A beautiful image adds to the visual appeal of a blog post. Unfortunately, many of us pay little attention to the stock images we use on our blog posts. The world of stock photography has come a long way in the last five years. There are several websites where we can download royalty free stock photography for free, sometimes, even without attribution to the creator.
We’ve curated a list of websites to download royalty free photographs for free.
A Quick Disclaimer
Although we’ve done our best to identify the sites with a creative commons (CCO) license, we suggest that you do your own research before downloading images. Sometimes, site policies can change.
Unsplash
With over 25,000 contributing photographers, and a wide range of high resolution photographs, Unsplash is one of the best free stock photo sites. All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
Attribution Required – No
Pixabay
Pixabay is an international website that offers high quality public domain photos. A one stop solution for bloggers, web designers, business owners, or anyone who’s looking for free stock photos. Another site that lets you use images without attribution.
Attribution Required – No
Pexels
Started in 2014, Pexels has evolved into a database of amazing stock photographs. And, like the first two sites that we mentioned, almost all images on Pexels are licensed under Creative Commons Zero, meaning they’re free from all copyrights and can be used freely, even for commercial projects.
Attribution Required – No
Superfamous
Folkert Gorter’s Superfamous is a website with stunning original photographs of beautiful landscapes. The library is not huge, but is updated regularly, and you need to provide image credits to Folkert or Superfamous if you are using images from here. But, rest assured, the images are high quality, and free.
Attribution Required – Yes
Picjumbo
Started by Viktor Hanacek in 2013, Picjumbo is today one of the most popular free stock photo sites, used by millions of bloggers, marketers and web designers worldwide. The images are high in quality, and very different from the regular stock photos from other websites. Almost all images are free from copyright and don’t require attribution of any kind.
Attribution Required – No
Negative Space
Negative Space is where you should go if you’re looking for beautiful, free, high-resolution, and restriction-free images. All images are licensed under Creative Commons Zero, making use for any kind, commercial or otherwise absolutely free.
Attribution Required – No
Stokpic
Stokpic is a site designed by photographer Ed Gregory, who adds about 10 new photos every week to his database, making his pictures available for the public to use freely. The images are of good quality. However, Stokpic photos are subject to attribution. There are very few images with a CC0 license. So, please choose your images carefully.
Attribution Required – Yes
Kaboompics
Another website that, started in Poland with spectacular images about fashion, food and scenery, Kaboompics is also free of any copyrights, or attributions.
Attribution Required – No
StockSnap.io
Whether it is for personal use or a commercial project, StockSnap.io is a website that offers a range of stunning stock photos for free. Like most of the free stock photo sites, images on StockSnap.io are free of also copyrights and attribution. free.
Attribution Required – No
Gratisography
Gratisography is a collection of free, high-resolution images for personal and commercial use. New images are added every week and the site offers images on several categories for free. And, the good thing is the images do not require any sort of attribution.
Attribution Required – No
Before uploading an image on your website. It’s important to understand copyright laws. A naïve mistake can end up costing you thousands of dollars in penalties and law suits. Check out our article on copyright issues here.
I religiously use Unsplash + Picjumbo! I use stock images a lot on my blog and they are by far the best I have found!
Oh my goodness! I was just looking for free stock image websites last night and was having a hard time. Thank you!
Thanks for these great tips for finding pics!!
Wonderful tips even though I have ever used my own images in my blogs… I have never really explored other options?
saving this for when I need more stock images!! these seem like great places to look through <3
This is a great repository – Bookmarking!! 🙂
I am going to check these resources right away. Thanks for sharing.
Hi,
Great post! Have you checked out http://www.rawpixel.com yet? We are one of the leading stock photography contributors, and now we’re giving away lots of images for free. It would be amazing if you could add us to your list. 🙂
Thank you,
Jen
I knew pixabay which i use frequently, but it is good to have alternative 🙂