Last Updated on January 10, 2024 by Andrew Shih
Whether you are creating a personal blog, website, brochure, magazine, or digital art, you know it is important to find the right image that can resonate with your message and grab the reader’s attention. In the past, a good image can be costly, with limited royalty-free images. Fortunately, there are more and more websites that specialize in free stock photos. Here is the list of top sites that offers free stock photos and royalty-free images.
Royalty-Free Images & Free Stock Photo Sites
#1: Pixabay
PixaBay is by far my personal favorite go-to site for royalty-free images.
With 2.4 million high-quality free stock photos, videos, sound effects, and music, it has one of the largest free image and stock collections available. There is even a searchable interface that works well and makes it easy to find photos, illustrations, and vector graphics.
You have the choice of downloading different image sizes. It is Free, Simple, no hassle, and doesn’t even require email registration.
A nice bonus is many of the images also have vector graphic (SVG) files available, so the picture does not become pixelized if the viewer enlarges the picture. However, if you want to download the SVG files, you will need to register for a free account.
Library Collection: Over 2.4 million images, videos, sound effects, and music.
Categories: Animals, architecture/building, backgrounds, beauty/fashion, business/finance, computer/communication, education, emotions, food/drink, heath/medical, industry/craft, music, nature/landscapes, people, places, religion, science/technology, sports, transportation/traffic, travel/vacation.
Different Downloadable Size: Yes
Vector Graphics: Yes
Image Search: Yes
#2: Pexels
Pexels has over 1 million free stock photos and videos. All the photos have no restrictions for commercial use and are royalty-free, so you can use them for your blog and digital content creation without attribution. Pexels also has a searchable interface to help you find images. Another helpful feature is that you can specify and download custom-size images that you can’t do elsewhere.
Number of Images: Over 1 million images and videos
Categories: Pixel has a large collection of categories and collections, including color, fashion, food, landscape, lifestyle, nature, outdoor, sky, style, sunset, underwater, wallpaper, water, and many more.
Different Downloadable Size: Yes, Small, Medium, Large, Original, Custom Size.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
#3: PikWizard
PIkWizard has over 1 million free stock photos in many categories for personal and commercial use without attribution. When you download the royalty-free image, PikWozard also provides a build-in wizard for you to customize the image that you won’t find elsewhere easily.
Library Collection: Over 1 million images and videos
Categories: American flag, angel, animal, people, season, sport, background, birthday, black & white, flower, building, car, candlelight, cloud, skyline, coffee, computer, cornfield, desert, dinosaur, dragon, earth, eclipse, family, fire, food, forest, night, holiday, and much more.
Different Downloadable Size: No. Full image size.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
Built-in Image Editor: Yes. The only one with a built-in image editor.
CONS: You need to hover your mouse on the picture to find out if the picture is a sponsored picture or a free stock photo.
#4: FreeImages
FreeImages has over 300,000 free images with a searchable interface. While its collection is smaller than Pixabay and Pexels, FreeImages maintains a diverse set of categories and vibrant color images. The interface is fairly clean and easy to use, and it is a useful resource for free images.
Library Collection: Over 300,000 images
Categories: architecture, animals, art, automotive, business & finance, celebrities, education, fashion, food & drink, religion, flowers, health, home design, landscape & nature, outdoor, people, signs & symbols, sports, texture, transportation, and more.
Different Downloadable Size: Yes (S, M, L, XL, Full)
Image Search: Yes
#5: Unsplash
Unsplash offers an impressive collection of over 1 million free high-quality resolution photos that is searchable and don’t require attribution. There are many breathtaking and beautiful landscape pictures. The search interface displays related keywords so that you can fine-tune or perform related searches quickly.
Number of Images: Over 1 million
Categories: Huge collection of categories including nature, people, business & work, travel, technology, animals, interiors, architecture, food & drink, athletics, health, work from home, current events, wallpaper, holiday, blockchain, and more.
