Where to Find Free Stock Photography

Intellectual property as it applies to images on the web is tricky at best. Using images without proper attribution or reference, can land you in big legal trouble. And using one of the large micro-stock sites can be quite expensive. So how do you get your hands on quality stock images if you can’t or won’t pay for them?

Believe it or not, there are some good stock image collections out there that are free to use. Some are completely free, and you can download and do whatever you want with them. Others have no fees associated with them, but do have some conditions placed on their use. Typical conditions could include a requirement to credit the original creator of the image, or restriction of the image to only personal use (or alternatively, for commercial and personal use).

We’ve put together an extensive list of places you can go to search for the ultimate FREE stock photo. We won’t lie, you’re probably going to have to dig through a lot of less-than-awesome images to find the one you need. But if you are willing to put in some effort, you may find some hidden gems!


1001freedownloads.com
1001freedownloads.com
bigstockphoto.com/free-images/
bigstockphoto.com
deviantart.com/resources/stockart/
deviantart.com
www.dreamstime.com/free-photos
dreamstime.com
freedigitalphotos.net
freedigitalphotos.net
freeimages.com
freeimages.com
freestockimages.org
freestockimages.org
imagebase.net
imagebase.net
istockphoto.com
istockphoto.com (bottom)
morguefile.com
morguefile.com
pixelperfectdigital.com
pixelperfectdigital.com
publicdomainarchive.com
publicdomainarchive.com
rgbstock.com
rgbstock.com
shutterstock.com (free images)
shutterstock.com
startupstockphotos.com
startupstockphotos.com
stockvault.net
stockvault.net
thinkstockphotos.com/free-image-of-the-week
thinkstockphotos.com
publicdomainpictures.net
publicdomainpictures.net
stockphotos.io
stockphotos.io
stockphotosforfree.com
stockphotosforfree.com

If you would like to hunt even further for great free stock, check out these pages and posts on other top design blogs:

And who could forget the great CC Search Engine?

Obviously, you need to watch your attribution and rights when downloading images from Creative Commons. 😉


If you know of any other places where FREE stock photos can be found, please comment below. Let us know so we can add them to the list!

6 thoughts on “Where to Find Free Stock Photography”

  1. imagebase.net is one that I’m using more often these days, since they have a lot of good photos in the people category.

    freedigitalphotos.net is a good one as well not on your list.

    I’ll have to check out some of the other ones on this list if I can’t find any in my existing sources.

    • Hey Brian,
      Good to see you over here! Another blogger also mentioned freedigitalphotos.net, and we just added that site in!

      Cheers
      WDF

  2. Hi, I created a super badass list of all the free stock photos websites out there. I thought you might want to add it there as well, as it is super detailed.

    Keep up the great work you’re doing with your content!

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