Images have always been a crucial element in web design, breathing life and visual appeal into digital platforms. However, the task of locating high-quality, free stock photos for commercial use can often be a daunting challenge.
Fortunately, the digital landscape has seen a surge in platforms offering exquisite stock photos, free of charge. These images are licensed under Creative Commons Zero, enabling unrestricted use and modification.
As the saying goes, ‘A picture is worth ten thousand words.’ This adage, coined by Fred R. Barnard in Printers’ Ink on March 10, 1927, holds true even today, emphasizing the potent impact of visual imagery.
A quick online search for free or royalty-free stock photos can lead you down a rabbit hole of misleading websites demanding payment to access their photo collections. However, you can avoid this hassle.
I’ve navigated this labyrinth on your behalf, compiling a comprehensive list of various platforms offering free stock images. These images fall under the Creative Commons Zero license or similar, which means you can copy, modify, and use any photo you find, even for commercial purposes, without requesting permission or providing attribution. Now, you can focus on creating captivating content with ease.
In this article, I will show you unique and high-quality sites to download free stock photos and videos for your commercial or non-commercial needs.
28 Unique Free Stock Photos & Videos
In this article, I’ve hand-curated a list of awesome websites for free stock photos for you.
1. Pexels
Pexels has a collection of CC0 licensed images that have millions of creators all over the world to easily create beautiful products and designs. They call it “Empowering Creators“
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
2. Pixabay
Pixabay provides stunning free images that have over 1.5 million images royalty-free stock photos and videos shared by their generous community.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash has a collection of beautiful free stock photos that are gifted by the world’s most generous community of photographers. Squarespace is the proud supporter of the Unsplash Community.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
4. Gratisography
Gratisography has free high-resolution stock photos that are quirky, creative and will always be free. They claim that the photos available on their site will not be found anywhere else.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
5. PicJumbo
PicJumbo has the best of the best collection of free stock photos. Even you can download and use the premium collection of photos using PicJumbo Premium.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero and Premium.
6. Picography
Picography has been providing stunning images to millions of people for the past 3 years. It is now one of the top sources for gorgeous, high-resolution, free photos.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
7. Stock Snap
StockSnap promises its users an ever-expanding collection of the best, most beautiful stock images for free.
At StockSnap, they know how frustrating it can be to look for the right images for your digital and print projects. There are so many factors to consider: content, angle, color scheme, composition, artistry, and more.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
8. ISO Republic
ISO Republic is a free stock photos library which contains thousands of high-resolution CC0 Licensed images for your next creative projects.
Since launch, they have published over 3000 CC0 licensed images with more being added every week.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
9. Free Photos
FreePhotos has a variety of collections of photos you want in any category. You can easily search for the stock photos you want for your next project.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. (Check the license on the home page by clicking on warning icon at the bottom left corner)
10. Burst by Shopify
Burst is a free stock photos website powered by Shopify. It includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images that were shot by the global community of photographers. All the photos are free for commercial use with no attribution required; you can read more about this on their license page.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
11. Moose by Icon8
Moose by Icon8 is a complete single zipped package of images with different variations to provide a clean and minimalist look to your designs.
- Category: All with the single zipped package.
- License: Link Attribution required. See License.
12. KaboomPics
KaboomPics provides a perfect stock photo for your next project with different color palettes. You can find thousands of pictures without any payment, even for commercial purposes.
Checkout how the option of color palettes works.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
13. Foodie’s Feed
FoodiesFood is an awesome resource of naturally looking free stock food photos for food which you can use on any of the food and travel blogs.
- Category: Food
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
14. MMT
MMT is a library that contains free photos and videos for commercial use. You can use them on any website, themes, templates, projects, print materials, social posts, and more. They add new photos and videos every week.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
15. Jay Mantri
JayMantri provides a variety of free stock photos and images with a slogan Do Anything. Make Magic.
- Category: Limited
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
16. Cup Cake
CupCake is a library of free stock images that comes with doing as you want strategy, even for commercial use.
- Category: Limited
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
17. Travel Coffee Book
Travel Coffee Book is a library of free stock photos of beautiful travel moments that are free to use.
- Category: Travel
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
18. SnapWire Snaps
SnapWire Snaps contains free stock photos from 2,00,000 world’s most talented photographers.
- Category: Travel
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
19. Magdeleine
Magdeleine is a collection of free hand-picked stock photos for your inspiration. They upload free high-resolutions photos every day.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
20. Free Nature Stock
Free Nature Stock is a collection of royalty-free nature stock photos and videos that you can use however you want.
- Category: Nature
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
21. Life of Pix
Life of Pix contains free high-resolution stock photos and videos. Most of the photos and videos are related to travel and nature blogs.
- Category: Nature and Travel
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
22. Realistic Shots
Realistic Shots is a collection of high-resolution stock photos for personal and commercial use.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
23. Free Stocks
FreeStocks contains free stock photos for your next animals, travel, fashion, food, nature, and technology blogs. You can feel free to use those stock images on your personal as well as commercial projects.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
24. Skitter Photo
Skitterphoto is a unique place to find and share public domain photos. Here, you may download and edit the photos and even use them commercially.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
25. Little Visuals
Little Visuals is a free stock photos site created by Nic. But, unfortunately, he died at the age of 26. However, his family is maintaining the site and looking for a favor if you use the images (not recommended, but be generous). You can easily donate them to the site.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
26. Shot Stash
ShotStash is a collection of beautiful unique stock photos. They provide a variety of unique photos that you can use it in your project or website.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
27. Styled Stock
StyledStock is a collection of beautiful free styled images based on the concept of feminine stock photography.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
28. Barn Images
Barnimages is a collection of free high-resolution photos for everyone. It was launched in March 2015 by Igor Trepeshchenok and Roman Drits, two photographers from Latvia. They created Barn images with the hope of redefining traditional stock imagery.
- Category: All
- License: Creative Commons Zero. See License.
Conclusion
I’ve tried to list down all the best and genuine free stock photos and videos websites.
Go through all the sites based on the niche or category your blog falls in.
Personally, I use Pexels for the stock photos on my site. Let me know your preferred stock photos and videos site for your blog via the comments section below.
