5 Free Stock Photo Websites You Should Bookmark

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, photographer, blogger, writer, artist or publisher, if you’re running a website, it makes sense to keep a list of free stock photo websites you can visit in case you need to use images – most likely, you do!

If you’re a designer of any field, it only makes it necessary for you to keep such a list!

You Can’t Use Google Images

Now, if you’re totally new to design, you should know one rule above all else: never use Google Images for your website, business or design projects – whether commercially or even for personal use. It is a surefire way to getting into copyright troubles – at least, 99% of the time!

Yet, many (who are mostly unaware) use Google Images for their websites and other design projects. In some unfortunate cases, some faced legal charges and had to pay a fine for it.

Now, you might start to get paranoid and fear over which images you can get now. Don’t worry, that’s the reason why we wrote this article! It’s for you to know which websites you can safely download and use images – for personal and, oftentimes, commercial uses.

5 Free Stock Photo Websites You Should Bookmark

Stock photo websites are great source of getting free images. However, not all stock photo websites offer free photos. But those in this list mainly offer free photos for your own use.

When it comes to free stock photo websites, some of the heavyweights are Pixabay, Unsplash, Pexels, and Freepik. You’ve probably heard of them, and maybe, you probably had even checked and used them.

For this purpose, we will check the not-so-familiar stock photo sites but are nevertheless great! Let’s dive into them.

1. Moose

Moose is a comprehensive resource to find high-quality photos. Although Moose’s primary focus is the photos of people, it has over 200,000 photos across various categories like technology, business, food, nature, and many more.

One of the great parts about Moose is its user-friendly search, and well-organized categories, so everyone can find what they need.

Take note that Moose offers both free and premium photos.

But free ones always come first in search results, and are marked with a small yellow box labeled «free». So, you can easily notice them. All you need to do to use the free photos in your projects is to link back to Moose.

Visit Moose now!

2. Stock Vault

Stock Vault’s main mission is to provide free high-resolution images for photographers, designers, and students.

Free images can be used for Non-Commercial, Commercial and Public Domain use (check your intended image for the license the author gives you).

Although Stock Vault doesn’t have as plenty of images as big stock photo sites like Pixabay and Unsplash have, each photo is highly curated and there are new uploads on a daily basis.

Stock Vault also have their own revenue sharing system for their contributors – they are paid either through Google AdSense or donations.

Check out Stock Vault here!

3. KaboomPics

Whether you’re a UI designer, a designer in general or anyone who simply needs photos for his/her website or other use, KaboomPics would be great for you!

KaboomPics’ images are of high-quality, and they’re free for both personal or commercial use. Attribution is also not required, but definitely highly appreciated.

KaboomPics is great for blogs, books, t-shirt prints, and any other design project you have there.

Another thing KaboomPics offer is their free color palette: KaboomPics generate up to 6 colors for a color palette for every image you use. You have the choice to download them as well – for free.

In the end, KaboomPics is simply great, both for designers and just anyone who needs free images for their website.

Check out KaboomPics now and see what they have to offer!

4. PicJumbo

If you’re a photographer who got rejected by various photo stock websites because your photos “lack quality”, what would you do?

For Viktor Hanacek, who happened to face the same situation, well, he simply made his own stock photo website. Hence, PicJumbo was born!

Don’t even doubt the quality of PicJumbo – as of today, PicJumbo grew to have 2,500,000+ downloads, two years after he created the website!

PicJumbo has plenty of free, (very) high-resolution images ready for your own use. You should definitely check it out!

5. Negative Space

Negative Space is a sleek-designed website that offers tons of free high-resolution images, mostly with CC0 license – meaning, you can use it “however and whenever you lIke.”

There are tons of images you can choose from, from Animals, Architecture to People and so forth.

Take a look at Negative Space now to see what they have for you!

Conclusion

That’s the list of free stock photo websites you should use and bookmark for any of your design needs. With them, you don’t need to worry about being in copyright trouble!

But, although these sites are mainly free for personal and commercial use, still check the licenses given by each site (and by each photo) to be sure. It doesn’t hurt to do some due diligence!

What did we miss? Let us know in the comment section!