66 Free Stock Photo Sites to get Free Images

One of the hardest parts of blogging is getting the right images to go with your content. Ideally, you’re a professional photographer as well as being a professional copywriter! I’’m just kidding. Thanks to the troves of free stock photo sites online, you don’t have to be pro.

Finding the Right Photo Takes Time

I will warn you that if you don’t hold yourself in check, looking for images can be a major time warp. Having said that, I want to put in a quick plug for your handy camera phone. The best images to use on your website are your own. Taking photos is a lot like learning to write good content. It might not be perfect at first, but keep practicing and you’ll develop an “eye” over time. Plus if you use your own images, you will never have to worry about copyright issues.

A Handy Trick for Finding the Right Photo

A lot of people don’t realize that they don’t need images that are literally portraying what they’re writing about. Think bigger and metaphorically about the subject. If you’re managing a relationship blog, you don’t ALWAYS need pictures of couples. Maybe if you’re writing about trust, you find a picture of a tightly tied knot or rock climbers (trusting their belayer). If you were writing about repairing trust, maybe find a picture of a band-aid. Be creative!

Also, keep your search terms simple, one word at a time if you can. For instance, “music”, “wedding”, “bride”, “coffee”, etc. Most photo sites don’t have complex search algorithms.

The Top 8 on the List:

So here it is in all its glory, 66 websites to get completely free photos. I start with my favorites at the top.

1. Flickr. No login required. On the “advanced search” page, check the box in the Creative Commons section, “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”

   Click search. Click on an image you want, and look for the “download” arrow. Click that button, and it will give you an option to select different sizes. Download the one you need.

   ALWAYS cite the person you borrowed the image from, and link to their flickr profile.

2. Max Pixel

3. Every Stock Photo. Just a heads up: this site will frequently give you NSFW results even for the most innocuous search queries like “hand” or whatever. So take care when you’re at work. Also, in my opinion, the images are getting to be a bit dated. Otherwise, this site is an amazing resource because it combines so many major free stock photo sites, and simplifies your search process.

   Another bit of advice for searching on this site: once you’’ve made your first search, go to “sources” and uncheck Flickr. I’’ve found that it doesn’’t serve very good results through this site. You are better off going straight to flickr’’s search bar.

   When you find a picture you like, you’ll jump to another stock photo website and you’ll have to create an account or login to get the picture. All of these websites are great places to search for an image too.

4. Free Images. This is a sister-site of a paid image site: iStock, and they advertise heavily, trying to get you to buy stock images. Other than that, great place to get lots of high-quality photos.

5. Getty Images. I rank this high because the quality is the best you are going to get. But there’’s a catch: NEVER download them onto your computer. Getty’s images are for embedding only——think of it like embedding a Youtube video. The downside of is that Getty has control over the content. If the photographer decides they don’’t want their images embeddable, the image will disappear from your site.

6. RGB Stock. Like freeimages.com above, this is a sister site of a paid image site: stockfresh.com.

7. Stock Vault. This is a sister site of a paid image site: shutterstock.com

8. Google Images. When you look for images using the following instructions, you are in charge of following up on whether or not it actually IS “labeled for reuse”. If you are not sure, don’t use images from this source. To find images labeled for reuse on Google, do a search in the “images” tab. Click “Search tools” > Click “Usage rights” > Commercial use? Click “labeled for reuse” > Non Commercial use? “labeled for non-commercial reuse”.

Honorable Mentions 9-18

After searching through these sites, I usually find something that will work, but here are a few honorable mentions:

9. Creative Commons Search More than just images, this site directs you to free music and video too!

10. Death to the Stock Photo. This site is an email subscription to random packs of images that come once a month or so.

11. Deviantart – Creative Commons

12. Dreamstime. You will have to have an account and login first to see the free photos in this section. Alternatively, you can go to their sister site here at Stock Free Images.

13. Free Range Stock.

14. Foter.

15. MorgueFile.

16. Pexels. It’s a smaller database, but it’s searchable and the quality is stunning. I seriously scrolled through the whole thing because the photos were so pretty. There’s another website with a lot of the same images called Gratisography, which has more focus on humor.
17. Pixabay. Searchable database. Lots of nice-looking, clear photos. I also like that when you find a picture you like, there are a bunch of other tags/search terms underneath it to snowball your searches.
18. The Stocks. This website combines several photo collections that are mentioned in this article in one place. Beautiful photos, but they can’t be sorted in any way.

