Whether you are a content writer, blogger, web designer or a graphic designer, you will be frequently in need for quality stock images. Copyrights is always a concern especially if you don’t want to spend a fortune on buying high quality professional images that may be suitable for your use. Premium stock image websites such as ShutterStock or iStockPhoto can be pricey for your new business, freelancing business or a blog that is on budget or still behind the phase of monetization.
I decided to mention my top favorite free stock image websites because some of the free stock image websites that I tried have a small collection of photos and others don’t include search feature which makes it harder to find a relevant photo. So I skipped mentioning my least favorite ones and picked the 5 most useful websites that proved their quality & reliability.
1. PixaBay.com
With almost a million free stock images, PixaBay makes it to the top of my favorite free stock image websites. It is my first choice whenever I need a stock image. It has a simple search feature, editor’s picks section & the ability to browse photographers’ collections.
Almost all the images on PixaBay come with different dimensions to help you to pick what is suitable for your need. Also, no attribution required for almost every single image on the website.
2. Pexels.com
Pexels comes with an elegant interface, categorization & easy search. A large number of photographers upload their photos there. All the images are free for commercial use with no attribution required.
Pexels also has a Photoshop plugin available for free for designers who need easy &quick method to access the images on Pexels.
3. StockSnap.io
It is one my favorites. The pictures on StockSnap.io looks very professional & I usually find relevant photos there to what I am looking for. I picked the picture for this article from StockSnap.
The downside is that it doesn’t have multiple image resolutions but the available resolution is always high & you can resize it or crop it later.
It also has views, likes & downloads counters which helps you to know the trending & most viewed images.
4. PicJumbo.com
PicJumbo contains a good collection of photos but the most noticeable thing is the amazing collection of food photos. It can be the perfect source of photos for food blog or any food or nutrition business website/blog.
The photos on PicJumbo are all captured by the Czech photographer, Viktor Hanacek. Despite all the photos are taken by one photographer, you will be surprised by the variety of quality photos in this website.
5. FreeImages.com
It was the first free stock images website I found & I used to use it for a while. As described by FreeImages.com, they have over 390,000 images available to download for free. The only downside is that some photographers require attribution for using their images but still a few of them require that s be careful not to violate any copyrights. The interface is also not my favorite since it looks outdated compared to similar websites.
I am the creator of Nomadic Memoir and the author of this article :D; Living as a Digital Nomad since 2016; Founder of the remote digital agency, Web Leap Garage. I share my experience as a Digital Nomad. Also tips, destination info, and travel stories.
Not sure if it’s considered stock, but Unsplash is my go to for gorgeous photos!
This is perfect, I have been looking for websites with free pictures to use!
Thanks for this post. I’ve used pixabay and FreeImages before, but I hadn’t heard of some of these other once. Great tips for bloggers or anyone who needs copyright-free images!
Thanks for the tips, there are a few there that I didn’t knew yet!
I have used StockSnap before but I haven’t even heard of the others! Thanks for the list. it’ll probably come in really useful to me!
Did not hear about some of those. Thank you for the consolidated list.
I haven’t started using stock photos yet, but have been really looking into it, so this list is super helpful!! Thank you!!
Definitely I need quality stock pictures all the time. Thanks for putting this up. I will check through these websites
Thanks much for this, as I too am a blogger, and it’s good to know where to find images. A year or two ago, I used a few freee image sites and yeah, they’re not so good, so I’m glad to find others. Cheers, then.
Stock images can come in handy sometimes. It makes a blog post much better with an image to go along with it and you might not have a picture on hand of the thing you want. Free is always great as well.
Great resources! Will keep these in mind when needing pictures for places I haven’t gone yet!
That’s a very useful list. will keep it bookmarked. thanks
This is a great and handy resource for all the bloggers! Pictures speak more than words and anything free is always welcome!
This handy list is going to be so helpful to me. Havent tried any of these till today but surely gonna consider them now.
This is really helpful. We have used pixabay and creative commons. Will check out the others as well.