Where can I get royalty free images free of charge?
From Unsplash to Pexels to RawPixel, here are answers to the question, “What are the best places to get royalty free images free of charge?”
- Pexels
- Rawpixel
- Unsplash
- Stocksnap.io
- Morguefile and Flaticon
- Gratisography
- Freerange Stock
- Vistacreate
- Pixabay
- Pexels
- The Best Places to Find Royalty-free Images
Pexels
As someone who has dabbled in creating graphics for social media posts and digital marketing, I strongly recommend Pexels as a source for royalty-free images.
One of the things that sets Pexels apart from other similar websites is the variety and diversity of images available. Pexels has a large collection of beautiful, high-resolution images that can be freely used for personal or commercial projects without the need for any copyright notice. Moreover, the site is easy to navigate and browse.
You can search for anything from high-quality backdrops to astonishing landscape photographs. Personally, I spend almost two hours searching for an image in Pexels to use simply because I cannot decide on which is better from hundreds of great options available.
Another great feature of Pexels is the community aspect, where photographers can upload their own images to the platform, making it a great place for photographers to showcase their work and gain exposure.
Paw Vej, Chief Operating Officer, Financer.com
Rawpixel
RawPixel offers a combination of public domain, free, and premium images. You can create a free account to leverage the free images, plus it will keep a record of all the images you download so you can easily reference them in the future. They offer a feed of new images on the homepage so you can check out what’s recently been added. You can search for images using your own key terms or check out the topics section to narrow your options. They sometimes offer a lifetime paid subscription so you can grab all the images you want for a one-time fee.
Alli Hill, Founder and Director, Fleurish Freelance
Unsplash
Unsplash has a wonderful array of freely available imagery to use. It’s organized into easy-to-understand categories. There’s a bit of something for every purpose here and for every style. Need Instagram posts? Check. Need a professional background? Check. Need blank product containers? Check. The majority of images are downloadable completely free of charge, and sometimes it’s suggested that you give attribution, but you don’t have to. Unsplash is also a great way to find talent for future projects.
Simon Bacher, Ceo, Co-founder, Ling App
Morguefile for Photos, Flaticon for Icons and Graphics
MorgueFile touts itself as an image archive “for creatives, by creatives” and features roughly 400,000 free images for both personal and commercial use. Anyone can contribute, with a few rules, so you’ll run into some really interesting options that really feel like they have some soul rather than the standard overly professional feeling you’d get from Shutterstock oftentimes. Flaticon is home to 9 million icons and stickers while also playing host to a free icon editor that lets you colorize, de-saturate, etc. all in the platform before downloading it. Incredibly useful, quick and easy to use, and constantly updated – I highly recommend this one as a bookmark for designers.
Kate Kandefer, CEO, SEOwind
Gratisography
There are several places where you can find royalty-free images: Gratisography: You will find a very special collection. The images here have more production value and are more creative than on a traditional site. Unsplash: Maybe the most popular website with images that are free to use for commercial and personal projects. Pexels: A website that offers a wide variety of free stock images, including photos, illustrations, and videos. Pixabay: Besides free stock photos and illustrations, you will find vector graphics. StockSnap: They focus on high-quality, high-resolution photos.
Luciano Colos, Founder and CEO, PitchGrade
Freerange Stock
For the last three months, I have been using FreeRange Stock to find high-quality, royalty-free images for my blog. Although I still use other platforms like Pixabay, I like FreeRange simply because of the incredible variety of high-quality photos. FreeRange is a stock photo website providing a collection of high-quality images available for personal and commercial use. The website has a wide range of images in several categories, including business, technology, travel, and more. FreeRange images are royalty-free and can be used without attribution. The platform also offers a flexible, low-cost subscription model for those looking for a more extensive collection of photos. They offer a variety of images from professional photographers and also have a curated collection from their own photographers.
Logan Nguyen, Co-founder, MIDSS
Get Free Premium Quality Stock Photos On Vistacreate
We have been using VistaCreate to get copyright-free images for quite a while now. They have a wide array of image subjects and customizable templates perfect for your blog or business. The best part of using VistaCreate is that they have blogs that will teach you how to use their product and amplify your brand with digital art and images. This can be beneficial for startups, personal blogs, and small-time businesses that don’t have access to the financial resources to hire professional photographers just to have excellent-quality visuals.
Preston Powell, CEO, Webserv
Pixabay
I am the editor at Merchmates.co.uk and I work in SEO. I’ve put together some options below which are my go-to choices. Unsplash.com: A vast collection of beautiful, high-quality images perfect for any project. Pexels.com: An online library of stunning photos in a variety of categories like art, nature, architecture, and more. Pixabay.com: Hundreds of thousands of copyright-free images available to be used commercially without attribution or costs.
George Patient, Founder and Editor, Merch Mates
Pexels Has Been My Life Line On Many Projects
Pexels has access to high-end imagery, both photos and videos, in a range of different aspect ratios and dimensions, all for free. No license needed, no monthly subscription to access – only attribution where stipulated. It’s gotten me out of a jam many times when working on corporate and documentary work.
Lenard Cassimatis, Director, Latis Creative
Stocksy
Stocksy has a lot of great photos, but they are not all free-you can buy them individually or buy credits which will give you access to their entire library (which is pretty big!). It’s worth checking out if you’re looking for some specific types of images, though, because there are some really great ones.
Jephonie Villegas, SEO Specialist, VEED.IO
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