How To Get Free Stock Photos? 30+ Awesome Sites For Free Photos

As a blogger and designer, looking for how to get free stock photos is an integral part of my blog posting workflow. When I’m looking to create a professional design for a client I would probably would want to buy stock photos (for licencing reasons) on sites like iStock, fotolia, or Shutterstock. But on my own blog or one of my projects I would defiantly prefer going with free stock photos instead.

Unfortunately, these days it’s hard to find great hi res photos that are free for commercial use and ones that are truly original and creative. In the past, the time I spent on finding free high resolution photos was taking most of my time. But not anymore!

 

2 Things To Know About Licenses

A large number of these photos are free from copyright limitations or licensed under creative commons public domain dedication. This implies you can duplicate, change, circulate and play out the work, notwithstanding for business purposes, all without asking consent.

On the other hand, some photos may require attribution. I’ve done my best to recognize which permit they fall under yet despite everything, I encourage you to do your own examination and decide how these pictures can be utilized.

With that covered, let’s see my top 25+ free stock photos sites.
 

How to get free stock photos? Here’s the secret

 

Pexels

pexels free stock photos

Pexels is a search engine for the best free stock photos. It has become one of my primary tools for downloading stock photos that are free for personal and commercial use with no attribution required. Its set of features makes it easy to find and discover new creative photos by color, theme or by subject.

When it comes to a big variety of photos. You can count pexels to do the job of downloading free photos for your next project.

Bottom line: great for searching photos by color or theme

 

Libre Stock

Libre Stock free hi res stock photos

LibreStock is a free multi search engine that will check through over 40 different websites to find images that you can use for commercial or personal use. It’s growing collection of photos include excellent imagery, high quality and entirely free for you to do anything you want to with it, this is certainly a site worth looking at.

Bottom line: great for finding specific niche photos from different sites

 

Pixabay

Pixabay free hi res photos

Pixabay is a site with more than 670,000 free images, vectors and art illustrations. Their database is mainly contributed by the community members and contributors but the quality of the images is maintained and monitored by a group of website management staff who hand-pick the images to be included.

All content provided on this website (except sponsored images which are clearly mentioned) is free for use to everyone (see Pixabay FAQ here). They all fall under “public domain” territory.

Bottom line: lots of images and you can also search videos.

 

Unsplash

Unsplash free hi res stock photos

Unsplash is a collection of free high-resolution photos that releases 10 new photos every 10 days. All of their photos are released under the creative commons public domain license.

Bottom line: photos with swag.

 

Gratisography

Gratisography free stock photos

Gratisography is a free high-resolution pictures collection you can use on your personal and commercial projects. It updated weekly and have tons of new & inspirational photos in areas like Urban, Nature, Animals and more.

Bottom line: great for emotional or provocative photos.

 

Kaboompics

Kaboompics free stock photos

Kaboompics has one of the most breathtaking free stock photos collection I’ve seen so far. It has a variety of pictures such as abstract photos,  city & architecture photos, fashion, food and landscapes photos. All free for personal and commercial use!

Bottom line: great for abstract, fashion or food photos.

 

Stocksnap.io

StockSnap.io free stock photos

StockSnap.io has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high resolution images. Its search engine enables you to search through thousands of free photos to find what you’re looking for. In addition, the site tracks views and downloads so you can find the most popular photos available. All photos are released under creative commons public domain – no attribution required.

Bottom line: rich experience of photo searching.

 

Raumrot

Raumrot free stock photos

Raumrot is a categorized and handpicked stock photos collection that you can use for free. If you are looking for free stock images that follows a high artistic standard, you might find Raumrot very useful.Free for commercial use – attribution to the creator is appreciated. Raumrot is not the largest Free Stock Photo site, but it has incredible pictures and is very user friendly.

Bottom line: photos organized by sets (collections).

 

IM Free

IM Free stock photos

A curated collection of free resources, all for commercial use. Since the photos are curated from various sources, some photos may require attribution.

Bottom line: great tech and people photos collection!

 

Realistic Shots

RealisticShots free stock photos

Free stock photos (high resolution) for personal and commercial use. 7 new photos every week. Just make something creative!

Bottom line: great nature and urban photos collection. 

 

Picography

Picography free stock photos
The simplest site on this list, Picography is a scroll-through gallery of random shots offered by a handful of professional photographers. This site is perfect for designers looking for generally evocative photos (of which there are dozens).

Bottom line: great urban photo collection. 

 

Burst (by Shopify)

burst free stock photos
Burst is a scroll-through collection of random shots for entrepreneurs offered by a handful of photographers. This site is perfect for entrepreneurs looking for some inspirational photos for their projects.

Bottom line: great for entrepreneurs

 

Freestocks

freestocks free hi res stock photos

Freestocks is a collection of free high-resolution photos that releases 10 new photos every 10 days. All of their photos are released under the creative commons public domain license.

Bottom line: another great collection of photos.

 

Pikwizard

pikwizard free stock photos

Pikwizard is a search engine for free stock photos. It has a very big collection of photos which include photos in unusual categories like seasons, animals, sports and more.

Bottom line: has unique categories such as sports, seasonal photos, animal photos and more. 