Final 49 Free Stock Photo Sites

Here are a few more sites that I/’ve never used before; I’’ve run across them while looking for other image websites. Some of the sites I’ve had a chance to look at briefly and get a quick impression on the quality. I put the less than stellar sites at the bottom. Let me know in the comments if you love one of these and why. Also, let me know if I’’ve missed any good image sources.

18. 500px Creative Commons
19. Animal Photos
20. Best Stock Photo Free
21. Big Foto From what I can tell, there’s no good way to search this site unless you use Google’s domain search feature. So for example, in google type: (without the brackets) [ flowers site:bigfoto.com ] This is good site for pictures of locations around the world.
22. Car Pictures
23. Cupcake. Nice photos, but this website is not searchable.
24. DesignersPics
25. Foodies Feed. Food pics for foodies
26. Free Digital Photos. Lots of nice, clear photos on this site, and the ability to search with filters. However, a lot of them look like they are from the early 2000’s
27. Free Media Goo. Again, use the google search tip from above. However, this is a pretty limited database; not much variety here.
28. FreeImages.co.uk Use google to search the site.
29. Free Stock Images
30. From Old Books . Like the title suggests, these are all engravings and prints from old books.
31. Getrefe. Mobile photos from people on the go.
32. HiResStock. Interface of this site is a little clunky to navigate, plus not a huge database.
33. IM Free. Keep an eye on wether or not each photo requires attribution.
34. ISO Republic. Very nice photos, but not a big database.
35. Jay Mantri. Nice photos, but this website is not searchable.
36. Jeshoots. Very nice photos, but not a big database.
37. Life of Pix. Nice photos, but this website is not searchable.
38. Magdeleine
39. MMT. Nice photos, but this website is not searchable.
40. New Old Stock. Curated gallery of retro images from the public archives. This website is not searchable.
41. Picjumbo. Nice pictures here, but seems to be a pretty small database.
42. Public Domain Archive
43. Raumrot. Even though this site isn’t searchable, I like that he at least makes his images a little smaller so we can see more of them at once. Much easier to sift through. Be sure to credit the creator if you use these photos.
44. Snapwire Snaps. 7 snaps a day. This site isn’t searchable.
45. Splitshire. Nice photos, but a small database. Search function is available.
46. Startup Stock Photos. Images of a trendy office space. This site isn’t searchable.
47. StockPhotos.io
48. Superfamous. Use as you like as long as you credit the source. Not searchable, unfortunately.

49. Unsplash. This site features beautiful photos that are all free to use, however they are not sorted in any way, and can’t be searched. Still, go take a look, you’ll be glad you did.

50. USA.gov Images. This would be a good resource if you are going to write about politics, health, sciences or history.
51. Wikimedia Commons.

Meh:

53. Good Free Photos. These photos mostly fall under natural and location-specific categories. However, this site’s content is looking a little dated now.
54. Kaboompics. I find it irritating that there are only 5 pictures on a page. My guess is that there’s only about 500 pictures on this site. If 500 pictures were on a Pinterest board I could sift through the entire thing in just a few minutes! Plus the image quality is not all that great.
55. Little Visuals
56. Lock & Stock Photos
57. Openphoto. Decent number of photo options here, but they all seem pretty amateurish. The framing is off, lighting isn’t balanced, blurry, etc.
58. PDPhoto.org. These photos look a little dated to me now, but it does have a search bar.
59. Picsearch
60. Photo Rogue. Hmm, seems broken. But we’ll just leave this here for while anyway.
61. Photoeverywhere.co.uk
62. StockTrek Images. This site feels pretty dated in my opinion. Searchable though, which is a plus.

There you have it. Somewhere in here you should find an image that will work. If you’d like me to help you curate a few images, let me know in the comments. I have started a pinterest board for this topic and I will pin them there for you!

Follow the board Free Stock Photos I Like on Pinterest.