabulous online course, personal blog, website, or advertisement… however you are missing one final touch – amazing images to convey the idea you are wanting to enlighten others with! You know they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so you definitely don’t want to miss out on our inside secret… tips on where to find the best free stock photo sites for STUNNING images!
If you are someone seeking to have a powerful online presence, you want to immediately draw people in. But before they read your words, they will be drawn to the images you have displayed. A huge goal of creating online content is to gain a lot of attention, and simply put, beautiful images will help intrigue people right off the bat. More attention = more people = ultimately more exposure! This goes for anything… you may need the best free stock photos for planning an online course, marketing and advertising, personal ventures, commercial and for-profit projects, blogs posts, and websites. The list is endless!
If you are familiar with creating and marketing for online creations (whatever they may be), you must know how difficult it can sometimes be to source beautiful photos. Trying to find the best free images can be very time-consuming and expensive. Most people are visual learners, and they need something to captivate their attention and make them want to keep exploring, which is why finding the right photo is a very important (although not always the simplest) aspect of making your presence online stand out compared to others.
Well, it’s time to let out a ~ sigh of relief ~ because your search is over! We have got you covered, and we are revealing our sources on where to search for the best free images.
We have compiled a comprehensive list of where you can find the best free stock photos which – trust us – is going to make your life a heck of a lot easier next time you are in need of some high-quality images.
Here is our list of the best stock image sites for you to use:
*While these sites are listed as free photo sites, it is always important to double check the permissions before you use them!
Powered by creators everywhere, this is the internet’s source of freely-usable photos. You are able to search for high-resolution photos from an expansive list of categories. They offer 10 new photos every 10 days – subscribe to be the first to know! Fun fact: Unsplash is now supported in multiple languages, making it highly accessible.
These two sister sites both offer free high-resolution photos and video clips, with no copyright restrictions for personal and commercial use. New photos and video clips are added weekly, and they feature their favorite photographer of the week, as well as upload weekly video collections.
Startup Stock Photos are free startup, office, and tech stock pictures ready to use for your next project. They specifically showcase free, high-quality stock photos of startup teams in startup settings. You can use them for your project without credit; their mission is to create awesome photos for startups, bloggers, publishers, freelancers, designers, developers, creators, and everyone else.
Pexels offers the best free stock photos, royalty free images, and videos shared by creators. They have different boards where you can search through various collections, and they also show you what’s trending at the moment.
This free stock photo site offers a bunch of different categories of photos which are added daily, free of copyright restrictions. They offer beautiful, high-quality images which can be used for anything you can think of, including commercial use.
Nappy is a site that showcases the best free stock photos featuring people of color for personal and commercial use. Their mission is to create content that demonstrates diversity, including candid photos that really represent today’s generation. They are very intentional about cultural representation in the work that they do. Nappy provides beautiful, high-resolution photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else. Nappy makes it easy for companies to be purposeful about representation in their designs, presentations, and advertisements.
Reshot is a unique site, as it offers free icons, illustrations, and photos. You can design freely with instant downloads and commercial licenses – applicable to both commercial and non-commercial projects. Their motto is to create bold, fearless designs with absolutely no attribution required.
ShotStash offers free high-quality stock images for creative professionals. They carefully curate thousands of photographs to offer the best images for anyone – whether you are looking for photographs for your blog, social media accounts, projects you are working on for yourself or clients, or any other creative use. Look no further than at ShotStash, their photographs are absolutely free of charge and without any limitations, requirements, or commitment.
Sometimes all you need are pictures of delicious-looking food… well Foodiesfeed has got you covered. You can search over 1800 high-quality free food photos. This site is easy to use, with different categories of food listed, and a page showing you the top-trending foods (our mouths are already watering looking at these tasty images).
This site is where you can find amazing stock photos free for download. They are continuously adding new content (videos too), and have an expansive list of categories to search through. They have adopted a strong community presence online, and even have a section for you to get inspired by the latest creations from their phenomenal Ukrainian contributors.
Pixabay is home to a talented community of creators with the best free stock photos and royalty free stock. They have a huge range of selection, with over 2.6 million high-quality stunning stock images, videos, and music.
Burst offers the best free stock photos and images for websites and commercial use. They highlight their top photos of the week, and showcase which categories are trending at the moment.
Looking for something a bit more… quirky? Gratisography has established the world’s most whimsical collection of high-resolution free stock images that you won’t find anywhere else. These photos are full of life and creativity, and will make your audience’s heart beat just a little bit faster… if this is what you are searching for, you’re in the right place.
Rawpixel offers thousands of the best free images, and you can explore their carefully curated topics to easily find design resources and personalize your creative experience. Their images are collected and digitally enhanced from international museums and their own original collection of artwork, and are available to use as you would like with a CC0 license.
Searching for more of a professional look? Find and download business and finance pictures on Pikwizard. They have thousands of free stock photos, and collections of various professional images free for you to use at your disposal.
This is the perfect site if you are looking for a vintage ambiance. New Old Stock is recapturing history, and showcasing vintage photos from the public archives. These elegant images are free of known copyright restrictions.
Picjumbo is another site with over 200 business stock photos capturing money, entrepreneurship, freelancing, small businesses, office and home office work, and more. For personal and commercial use, use Picjumbo for perfect high-resolution business free stock photos and royalty free business images.
Morguefile is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” They are a community-based free photo site, and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, whether it is commercial or not. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creators from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.
This site is more niche, for those in search of more of a feminine style! They showcase hundreds of beautiful feminine photos, free for your commercial and personal use. This is the perfect site for any entrepreneur looking for that feminine touch.
Foca Stock offers a wide selection of categories of free photos, videos, and templates for commercial use. You can use their amazing free images in websites, themes, templates, projects, print materials, social posts, and more.
This free photo site is a “one woman show,” with the creator Karolina shooting and creating all of the photos herself. To this day, the site has gathered over 6 million impressions, and the photos have been downloaded over 21 million times. Kaboompics is one of the most popular sources of free images for lifestyle, interior design, and specialized bloggers in the world.
With endless categories, you can discover and download beautiful royalty free images, stock photos, illustrations, and vectors. Picspree is free for personal and commercial use. They also have multiple language preferences on their site.
Using Skitterphoto, you can search for authentic photos free to use for any purpose. You may download, copy, edit, and even use photos commercially. They have a wide variety of collections and categories to search different images.
Stockvault has plenty of unique designs and collections, with new photos, textures, and illustrations added everyday! Their sole purpose is to collect and archive high-resolution photographs that photographers, designers, and students can share and use for their personal and non-commercial design projects. They currently offer over 138,000 free stock photos with hundreds of new images added every week.
In a pinch? Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple and straightforward! Easily search for a specific image using Wikimedia Commons. Their site is user-friendly, and easy to search for a specific category and find what you are looking for.
There you have it! Our growing list of fantastic resources for high-quality free stock images. What we love about this list, (besides the fact that all of these stunning images are FREE) is that it includes those untraditional and less cheesy, tacky, and posed images that actually portray raw and real emotions.
These free websites with beautiful stock photography are popping up all over the web. You can tell that these creators have put their heart and soul into these images to make them authentically unique. These kinds of resources have been a safe haven to online course creators, bloggers, startups, publishers, freelancers, designers, developers, creators, and everyone else. Happy image sourcing!
This blog was originally published March, 2015 and was updated July 2022.
