27 Best Sites to Find Free Images for Your Website

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One of the biggest challenges new bloggers or website owners face is finding free images for your website.  The internet is a huge blessing in that you can find anything and everything you need in terms of pictures, videos, and audio content. But just because all of this content is easily available online, it doesn’t mean you can make use of them with impunity.

Romance author Roni Loren details how bad things got for her when she used an image she didn’t have the rights for in her story here. In the end, in her own words, she had to “pay money that I didn’t have for a use of a photo I didn’t need.” Enough said.

How can you make sure you’re using the right images for your website while ensuring you have the necessary permissions in place? Here’s a detailed guide plus a list of 27 of the best sites to find free images for your website.

Why it’s Never a Good Idea to Use Random Images you Find on Google

When you’re a professional who’s running a business and generating income from your blog or website or whatever you’re using images for, it’s not a good idea to grab and use random images you find on the internet. This is especially true for the glossy, professional-looking, high-resolution images or high-quality images that you want to use. These images may be belonging to a specific individual, blog, website or business.

If you download the image off the net and paste it onto your content, you are basically using their material without permission and that can get you into legal trouble. Even if they send you a legal notice and you take down the image afterwards, it may not absolve you from further action. It is very possible for persons or businesses to find out that you’ve used their image without permission because there are software that can help them do just this.

So in a nutshell, you need to be careful about where you source your images from and how you use them.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Free Images for Your Website

If you’re debating whether or not you should use free photos for your website, here are some benefits and drawbacks to help you decide:

Benefits of Using Free Images for your Website

• Free images, for the most part, are FREE in that you don’t have to pay a single dime or paise for them – this is obviously the greatest no-brainer benefit.
• With so many sites out there, you also have plenty of options to source some very high-quality images from. In other words, you can generally find the right images for your blog posts or any type of content with just a few clicks.
• You get high-resolution and high-quality images without having to bust the bank. Some of the free images are professional-grade and using these images will give you that polished look while helping you cut unnecessary costs.

Drawbacks of Using Free Images for your Website

• There’s a possibility that someone else could be using the same image as you are. This can be an issue when it comes to stock photos. To counter this, it’s a good idea to browse beyond the first page results of the image gallery so that you don’t pick up the most commonly downloaded ones. Most people don’t have the patience to go beyond the first few pages.
• Free stock photos have been done to death. While there is nothing wrong with using royalty-free images for your business, getting more creative is a good idea to stand out.
• You do need to do your due diligence before you make use of any photo even if it’s headlined a free image. Always look at the fine print to see on what occasions it’s free and whether you have to support the website or contributor by a share or attribution.

But First, How to Check if It’s Really a Free Lunch…

You’ll find a lot of websites online advertising free stock images or royalty-free images. While some of these are genuinely free, others require some form of give-back whether it’s through a ‘low’ subscription payment or attribution – I will get to these terms in just a bit. I cannot emphasise how important it is to read the fine print when you’re looking for free images for your website. So, here are some of the most important terms you need to be aware of when you’re reviewing the fine print:

Personal Use – This is when you’re using the image for yourself with no intention of making profit. So if you’re using the image to create a design for a t-shirt for you or as a gift for a friend, it would come under personal use.

Commercial Use – This is when you’re using the image for promotional, marketing, merchandising, or advertising purposes.

Editorial Use only –  Editorial use images may not be used for commercial advertising purposes. PhotoSecrets also points out an important distinction between editorial use images and other images that you can use for commercial purposes. Referring to iStock Photography standards, PhotoSecrets quotes the following:

“An Editorial Use Only image can be used:

• In a newspaper or magazine article
• On a blog or website for descriptive purposes
• In a non-commercial presentation

An Editorial Use Only image cannot be used:

• In any kind of advertising or promotional material.
• For any ‘advertorial’ purposes, i.e. in sections or supplements in relation to which you receive a fee from a third party advisor or sponsor.”

Copyright – Copyright is the exclusive right that owners/creators have over their original works which can be music, books, and art amongst others. You cannot use the work for any purpose unless the owner or creator has given you the right to do so. You want to look for images where the copyright restrictions are clearly laid out, so you know what you can and cannot do with the images.

Royalty-free – Royalty-free doesn’t  mean that you’re not paying anything. In fact, you may be required to pay a one-off fee to use the image for various purposes but the owner/creator still holds the copyright. That can sound a bit overwhelming but in very simple terms, you can generally use it for your website or blog and keep re-using it after paying the one-time fee. Now what happens with free stock photo sites, is that the sites themselves have absorbed the fees so you get to use the images free of cost. Phew!

