A picture is worth a thousand words! But it also needs an investment. Do you operate a website or blog and are looking to download free stock photos or royalty-free images for commercial use? Why waste your time searching for such websites and understanding their commercial image usage copyright when you can find all free stock photography websites at one place?
We noticed that visitors to blogs and websites are more curious to look at the images/visual content as compared to text content. If the images are in high resolution and attractive enough, then your content will definitely grab more attention of readers. Not only do images in articles help to maintain a good level of readership, but they also tempt visitors to get more engaged by sharing blogs on social media or leaving comments on the content. But as a blogger or website owner, you must be sure that the images you are using on your web content are free of copyright issues and are available under free license usage, or else you may face copyright claims by the original image owner.
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There are plenty of categories or topics on which bloggers can write content, including health, food, science, technology, lifestyle, and many more. Finding the right image for the blog is obviously very hard and expensive. So here we make an attempt to compile a list of online stock photo websites from which you can download free stock photos and royalty-free images that can be used by anyone to promote their online content. (Subject to respective image copyright terms.)
Best Free Images Website Without Copyright:
1. Pixabay:
Pixabay hosts a collection of royalty-free images that can be used in professional projects, especially by researchers. It is a great repository for accessing public domain images. You can search for free images based on orientation, a unique feature of this website. Pixabay images have recently been tagged under Creative Commons Deed CC0. and one needs to follow the image license terms clearly specified under the respective image. You can download free images for multiple categories, including Business, Education, Health, Science, technology, etc., at Pixabay. With over 670K free stock images, illustrations, and vectors, Pixabay is the best platform to find & download royalty-free images online.
[Tweet “With over 670K free stock images, @pixabay is the best platform to download free images online.”]2. Pexels:
Pexels has secured the second spot in our list due to the quality of pictures they offer. Currently, there are over 30K free stock photographs available for personal or commercial use, and 3000 high-resolution photographs are being added every month. If they keep offering such great photographs, you may soon see this free stock photography website on the first page of our article. According to their license, you can use all photos on Pexels for free for any personal or commercial purpose.
3. Morguefile:
Morguefile has a collection of royalty-free images over 300000 in count. One unique feature of this site is that it lets users resize/crop the images that are being downloaded for usage. Searching for images can be done via keywords, and there’s no need for user registration. In some cases, the user might need to contact the original uploader for usage. Downloaded images, if they are of a personal nature, should not be used on adult websites or for any similar purpose. Morguefile is a Creative Commons license-friendly website, making comic book artists, and teachers great fans of this site.
4. Death To The Stock Photo:
Death to Stock Photo is one of the fastest-growing websites that provides FREE non-stock photos as well as various memberships depending on your requirements. With a FREE subscription, they email you 20 new photographs every month. If you are looking to download more photographs at no cost, Death to the Stock Photo is not a recommended option for you. For unlimited downloads, you will have to buy their paid subscription, which starts at $12 per month if you buy a yearly subscription.
5. Stockvault:
StockVault is the best source to download free stock images and comes with a CC license to use for noncommercial purposes. It also offers paid images with specific licenses and can be used for commercial purposes. To make your search easier, StockVault offers various image search filters and advanced search options. It is noted that close to 55000 images are available on the Stockvault website, tagged under Creative Commons License terms. It also helps with photo editing resources for users who would like to add more creativity to the downloaded images.
6. Flickr:
Flickr is the world’s #1 platform for photographers has over 8 billion photos from over 87 million users (2013 data) and 3.5 million images uploaded daily. Here users are allowed to control the license of images they upload and the public can accordingly use images for their blog or website.
Flickr images are tagged with a Creative Commons license which means images downloaded from this site can be used in any form but under a particular Creative Commons license. Also, no forms of derivatives are allowed as it would be considered a violation of the Creative Commons license agreement with Flickr. It also lets users search with CC license terms and offers further search drill-down based on usage licenses. Bloggers often use this platform to download images and use them on their blogs with the credit of the owner of the image.
