Why should I use a free stock photo website?
When you’re designing websites, creating marketing collateral or doing anything else design related, a good stock photo will do wonders for your finished product. Often, you don’t have the budget, time, or skills to capture the photo you have in mind.
If you have a big budget, you can explore a premium stock image website such as iStock or Shutterstock. However, if you’re not willing to fork out large sums of money, a free stock photo website will become your best friend.
Finding a good stock photo (or a few stock photos) can be challenging if you don’t know the best places to look. A google search for “Free Stock Photos” or “Free Photo Websites” will bring up mixed results. Many sites will show a combination of some free photos, some royalty free photos, and a lot of paid images. It can be difficult to sort through the entire mix to find an image you can use for free. This is why you should turn to a truly free, and royalty free, stock photo site.
What is the difference between free stock photo sites and paid stock photo sites?
Premium stock image websites rely on people or businesses paying for specific images (or a recurring fee) to use their high-quality photographs and stock imagery. Often, these website costs or image purchases come at a high price for exclusive images, but there is a huge market of options available across the stock photography industry.
How do free stock photo sites work?
Free stock image sites exist thanks to on-page advertising and often less experienced, amateur photographers or up and coming photographers. Fortunately, this means you can find some great images for free, from largely undiscovered talent.
There are thousands of photographers who upload their images to free stock photo websites knowing it will be beneficial for small businesses or individuals while providing them with exposure and experience at the same time.
Free stock image sites allow you to use their photos often under Creative Commons Zero licensing, which means creators waive their copyright and other related rights to the asset. This allows you to use their free stock images (or other creative assets) for commercial use, absolutely free.
Best paid stock photo sites
Depositphotos
Visit: https://depositphotos.com/
Depositphotos is a stock photo site that prides themselves on high-quality licensed photos. They started in 2009 and have over 234 million photos. Depositphotos also has stock video if that is what you’re looking for.
Depositphotos Price and Inclusions
Depositphotos royalty free stock photos start as low as USD $0.83 per image in a subscription on a 25 image per month plan, or USD $14 per image on demand when purchased in a pack of 3.
Shutterstock
Visit: https://www.shutterstock.com/
Shutterstock is a great place to find high quality images, with a library of over 400 million photos and boast the addition of over 200,000 every day.
Shutterstock Price and Inclusions
10 downloads per month cost AUD $29 at Shutterstock, or AUD $49 for 5 images on demand, noting that this expires within a year.
Dreamstime
Visit: https://www.dreamstime.com/
Dreamstime has been around since 2000, as a royalty free stock photo site. They have over 190 million photos, illustrations, clip art and vectors for sale.
Dreamstime Price and inclusions
Dreamstime charges AUD $31 per month for 5 monthly downloads, while a credit package of 11 credits costs AUD $22.82, with custom packages available.
iStock
Visit: https://www.istockphoto.com/
iStock is part of the Getty Images family of companies. It was founded in 200 and hosts stock photos, vector illustrations, and even videos.
iStock Price and Inclusions
10 downloads per month through iStock costs AUD $40 per month, and credit packs can be purchased for as little as 1 credit at AUD $13.
Adobe Stock
Visit: https://stock.adobe.com/
Adobe Stock is part of the Adobe family of companies. They provide high quality, royalty free assets for all types of projects. Their assets include photos, vector graphics and illustrations, templates, 3D assets and even video and motion graphics templates as well as audio tracks.
Adobe Stock Price and Inclusions
10 downloads per month cost AUD $39.59 at Adobe Stock that is charged after your 14 day free trial has expired.
Best free stock photo sites
Canva
Visit: https://canva.com
Canva is an Australian-born creative website with free high quality stock photos as one of its services. Canva has o
Canva is an Australian-born creative website with free high quality stock photos as one of its services. Canva has over 1 million photographs and stock imagery available for use, through either its free service or the Canva Pro service.
Who uses Canva?
These photographs have been compiled with graphic design in mind – as this is a core service of Canva. So every photo is great for use on most graphic design projects, such as posters, social media graphics, flyers and more.
Pexels
Visit: http://pexels.com/
Pexels is a great stock image website (if not the best free image sites) to find a high-quality stock image and other royalty free images.
Pexels is a free stock photo website based in Germany. It was created by two brothers with a background in computer and software technology. The photo website aims to provide free photos that are more authentic and modern than some other free photo websites.
The benefits of Pexels
The free stock photo website stands out with its search function – which is easily filterable and multiple useful parameters make it easy to find the image you need. All photos on Pexels are nicely tagged, easily searchable and has a great variety of royalty free images that can be used for commercial use.
Pexels also has a branch for free stock videos – a great resource for when you’re needing something beyond a simple photograph.
Pixabay
Visit: https://pixabay.com/
Pixabay is our next pick for free stock photography. Pixabay has a large collection of free stock photography, vector image, and art illustrators. This website is also German-based, created by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger, who both have a background in computer technology.
Pixabay is also crowdsourced, which means users upload their free stock images to be used. Over 1.4 million files are uploaded to the website under Creative Commons Zero license (CC0).
What does CC0 mean for me?
CC0 does still mean there could be privacy and property rights, but Pixabay has a dedicated photographer and image editor who reviews submissions for quality and legality, creating a more curated collection. This is a great positive if you’re worried about CC0 license usage.
Unsplash
Visit: https://unsplash.com/
Unsplash has a large collection of free, high-resolution stock photography. The team at Unsplash looks through submissions and features the best stock photography on their homepage. All photos are released for free usage for personal and commercial use under the Unsplash license.
Unsplash was born from a Tumblr blog that offered leftover photos from photoshoots, for free. It was then developed and is managed by the owners of Crew – a platform connecting clients with freelance designers, web developers, and small studio services. The site now has over 500,000 free photographs and stock imagery with 10 royalty-free photographs being uploaded every 10 days.
The benefits of using Unsplash
Photos on Unsplash are high quality image, modern and authentic. The site uses its own custom license, which replicates a Creative Commons Zero license but removes the right to compile its photos (avoiding a competitor using its free stock images).
Where can free stock photos be used?
Most free stock photos sites allow use for personal and commercial use, but it is always good to check, especially if you plan to use the photo for advertising or marketing as copyright restrictions might not allow you to do so. Generally, we like to use stock photos for blog posts, and social media posts. They can also come in handy when showing someone an example of the photo you are trying to recreate – or even find on a paid stock photo site.