Attribution – Attribution is when you ascribe the work to an individual or business. In some of the free sites I’m going to be listing, the fine print will indicate a need for attribution. What this means is that you can use the image for free on the condition that you do the necessary attribution in the manner they’ve described. In most cases, you will be asked to visibly credit the creator using a link wherever you’re placing the image.

Creative Commons – Creative Commons is when the author or creator of the work holds copyright but still wants to give other people the opportunity to share, use, or build/modify on their work. But the author/creator decides the terms of use – so you still need to read the fine print to find out if and how you can use the images. Creative Commons is also known as Creative Commons licenses. Here’s a list of 7 of the most frequently-used Creative Commons licenses courtesy Wikipedia. Also, check out creativecommons’ blog post for more information on the different types of creative commons licenses. 

One specific CC license is worth mentioning here because you will come across it frequently when you’re looking for images – the Creative Commons Zero or the CC0 license. When an image is licensed under the creative commons CC0 license, it just means that the creator has given up all rights to the work with no terms or conditions – which basically means you can use the image for whatever you want.

Public domain images – Public domain images are those that never had a copyright to start with or have copyrights that have expired. In other words, these images can be used for both personal and commercial use. The Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center has an exhaustive explanation of what constitutes public domain images which you can find here. Sometimes you will also find the image tagged with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

Generally, to be on the safe side, it’s recommended you look for:

• Free stock photo sites like the ones I’ve listed here
• Images that you know are licensed under creative commons zero (CC0)
• Public domain images.

For this compilation, I went through over 100 free image sites and shortlisted the ones that had the most range of pictures and also, the best quality. I also picked up a few that cater to more specific niches. I know you’ll want to get down to it straight away so let’s get cracking!

27 places to find free images for your website

1. Pexels

Pexels is one of my favourite sites to source free images from. Pexel currently offers over 3 million stock photos and videos. An easy search option enables you to quickly search for the specific item that you’re looking for in their huge gallery. You also have the ability to choose orientation (horizontal, vertical or square), size ( small at 4MP, medium at 12MP, and large at 24MP),  and filter based on image color.

According to Pexels, all photos and videos on Pexels are free to use. The fine print further goes on to say that while attribution is not required, giving credit is appreciated.

 

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is another great resource for stunning, high-quality, royalty-free images that you don’t have to pay for and don’t need attribution.  They also provide paid iStock images at 20% off.  Their library is exhaustive, consisting of over 1.9 million royalty-free stock images, videos, as well as music.

 

3. Burst by Shopify

Burst by Shopify doesn’t have a large gallery of images but all the images are free, high-resolution, and usable for websites and commercial use. You can find the odd decent image or two depending on what you’re looking for. Images can be searched for from common categories like fashion, work from home, women, fitness, feel-good pictures, medical, wedding, business, baby,…etc. A search for the term ‘blogging’ threw up no hits.

 

4. Foodiesfeed

Foodiesfeed is a fantastic site to get amazing-looking free images for websites and businesses related to food. There are 6 major categories to choose from – coffee, cake, pizza, meat, top view, and healthy. You can still find free food images outside of these main categories through the search bar on top. The pictures are simply stunning and high-resolution to boot.

 

5. Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive

If your blog or website has content based on Shakespeare’s work, you will find the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive an excellent resource of vintage illustrations and images. The site has a helpful search option which allows you to filter down to specific Acts, Plays, and characters amongst many others. If vintage is your jam, also check out DigitalArts’ 14 best sites for free vintage photos and artworks for more vintage resources.

 

6. Unsplash

Unsplash is another great site to source free images for your website that are generally high-quality and high-resolution. You can choose to filter by orientation, color of choice or relevance vs. newness.

 

7. Free Images

FreeImages is a site which has a wide variety of images across a large range of categories.  The quality and resolution can vary and I wasn’t very impressed by what came up for my chosen keyword ‘blogging’. It’s still worth a search if you need more options.

 

8. StockSnap

StockSnap is a great site for premium-quality images. Aside from being able to search for the specific items you’re looking for in the search bar of the gallery, you can also sort by relevance, date, trending, views, downloads, and favourites.

 

9. Gratisography

The good thing going for Gratisography is that it’s landing page doesn’t look like every other stock image website’s landing page.  On the other hand, given that its primary focus is quirky and whimsical images,  it may not have a library that suits more formal requirements. My search for the term ‘blogging’ yielded no results but the site did make me smile at the sometimes banal attempts at humour.

10. freepik

freepik is another large site which stocks not just images but also other graphic resources such as vectors, Psds, and icons. There is a free license as well as a premium one. The filter option gives you the usual generic choices such as color, publishing date, and orientation. But it also, rather helpfully, gives you an additional option to choose images that include or exclude people.

