Pexels website
Pexels is a new website that gives you royalty-free images that are relatively free, which is why you may not be able to find a huge collection of images. However, they provide quality in every aspect. All images available here are high quality and based on Creative Commons license, which means you can use them freely for personal or commercial purposes, and you don't have to provide any attribution.
The website is also very intuitive and easy to use with all the information presented in front of you. There is a large search button at the top that you can use to find the image of your choice, and below it you will find popular searches to see what others are looking for.
You can check new and popular photos directly in the main interface. Although the site is still new, it is growing steadily. The developers add 10 images per day, 7 days a week, hand-picked from various free image sources. So far, there are only over 4,000 images, but the high quality images and easy search give Pexels enough credit to rank first on our list.
Apart from images, Pexels now offers you royalty-free videos, which is also unique.
Popular categories: art, black and white, car building, people, vintage, technology.
2. StockSnap.io
StockSnap.io is another royalty-free image download site to download free HD images. All images uploaded here are under CC0 license, which means you can use each image here in any way you like for personal and commercial use. The website is also very attractive with a search bar at the top and newly added images shown below.
They don't have years of being in the field, but they still have a huge database with thousands of images of every kind. New photos are added every day and hundreds of photos are added every week.
You can also become part of the community and upload photos yourself. All you have to do is register with them and start uploading photos. However, the images must be uploaded under a CC0 license and must have no prior copyright.
Popular Categories: Beach, Love. Nature, business, designs, patterns and more.
3. Pixabay website
Pixabay has a huge database of over 1.6 million royalty-free images, and they are being added every day. All images are uploaded under CC0 license, you can search the website with any query and you should be able to find a lot of free stock images on it.
It has an amazing filter feature, which allows you to filter your search to get the most accurate results. Here you can select the media type, such as images, illustration, videos, or vector graphics. There is also a large list of categories from which you can decide which genre the search lies in. To make things more accurate, you can also select the color of the image you want.
You can also contribute to the site by taking photos and uploading them to Pixabay. The images must not contain any copyright and the images will be under the CC0 license once uploaded. There are two main categories as well, Editor's Choice and Photographers' Choice which you can use to search beautiful photos.
Popular categories: animals, education, archeology, religion, emotions, travel, sports, food, technology.
4. Free Images موقع
Each category displays the total number of images and you can just click on any image to open its detail page. In the image details, you will find tags, author name, download button and a button to prefer the image. You can also search for images by tags, if you are satisfied with them.
Images are uploaded by both the editors and the community. You can create an account and start uploading licensed CC0 images.
Popular Categories: Architecture, Animals. Fashion, religion, games, festivals, home designs, education, celebrities.
5. Foter. website
Foter is the largest free royalty-free stock image site on the internet right now. Hosting over 335 million free stock photos, Foter gives you access to all the free photos you could need. What I love about Foter is that out of all the photos they host, over 220 million photos are available for commercial use. While the images hosted on Foter are not of high quality, the quality is more than enough to be used on a website, video, etc.
The only thing Foter asks you to do is to attribute the photo you are using. Personally, I don't find this much of a problem because I like promoting creators who do a good job for free, however, if you have any issues with this template, you can take a look at the other options on this list that don't require you to submit a theme.
Popular Categories: Art, Education, Construction, Fashion, Social Media, Smartphone, Apps and more.
6. SplitShare موقع
SplitShare is a simple free stock photo website with a straightforward interface. It's not a huge site, but it does have some very creative images in HD. You will find a simple search bar where you can search for the image you need, or use the mentioned categories to find the appropriate image.
There is also a premium subscription that lets you download images in bulk. Even if you use the free version, you can still access all the images, but you will have to manually search and download each image. With the premium membership, you can download all the photos and even more than 30 videos in one click and in great quality.
Popular categories: animals, cars, blur backgrounds, bokeh, beam, Instagram, interiors, still life, street.
7. Creative Commons موقع
Creative Commons is not actually a site that offers free images, but rather works as a search engine. Created to search for royalty-free photos, videos, and music using the most popular websites in the field.
All you have to do is type the name of the image you want to search in English in the search bar and select the name of the website from which you want to get Creative Commons license images. You will see immediate results in the interface of the selected site.
After entering the query, you can click on a different website to quickly check the results. This makes this tool ideal for a faster search for your desired images from the best sources such as Flickr, Europeana, Open Clip Art Library and Pixabay.
Image sources: Flickr, Open Clip Art Library, Google Images, SpinXpress, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons.
8. Getty Images
Getty Images is one of the largest free stock image hubs with over 35 million images available for free. However, they do charge for commercial use of their photos. You can use images from Getty Images for personal use, editorial use, or even on blogs, etc. for illustration purposes. But you may not use it to advertise a company, products, or other similar commercial uses.
All you have to do is move your mouse pointer over the image and click the embed icon ( ). Now, just copy and paste the code on your website/blog. The image will be displayed on your website while it is hosted on Getty Images.
If you want to use these images commercially, you will have to pay $500 per image. This amount can be reduced to anywhere between $380 and $500, if you buy photo collages.
Searching for images is simple, just enter the name or type in the search bar and make sure that the “No copyrights” option is checked.
Popular categories: health, energy, family/kids, office, nature, sports, business, food.
9. Unsplash
What I love most about Unsplash is that its platform is driven by its great community. There are over 41,000 photographers who upload photos on a regular basis so you don't run out of new photos. The best part is that you don't have to assign images, if you don't want to. Unsplash is also useful for finding beautiful wallpapers for your mobile phone and desktop. So, even if you are not using the platform for commercial purposes, you can use it to get great wallpapers.
Popular Categories: Architecture, Animals. Nature, business, work, design, patterns and more.
10. Burst. website
Created by the creators of Shopify. If you haven't heard of Shopify before, it is basically a platform that allows you to create your own e-commerce website without having to learn any coding. Burst is a free service that Shopify offers to its users so that they can use high quality images on their website. The good thing about Burst is that you don't need to be a Shopify customer to take advantage of the images.
While the number of photos here doesn't match anywhere with any of the other platforms on this list, the photos themselves are of a higher quality as they were taken by paid professional photographers. Also, Burst mainly focuses on serving business, so the images you will find here are quite unique. If you run a business or represent a company, there is no better place to find royalty-free images. The collection of images on Burst is also constantly growing, so you will always be able to find new images for any category you are interested in.
Popular categories: business, retail, fashion, food, urban life, nature, and more.
- How to find royalty-free photos in their original size
All the sites we shared with you offer royalty-free images in their original size for free, and you can download them with a direct link on your device. Some sites also offer a size option if you want to specify a specific image size.
- Choose the best royalty-free photo websites
So, these are the best royalty-free stock photography websites where you can download professionally designed images for your personal and professional needs without having to pay any money. Did I miss any notable sites? If yes, feel free to tell us their names in the comments. Also, share your thoughts with us.