We all need stock photos for websites, blogs, social media and print publishing. But it can take hours just to find the right ones. There are a lot of sites with free stock photos out there, but I’ll list the top 10 that I use.
It’s Hard to Find Free Stock Photos
You might find some on a Google image search, but they’re copyrighted and you could get sued.
Other options are public domain photos and Creative Commons photos – these are free to use for anything, some require you to just credit the author. Now there are lot of different websites to search for those, and you’ll probably find what you’re searching for, but they’re usually horrible photos.
There have been a lot of sites popping up with free stock photos. Some are good and some are bad. Most just source photos from other sites.
But there are great sites created by individual photographers or design companies offering incredible free stock photos. I use them regularly for all my projects.
No cheesy photos here. This is my personal list of the 10 best sites with free stock photos.
1. Unsplash
Unsplash displays a grid of infinitely scrolling photos. All their images are incredible quality, and they have a lot of epic scenic and nature photos. There is a live search feature that’s pretty handy, and they also photo collections that are curated by users.
2. picjumbo
Picjumbo has a wide variety of great free stock photos of still life and people, with a good amount of business/tech photos. You can search or browse by category or tag. They also have premium photo collections that allow you to conveniently download all sets of images.
3. Kaboompics
Kaboompics has incredible still life photos that have a quaint feel to them. You can browse some of their categories or search directly.
4. Stokpic
The free stock photos on stokpic are bright and bold. They have a great collection of serious work photos as well as fun and crazy images. You can search through their photos or browse by category, latest, and even most popular.
5. SplitShire
SplitShire has a great combination of standard images, along with some really classy ones and some really edgy ones. They are certain to fit unique topics. You can search for images, or browse by category, as well as recent photos and “best” photos.
6. Negative Space
Negative Space features photos, that as you can see from the title, have negative space. This is evidenced by allowing you to sort photos by color and by where there is space for ad copy (right, left, center). You browse photos or search for them.
7. Gratisography
Gratisography has some really unique, whimsical and offbeat photos. Some are straight up photographs while others are photoshopped images. Either way, you’re going to find images here you won’t find anywhere else, from fun and silly to just plain weird. You can search, browse categories, or just infinite scroll down.
8. Fancy Crave
Fancy Crave has a wide variety of beautiful free stock photos to choose them. You can search directly for images or browse by category.
9. Free Stock Photos
This is newer than the other sites and so has slightly fewer photos. However, it’s a project from Hubspot, a major marketing software company, so be expecting a lot more to come. They have a lot of business-centric photos which are great if you’re in that space. You can search or browse by category/tag.
10. Good Stock Photos
This last is actually a project of SparkFlow. Here you’ll find free stock photos of nature and city landscapes, along with still life objects. You can search or browse by category. All photos on the site are free to use anywhere you want for personal or commercial projects, and there’s a new one released daily.
There are a ton of other free stock photos sites, but these are the ones that I personally use the most because of the library size, variety of photos, quality of shots, and usability in navigating their site. Are there any others that should be in this list? Let me know in the comments!