No doubt, there are abundant photo agency websites where you can purchase beautiful premium stock photos out there, but the problem is the prohibitive price behind them. Fortunately, some photographers decided to release their beautiful photos for free on their websites. You can use those free stock photos on your blog posts, or website background, even on a banner or any printed designs. Some of them also allow us to use their photos for commercial purpose. So, if you are running a startup, or maybe you are creating a premium product, these photos could save your budget.
But finding these charitable websites on the vast internet might not be easy. If you were using the images search engine, mostly you would end up on the premium stock photo pages which leads to buy the photos. The good news, we have curated a list of websites offering free stock photos in high quality on this article.
Be sure to bookmark this page, as we will update and add even more website we might find in the future. If you know any website we missed on the list, let us know in the comments section below.
Snapwire Snaps
Snapwire is a marketplace to get commission and license royalty free photos. However they also shares some beautiful free stock photos on their side blog, named Snapwire Snaps. The blog is public repository of photos contributed by a lot photographers around the world. The site has search feature and you can subscribe to its newsletter to get latest photos every week.
license: public domain, CC0
Unsplash
Unsplash is a public repository where photographers would get their own profile page to upload and share their photos for free. Unsplash team would also pick and curate some of the photos to their “featured photos” list. The new version of Unsplash include a search feature to make it easier finding the photos you want.
license: public domain, CC0
Foodies Feed
Specialize on providing free stock photos for foodies, Foodies Feed has a large collection from appetizers, snacks, pasta, desserts, and drinks. It has easy navigation, just a common blog with tags, and categories. And the search feature also very helpful. Along with the free photos, they also offers premium photo packages and Dropbox access for instant updates.
license: free for personal and commercial use
Death to Stock Photo
Every month, you will get a set of photos taken by their collaborating photographers. All you need to do is enter your email address for free subscription. The photos are really good taken, but the drawback is you can’t download the photos shared on past months. They also offers premium subscription which is $10 per month. As a premium subscriber, you will get more photos each month and also a direct access to download their past photos from the archive.
license: own license
Picjumbo
Maintaned by Victor Hanacek, a professional photographer, Picjumbo has collections of stunning and awesome free stock photos. It has various categories, abstract, business, person, landscapre, fashion, and foods. It also has search feature for easier navigation. Picjumbo also offers premium membership which includes more photos and assorted photo packs.
license: public domain, CC0
SplitShire
Daniel Nanescu, a designer and photographer from Italy loves taking photographs and share them for free on his website, SpliShire. The site has common filters like categories and search bar. You can also subscribe to its newsletter if you are too lazy to check the website regularly.
license: public domain, CC0
Gratisography
If you love fantasy-themed photos, Gratisography is your best friend. They provides some photos with some slight editings to turn the photos into fantasy-themed photos. You mostly would find a lot of unique face expressions among the collection. It has 5 main categories, animals, nature, objects, people, urban, and whimsical. You can also subscribe to its newsletter for instant updates.
license: public domain, CC0
Startup Stock Photos
Contains free photos for startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, or creators. All photos are mostly taken in the office and workspace environment showing people with notebook, monitors, tablets, people holding a meeting, whiteboard with flow diagram, or anything about startup working environment. The site has no navigation, just scroll down and keep browsing until you found what you need.
license: public domain, CC0
Barn Images
Barn Images is also a good alternative to get free stock photos in high quality. The site has search feature and categories to browse the photos. Beside free photos, Barn Images has some premium photo packs which you can purchase optionally. And they also has Lifetime Cloud Access for $10, you would get instant updates to your Dropbox and OneDrive every time they release new photos.
license: public domain, CC0
StockSnap
The navigation in this site is really helpful. You mainly will use the search bar to filter the photos with keywords. And then you can sort the results by trending, relevance, date, number of views, downloads, and favorites. You can add some photos to your favorites list, but you will need to create an account, which is free anyway.
license: public domain, CC0
Epicantus
The photos from Epicantus are really unique. You can use the search feature to find photos or use the Tumblr simple archive page to browse all photos in a nice overview grids sorted by months. Epicantus accepts some photo requests or if you are a photographer love to share your shots for free, you can contact them and they will feature your shots.
license: public domain, CC0
Jay Mantri
Inspired by Unsplash, Jay Mantri, a designer from Canada collects his photographs during his daily life and share them for free on his website. The website has minimalist look and almost no navigation to filter out the photos, means you can’t do search or “browse by categories” stuffs. However, the “grid archive” feature from Tumblr might help you to view all the photos grouped by month.
license: public domain, CC0
Travel Coffee Book
Focused on travelling photos around the world, capturing building or natural landscape from beautiful places. The site has no navigation at all, however you can subscribe to its newsletter to get direct updates, or use the OneDrive cloud service to download all the photos at once.
license: public domain, CC0
DesignersPics
Thanks to Jeshu John, a web designer and developer from India who decided to share free stock photos in high resolution and high quality. The photos looks very unique and in some way are very helpful to improve your great designs. Take advantage of the search feature and category filters to find some specific photos.
license: own license
Get Refe
A minimalist website which expose their photos in grid view with a short description. There is no navigation, like search bar or category tags, so you need to manually looking for the photos. But you can use Tumblr archive page if you want to browse in more organized view.
license: public domain, CC0
IM Free
A curated collection of free web design resources, all for commercial use. The site is managed by IM Creator, a free website builder platform. In the site, you can find free photos in various categories, from people, business, technology, health, foods, fashion, etc. Other than photos, the site also provides free icons and templates.
license: own license
JÉSHOOTS
Looking for more unique photos? Jan Vašek collects and shares free photos in various categories. You can use the categories dropdown menu to filter out the photos. Some photos are unique which you can’t find them in other websites.
license: public domain, CC0
Life of Pix
Another Unsplash-inspired website with a simple search feature to browse the photos. The photos are very well taken although we would see a lot of travelling captures among the collection. They also open public submission from other photographers. And you can subscribe to theirits newsletter for instant updates to your inbox.
license: public domain, CC0
Kaboompics
Really love the navigation on this website, you can use search feature, categories dropdown, and also hashtags. These filters could make your life easier finding your photos. Other than free stock photos, sometimes the site also shares free design mockups. You can also subscribe to their newsletter.
license: own license
How We Used The Free Stock Photos
High quality stock photos are an important part of your works. We have been following those websites and use their free stock photos to support our WordPress themes demo sites, and the results look fantastic. So will you! Start downloading free photos from those websites. If you have found some websites that are not in the list, feel free to let us know in the comment sections. We will update the list above as we see new suggestions.
I created a websites that allows you to search through all of these different websites in one go. check it out: http://LibreStock.com
Hi dave, just checked your website, really good idea!