Different Downloadable Size: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: The one possible downside is there is no size selection when you download the picture. You will need to download the full-size photos, typically a few MB in size. Most likely, you do not need the image in full resolution and need to manually shrink down the size of the picture to optimize your page load time.
#6: StockSnap.io
StockSnap.io is a hidden treasure for free stock photos. You are free to download the image for both personal and commercial use without attribution. The photos are well categorized with subcategories so you can fine-tune or perform related searches quickly. StockSnap has many high-resolution images shared by photographers.
Number of Images: Unknown
Categories: Business, beach, people, love, flower, nature, food, wallpaper, computer, office, mood, city, season, black/white, coffee, design, travel, car, dog, fashion, book, fitness, friends, music, money, school, house, building, water, work, flowers, health, laptop, meeting, wedding, baby, art, party, beauty, sky, phone, technology, shopping, team, sunset, yoga, forest, road, abstract, sport, construction, light, sea, wine, and more.
Different Downloadable Size: No
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: StockSnap shares a similar drawback with Unsplash that only a high-resolution picture is provided, and you will need to manually reduce the resolution of the picture if you need to reduce the file size to optimize your web page.
#7: Burst
Burst is a free stock photo platform powered by Shopify. This royalty-free image gallery has thousands of high-resolution pictures that were created by Shopify’s global community of photographers. It is built to help entrepreneurs, designers, and bloggers. All the photos are free for commercial use, and no attribution is required.
Number of Images: Over 22,000
Categories: work from home, business, shop, women, Video call background, photographer, fashion, feeling good, retail, background, landscape, food, urban life, work from home, home, accessories, people, flower, beauty, money, holiday, jewelry, transportation, animal, nature, art, fitness, education, love, technology, celebrate, travel, communication, recreation, season, mobile background, strength, wellness, office.
Different Downloadable Size: Yes. 2 choices – High or Low resolution.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
#8: Flickr
Flickr is another popular image site that has millions of images, and it also has the most impressive choices for downloading a specific image size. However, not all photos on Flickr are royalty-free images under public domain licensing with CC0. Therefore you need to pay attention to your search criteria.
Number of Images: Over 11 million images under public domain license. Total of tens of billions of images across all licensing types.
Categories: Not listed, but you can imagine it’s a lot.
Different Downloadable Size: Yes. Most impressive size choices from thumbnail to X-large and original.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: The images have different licensing requirements. Therefore, not all images are creative commons / public domain, and you will need to pay attention to your filtering criteria and review the licensing requirement.
#9: StockVault
StockVault has a decent list of free stock photos and royalty-free images available for personal and commercial use without attribution. The interface is pleasant to use. Open you open an image, the site will list keywords associated with the image. You click on the keyword to help you with the search effort.
Number of Images: over 138,000 images
Categories: Animal, transportation, art, construction, nature, industrial, objects, people, season, landscape, textures.
Different Downloadable Size: No. Full-size image only.
Vector Graphics: Yes, but require a premium account.
Image Search: Yes
#10: CreativeCommons
CreativeCommons is another image collection website where the creator has dedicated the work to the public domain and waived the copyright. CC search is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone. CC search can search across 300 million images using open API across multiple sites. While the search returns a lot of results, most of the pictures are not what I am looking for, and it can take a considerable time to sift through.
Number of Images: 300 Million. It is a search engine that searches images across multiple sites.
Categories: Unspecified. Many.
Different Downloadable Size: No. Only full resolution.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: While the search returns a lot of results, most of the pictures are not what I am looking for and it can take a considerable time to sift through. Therefore, it is not ranked high on the list.
#11: PicJumbo
Picjumbo is another smaller free stock photo site with high-resolution royalty-free images. However, you will need to join the premium membership to access more photos.
Number of Images: Over 3000
Categories: abstract, animal, architecture, business, fashion, food, holiday, live, nature, people, road, season, sunlight, technology, objects, transportation, vertical, wallpaper.
Different Downloadable Size: No. Only full resolution.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: The free stock photo library is still relatively small, and you cannot choose different image sizes.