7. StockSnap.io:
StockSnap.io is yet another website that hosts Free stock images (CC0) tagged with Creative Commons license terms. Getting the right images from StockSnap was a tedious task earlier but now they have improved the design and the search option is very user-friendly. As a user, one can download very high-resolution images from StockSnap.io with a CC0 license. You can find images from all different categories like technology, business, health, nature, travel, etc.
The best part of StockSnap.Io is; that they have a trending image section where they list stock photos based on their popularity. You just need to visit this section and download the image you liked the most.
8. UnSplash:
If you are after quality images then UnSplash is for you. At least 10 photos are being uploaded to this site every day. The site also offers website plugins for quick image retrieval to blogs and websites. Every image included the name of the photographer. Creative Commons Zero license-tagged photos can be attributed, derived from UnSplash without any permission. Unsplash photos are useful for artistic presentations, classroom projects, and other similar creative initiatives.
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9. SplitShire:
SplitShire platform is a collection of amazing breathtaking stock photos shot by Daniel Nanescu. He provides all his personal shots for absolutely free to other users. The platform already reached 80000 download marks and that’s amazing as per Daniel. SplitShire claims that the platform provides free high-quality photos with no restrictions at all.
10. GratisoGraphy:
Uniqueness is what defines the GratisoGraphy site. Most of the images on this site are professional takes, and unique in nature. But one issue with the site is that there’s no search feature incorporated as users have to scroll on to find their preferred image. This site also comes under the Creative Commons Zero license tag whereby one can download and use images in forms they want. Give special attention to terms while using photos as embedded images.
11. 500Px:
With well over thousands of views a month 500Px is the leading site for free images. Images fall under licensed, zero licensed categories. Special edition images are copyrighted under Creative Commons license agreements and should be used as per the owner’s terms. All violations will be legally challenged. 500Px has some awesome and attractive images that can help you to increase the readers on your blog.
12. UnrestrictedStock:
Unrestricted Stock is another popular website from where you can download free stock photos, vectors, and videos. I personally liked this website to use vector images for websites/blogs.
If you are using Unrestricted Stock to download stock images, check their user agreement too.
Bonus:
13. Google Image Search:
Google Image by far has been the easiest choice to find all different types of images with the advanced search option. What is notable with Google Images lets you search based on Copyright terms be it copyrighted for free usage, display images without any copyright issues, and many other search combinations. You can get direct links to websites that are placeholders for images or get direct links to the exact image.
All photo-sharing websites are a collective effort from photographers worldwide. Undoubtedly they are amazing resources for quick access to images for any occasion. It is worth researching well before moving to a photo-sharing website, to suit your needs as a writer and to find the apt images for your content. Sometimes it can be difficult to find the perfect match but the resources are growing in plenty and you can download free image that meets your requirement.
Before you download and use any FREE stock image, you should be wise enough to understand the licenses using the image, and would be good to contact the owner in case of any confusion. Here we don’t take any responsibility for free or royalty-free images downloaded by users and should be used at one’s own risk. The image usage policy of the particular website may change periodically, We strongly recommend reviewing the policy before you download and use free royalty-free, or stock images from any of these websites.
If you know about any reliable resources to download free images online, do share them with us. We will manually review the website and we will add it to the list.
FAQs:
Copyright-free images are pictures that are not protected by copyright or have had their copyright licenses waived by the creators. They can be used for various purposes, including commercial use, without legal restrictions.
Some top options include Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and Freepik. These platforms offer a wide variety of high-quality images for commercial use.
Not always. Many images on these platforms are available for both commercial and non-commercial use without attribution. However, it’s essential to check the specific license terms for each image.
Yes, in most cases you can modify the images to suit your needs. However, again it’s crucial to review the individual image’s license for any restrictions.
Yes, some of these platforms offer more than just images. You can often find videos, music, and other multimedia resources for commercial projects.
