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All the free stock photo sites for you to enhance your website, startup or business with beautiful free stock images
Online content has become increasingly visual. We all know the phrase, 'a picture speaks a thousand words' -- well, in today's world, that saying has never been more accurate. Images and pictures are important because they can grab attention easily and quickly. If your reader or user likes the aesthetic of your website, article, or application, they will keep coming back.
A few years ago, the best photos would always be behind a paywall. However, over the last couple of years, many free stock photo sites have gained popularity as they have collaborated with photographers and offered high-quality photos. You may have already used one or two extremely popular sites, but there are many more that fly under the radar and can provide you with a vast and varied catalog to browse through.
After a few days of scouring the internet, I've put together this list of the best free stock photo sites you should use in 2021. This list of 31 sites not only gives you many different options to choose from, but each site also has different sizes, photography styles, and other non-photographed images to choose from. You can always find the perfect photo for your needs through the websites on this list. If you find this list helpful and informative, do check out my other resource lists -- I've previously also compiled resources for remote working, web design, and cybersecurity among others.
Canva is a freemium tool that allows you to create amazing designs and documents in minutes. With this tool, you have access to a wide variety of content types. From Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest templates to infographics, presentations, and ads, you can find everything you need.
All you have to do is select your favourite template, edit it, and download it for free. Canva is a good tool for everyone from designers to design enthusiasts.
Fotor is an online photo editor and design maker that comes with everything you need. Whether you're looking to create a promotional poster, make an artistic collage or retouch your pictures, this tool has your back.
With an impressive library of customizable templates and useful tools and features, Fotor is one of the best choices for building your startup brand.
Pixlr is an online photo editor that comes in two "flavours" - Advanced (Pixlr E) and Playful (Pixlr X). You can use either one of them, based on your graphic design needs. Pixlr has 3 different payment plans.
The free one offers access to basic editing tools and a limited set of overlays and stickers. However, here's the best part- the premium plans offer a lot of powerful features and start at just $3,99 a month, which is pretty awesome for a powerful graphic design tool.
This site hosts both, photographs and vector images. You can use these stock photos for personal and commercial purposes.
TinEye’s Multicolr Search Lab lets you search for images by color. This is great if you like your stock photos to stick to a certain color scheme.
Unsplash hosts stock photos from professional photographers, so the quality is always super high. These photos don’t feel like the traditional stock photo.
StockSnap’s stock photos are governed by a Creative Commons license, which means that you can revise and alter their images to suit your needs.
FOCA stock also has stock videos, so if you’re a filmmaker or video editor, this could be the right stock resource for you.
pixabay also has both stock photos and stock vectors, so you can choose based on your requirement. They have 1.9 million+ stock images.
Stock Up aggregates many different stock photo sites to give you a large catalogue to choose from.
Pexels is one of the popular ones on this list. It has a gigantic collection of free stock photos.
Zoomstock also aggregates free stock photos from other sites. You can zoom into those photos to find others similar to it.
Apart from stock photos, picspree also has free stock illustrations and vectors for your needs.
Moveast is an initiative by a Portugese photographer who puts up his pictures for free under a Creative Commons license.
If you’ve ever needed stock photos for UI purposes, UI Faces has numerous free stock avatars photos for your use.
Burst has a lot of high-quality photo collections so you can find related and thematic stock photos for your requirements.
If you’re trying to create a sleek website for your startup, this site provides high-quality free stock photos that are professional and tech-related.
If you enjoy making collages, this site has thousands of beautiful free stock photos that you can download and use.
Thanks to their infinite scrolling feature, you can scroll through thousands of stock photos on this site and find exactly what you need.
Freerange is partnered with iStock to bring you good quality free stock photos.
Little Visuals has millions of users and image views, and their photos can be used for commercial purposes.
picjumbo has a very efficient categorization system. If the free stock photos aren’t enough for you, you can also plan to join their premium tier for a larger catalogue.
Cupcake hosts royalty-free, free-to-use, creative commons stock photos by one photographer.
flickr is a classic free stock photo website. You can look for images based on color and themes like minimalist, patterns, or shallow depth of field.
This site hosts 10,000+ free stock photos related to travel — a nice niche for travel-related content.
The name says it all — you can find 300,000+ free stock photos and images on this site. You can also upload pictures here to contribute to the collection.
This is a different Free Images website, but the principle is the same; they have about 89 searchable categories.
This site hosts free stock photos under a Creative Commons license. If you’re looking for textured landscape photos, this is the place for you.
The stock photos on this site are meant to look like natural mobile photography. If you need good photos that aren’t too professional, this is a good site for you.
Jeshoots hosts free stock photos shot by Jan Vašek. Their mission is to provide good quality content for evocative media.
Magdeleine adds one new high-quality, free stock photo to their site every day. Their catalogue grows every day.
This site has beautiful high-quality travel stock photos clicked all over the world.
In addition to their free stock photos, BARNIMAGES also has a photography-related blog with valuable information and tips.
500px is the ideal platform for photographers and consumers. There are millions of photos to choose from and photographers can also build their portfolios here.
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