Best Places to Find Free Stock Photos for your Design or Blog
The great thing about stock photos is it’s a great way to create an interesting design without trying to be your own photographer. The downside is many stock photo websites charge a monthly (or even per photo) fee. And if you don’t have a business account, these fees can be pretty pricey. I’ve unfortunately worked for some companies that made my job a lot harder by being cheap not purchasing a business account for either Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. Because of this, I’ve had to do some detective work to find the best websites that offer free stock photos.
What are stock photos?
Just a quick explanation of what stock photos are if you’re unfamiliar. Stock photos are images that don’t require a license which are available for free on certain websites. A majority of paid stock photos fall under a license that allows you to use them as long as you pay a fee. However, the free stock photo sites allow access to download their images free of charge to use however you want (as long as you don’t claim them as your own).
It’s very helpful to have a list of free stock photo websites to help save time as well as having images available that won’t have copyright infringements. The list below are several websites I’ve used in the past or currently use in my image search rotation.
Let’s get to it!
1. FreePik
This is one of the first websites I discovered in early 2012 when I was searching for free stock photos. This website has gone through several changes since then (one of which is a premium feature), but one of the main features is the ability to filter free images only. The best thing about this website is that there is no daily limit to the amount you can download a day. Besides regular stock images, they also offer Illustrator/AI vector files, PSD’s and icons!
2. Pixabay
Pixabay is another great resource to use if you need high quality stock images. They have a large library of images and the ability to select what size you would like to download. Pixabay is very similar to Freepik in that they don’t have a daily download limit. This is great since you can search and download as much as you want without feeling like you’ll be penalized and locked out for the day.
3. Pexels
Another great resource to have in your rotation is Pexels. Pexels has some amazing photographers and all of their images are free to download and use as you please. My favorite feature of this website is the leaderboard. They list the most popular photographers on the website and links to their popular photos. This is a great way to see what’s new and popular and to stay up to date.
4. Unsplash
In my attempt to find a photo example for this section, I spent more than 20 minutes scrolling and getting very distracted. I love Unsplash for their range of eclectic and diverse photos. They are so different from the above stock image website examples and they rarely have repeat photos that are shared a million times. Many times, I’ll stumble upon a beautiful stock image that I’ve never seen before and I’m constantly finding new and unique images. Just a fun suggestion, try adding a filter to an image you like to help match it to your particular theme or branding.
5. Visual Hunt
I’ll be honest here: Visual Hunt is kind of a weird place to find stock photos. It use to be a lot better a few years ago, but the optimization hasn’t been the best lately and the overall appearance of the site needs a facelift. I wanted to include it in my list because I have used it in the past with a lot of success and there are still good free high quality images available. You may need to “hunt” (no pun intended) a bit more than you would on the others I’ve listed to find what you’re looking for. I promise, they are there.
6. Styled Stock
Style Stock is a little different in that you can’t search for photos like you normally would on a search engine site. Styled Stock has a huge selection of free desktops, tech mockups and lifestyle shots while keeping a very minimalistic and clean style. Most of these photos are great to use for blog graphics since they are so minimal and have a clear space to overlay header text.
7. Pic Jumbo
PicJumbo has some unique high quality photographs, especially focused on fashion and beauty. Some of these photos have filters on them to give them a bit of a different look and many of these are not found on the above websites.
8. Stockpic
Stokpic has some pros and cons. The pros are the amount of travel, lifestyle and summer related images not found on other sites. The cons are it is a little difficult to search for images because it isn’t very intuitive and it has a bad UI design. If you’re not in a hurry and don’t mind weeding through the photos, then this is another great website to have in your arsenal.
If you plan on stocking up on a lot of photos, then I recommend creating a folder on your computer specifically for stock photos. It’s a good idea to keep track of what you have so you know where they’ve come from and what you’re allowed to use them for.