 

Visual Hunt

Visual hunt free stock photos

Visual Hunt is great resource for royalty & restrictions free high resolution stock images, you have right to edit or modify to use them in personal or commercial projects. If you are blogger, you can easily embed the images using embed code provided with each image and align them how ever you want.

Bottom line: great people and animals high resolution photos. 

 

MMT

MMT Free stock photos

 

MMT Stock is a collection of high resolution photos provided by Jeffrey Betts. Jeffrey likes to share photos of computers and workspaces as well as flowers and nature. All photos are released under Creative Commons CC0.

Bottom line: macro photos of flowers and drawing boards.

 

DesignersPics

Designerspics free stock photos

DesignersPics offers a variety of creative and conceptual free  high-res photos.  All photos are free for personal and commercial use. No attributions required!

Bottom line: great for conceptual photos.

 

Looking for food photos?

Here’s all the free food  stock photos websites I’ve found.

 

Foodie’s feed 

This great website is a resource of FREE food pictures available to download and use for any personal or commercial purpose.How to get free stock photos? It’s easier now as you can also sign up to their newsletter and get free food photos to your inbox.

Bottom line: every foodie’s dream, find photos on any category related to food.

 

Kaboompics

Kaboompics has one of the most breathtaking free stock photos collection I’ve seen so far. It has a variety of pictures and I know I’ve mentioned them already, but I’ve noticed they have a great taste in food pictures that honestly, really make me hungry!

Bottom line: photos that will make you say – yum!

 

FoodShot

FoodShot is a free food stock photos collection provided by FoodScene – a platform that helps you to become a food critic and open a food column of your own. All of FoodShot stock photos are handpicked and curated from around the web purely from sites where photos are distributed for free use.

Bottom line: drinks, fruits and delicious food waiting for you there. 

 

Picjumbo

Picjumbo free stock photos

Picjumbo is a personal favorite of mine due to its impressively easy navigation and extremely high-resolution photos (with no required attribution). This site also happens to sport a great collection of food shots, so if you’re running a restaurant or nutrition-themed startup, it might be worth taking a browse.

Bottom line: has a variety of collections but food & drinks certainly stick out.

 

Nomad_Pictures – Food

Nomad_Pictures has a very good photos collection that starts with food and drinks and goes to travel and tourism photos. I find their collection to be very creative and inspirational which sets them apart from most photos sites. If you’re looking for an inspirational or creative photos this should be your go-to place!

Bottom line: sea food, fruits, fast food and desert photos are among the best I’ve found so far. 

FancyCrave

Fancy Crave free food stock photos

FancyCrave has beautiful & selective creative common zero licensed images from Flickr and publishes 2 new high quality stock photos & images everyday. All images has not restrictions and you can use it for your personal and commercial projects without any copyright issues. Attributions is not required but highly appreciated.

Bottom line: baking, tea, coffee, fruits and everything in between.

 

Looking for travel photos?

Here’s all the free travel stock photos websites I’ve found.

 

Moveast

Moveast How to get free stock photos

Moveast is a great collection of free travel stock photos made by João Pacheco from Portugal. He’s a designer who’s traveled east and decided to upload all of his photos to his website for free use. So It has a lot of very original photography that surrounds cultures and nature.

Bottom line: a journey around the world filled with photos of cultures and people. 

 

Travel Coffee Book

Travel coffee book free travel stock photos

If you are looking for stock images related to travel and destinations, Travel Coffee Book is the perfect choice for you. Contains plenty of travel related high resolution stock photos and built with newsletter subscription form to get notified you whenever they have updated new stock images.

Bottom line: stunning landscape photography and more. 

 

Nomad_Pictures

Nomad_Pictures has a very good photos collection that starts with food and drinks and goes to travel and tourism photos. I find their collection to be very creative and inspirational which sets them apart from most photos sites. If you’re looking for an inspirational or creative photos this should be your go-to place!

Bottom line: great urban and nature photography. 

 

Free JPG

Free JPG travel stock photos

Free JPG is a  search engine for free stock photos, but I’ve found it’s travel section very interesting – I bet you can find some really useful photos there. You can use the images however you want including web, presentations, brochures, templates, T-Shirts, posters, blog etc. If you are a professional or amateur photographer, you can contribute your images to free jpg along with all rights.

Bottom line: a mixture of backpacking and cultural photography.

 

Shutteroo

Shutteroo free travel stock photos

Shutteroo founded by Australian web developer named Klaye Morrison, who’s working at the Melbourne based design agency. You are free to use all images anywhere you like such as personal and commercial projects, but you may not able to resell / redistribute them or claim the ownership of the images. Of course you can use them with your blog posts without any attribution.

Bottom line: beaches, sun and everything you need for your next vacation (kind of photos).

 

Conclusion

The past two years have been a blessing for designers and bloggers all over the world. As a growing number of free stock photos for commercial use websites are taking over the internet. They all share beautiful structure and amazing photography for any kind of project. And the most important part – they’re free.

I’ve made this post to finally answer the question of how to get free stock photos and I hope you find it useful 🙂

17 thoughts on “How To Get Free Stock Photos? 30+ Awesome Sites For Free Photos”

  1. Wow! I didn’t know these sites existed. Thank you for these resources. Hope you’d have a great weekend.

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