#12: Gratisography
Gratisography is a site that has a decent collection of nontraditional and evocative photos and images. While the photo categories seem quite typical, the free stock photos on Gratisography have more unique images that you are not going to find elsewhere. While Gratisography cannot compete with Pixabay and other top royalty-free image websites, its uniqueness makes this website worth your attention.
Number of Images: about 1,000
Categories: Animal, business, fashion, food, nature, object, people, urban, and whimsical categories.
Different Downloadable Size: No. Only full resolution.
Vector Graphics: No
Image Search: Yes
CONS: The free stock photo library is relatively small, and you cannot choose different image sizes.
Create Royalty Free Word Cloud Image
#13: WordClouds
Here is a bonus resource! If you are tired of all the pictures, having a hard time finding an ideal picture, or simply need a variation, a word cloud image is a very appealing alternative.
You can create a word cloud for free with WordClouds. You can easily import a text file or use a word list to create and customize your word cloud image; you can change the size, and the gap between words, font, color, shape, and theme. It’s a very powerful free word cloud tool.
Create Royalty Free Icons with FlatIcons
#14: FlatIcons
Another bonus resource! FlatIcons is a valuable resource if you are looking for icons. An icon can be a useful addition to your digital content. FlatIcons has over 2400 free icons and allows you to easily make customizations to size, color, background, rotation, shape, and effects to help you create a unique icon.
Freemium Stock Photo Sites
A freemium stock photo site not only offers a large selection of free stock photos but also additional photo-editing and other features not available on those free sites. If you join the premium program, you will have access to millions more images and unlimited access to the features.
#15: Desygner
Are you tired of searching for the perfect image from multiple sources?
Desygner can help you find the image from popular sites, including Pixabay, Unsplash, Photodexia, Google, and Shutterstock. The free plan will include access to thousands of free templates with 300+ design formats.
Desygner is also a powerful design tool for content creation, where you can use these images on your designs or thousands of pre-designed templates that you can get for free.
#16: Canva
Canva is a freemium site that offers plenty of free pictures, icons, backgrounds, and music. It has a very user-friendly interface that you can do graphic editing without graphic design skills. Canva is also the most popular tool for designing beautiful pins on Pinterest. You can sign up and stay free on Canva indefinitely.
If you pay for Canva premium, you will have access to millions more “pro” images, videos, icons, and art designs.
Premium Stock Photo Sites
If you are venturing beyond the popular categories such as people, animals, nature, food, or travel, there are going to be times when you will have a harder time finding an appropriate image. For example, if you have a specific keyword in mind such as affiliate marketing, blogging, freelance, or online teaching, finding an image will be a bit more challenging. You probably have to work around it by trying out similar keywords or settling for a mediocre image.
This is where premium image sites such as iStock or Shutterstock show their strength can save you a lot of time and offer professional images. If you have been browsing for graphics on those free stock photo sites and royalty-free images, you can typically see displays of nicer images from those premium images sites. Clearly, this is a trade-off decision you will have to make between time & quality vs money.
Google Royalty-Free Images
While it may be easy to use Google to search for royalty-free images, it is not very reliable. You should not use Google as the sole source of identifying if the image is royalty-free. You should always verify the website and the licensing where the photo is hosted is licensed under the public domain.
Conclusion
Personally, I’m very grateful for the artists and the websites that make these fantastic royalty-free images. Without them, bloggers and digital content creators like us, we will have a much harder time coming up with a compelling blog posts and better serving our readers.
Likewise, there are good reasons why premium stock photo sites exist. If you have more budget, the premium Image websites such as Istock or Shutterstock will save you valuable time. You will have a bigger pool of professional images that are more suitable for your target keywords.
I am sure there will be more free stock photo sites emerging, and this is not intended to be a complete list. Some of the sites have much smaller free stock photos and royalty-free images, require registration or have too many distracting ads that simply aren’t worth your time to search for an image on dozen more sites.
Please comment below if there is a free stock photo or royalty-free image site that should be added to the list.