11. The Graphics Fairy

The Graphics Fairy is another cool site for fans of everything vintage. It currently stocks ‘over 5000 free vintage images’ according to the blurb on its site. You get a weekly themed digital kit if you choose to take up their premium membership offer.

12. Nasa Image and Video Library

If space, literally, is your final frontier you can’t do better than the Nasa Image and Video Library which was made open to the public in 2017. If you’re looking for out-of-the-world images sourced from the many missions Nasa has carried out over the years in aeronautics, astrophysics, Earth science, human spaceflight, and more, this is the perfect site for you.

13. Ivory Mix

IvoryMix offers more than 550 free styled-stock images for content creators and creative experts if you sign up to their newsletter. You’ll also receive more free styled-stock images emailed to you every month. IvoryMix’s images are beautiful, high-quality, and professional-looking. If feminine styled-stock photos are your thing, also check out DesignYourOwnBlog’s list of 50+ sites comprising both free and paid options.

14. Ancestry Images

Ancestry Images a fantastic resource to find antique maps, prints, and portraits and hence its perfect for historians, genealogists, or just anyone interested in historical images. According to the site, they currently have a gallery of over 36,500 images from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

15. Lifeofpix

Life of Pix provides high-resolution and high-quality photographic images which you can use for your website or indeed any kind of professional or hobby project. Life of Pix doesn’t have a large gallery but you may find nice selections for nature, people, and food categories, amongst others.

16. Free digital photos 

Freedigitalphotos also provides a large gallery where you can find plenty of free images for your website. However, you will be prompted to agree to the Terms and Conditions and ensure that you publish an acknowledgement if you want to make use of the free version of the image.

17. PicJumbo

PicJumbo has an attractive and user-friendly interface which makes the whole process of searching through their gallery a whole lot easier and fun. It has a large library of images as well as free wallpapers, mockups, and social media elements. All in all, it’s a great resource to find free images for your website.

18. PicWizard

PicWizard has a limited collection so you may not always find what you’re looking for. It certainly doesn’t have the wide variety that you might expect from other bigger sites. It’s still worth taking a look at because some categories do have stunning and high-quality free images that you can definitely use.

19. Image Source

Image Source has a selection of premium-quality images as well as videos. The interface looks rather plain and my search for blogging returned irrelevant images that were nevertheless high-quality. Other niches like food and nature yielded much better results. One annoying aspect of this site is that unless you actually hover over the image you don’t really come to know whether its premium or royalty-free.  This is a site for when you have the time and the patience.

 

20. Kaboompics

Kaboompics is another great resource for free stock photos. The site adds new photos daily. The images are professional-grade and you’ll certainly find some interesting and stylish picks from its gallery.

21. Flickr

Flickr has a large image gallery with ‘tens of billions’ of royalty-free images. But the quality can vary and you may need to do some digging to find high-quality, if that’s what you’re looking for.

22. Women of Color in Tech Chat Images

WOCinTechChat are sadly no longer active however their image collection on Flickr is still available to use for free.  If you’re looking for free images that are specifically of women of color, this may be a good resource to use. The images are of premium quality, however, you do need to provide attribution to #WOCinTechChat or wocintechchat.com when you use them.

23. Reshot

Reshot’s photos are unique and high-resolution. They have a large gallery with images that cover people, nature, food, lifestyle, education, animals, business, and technology categories. Reshot also offers an option to register your interest in case you would like to know when they have their free illustrations and icons library up and ready.

 

24. Jeshoots

Jeshoots is a beautiful site where you can find free, unique, and high-resolution images that are categorised thematically. Collections include business, work, Christmas, education, technology, nature, animals, sport, games and casino. The site also offers a limited selection of free PSD mockups.

 

25. BucketListly

BucketListly is a travel blog maintained by backpacker/entrepreneur/storyteller Pete R. Pete has provided more than 10,000 travel photos for free non-commercial use on the site. All of the photos were taken by him. You can connect with him directly if you want high-resolution versions of any of the photos on the site. If you’re into travel photography also checkout Moveast maintained by Portuguese designer João Pacheco which provides more free travel images.

26. Foter

Foter is a niche-specific site that has over 335 million free stock photos catering to home and interior products.  This is, therefore, a site where you can find images related to things like decorative pillows and cushions, appliances, rugs, storage and organization, and home improvement.

27. Cepolina

Cepolina is a site which provides free stock photos catering to three specific categories – nature, animals, and cities. The gallery is over 20,000 free-photos-strong and provides 7 different size options for downloading each image.

Remember…

Just because an image is easily available online to download , it doesn’t mean you can use it. If in doubt, source the owner of the image and request permission to use the image for your work or make sure you’re sourcing it from the options we discussed earlier in this article. Happy free image hunting!

So, what are your favourite places to source free images for your content. Let me know in the comments section below. I love to hear from you!