You’re not a photographer, but you also don’t want to use the same boring, corporate stock photo every other website uses. The good news is there are still a few stock photo sites out there that offer a wide variety of unique—and free—images for your creative projects.
As a freelancer and a business owner, I’ve done my fair share of scouring the web for that perfect stock photo. So I spent several weeks reviewing dozens of stock photo websites—and I narrowed it down to the six best.
The 6 best free stock photo sites
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Unsplash for the widest variety of free stock images (and integrations)
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Pixabay for a variety of media types
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Pexels for adding simple enhancements and overlays
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Burst for eCommerce companies
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123RF for a mix of AI-generated and stock photos
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rawpixel for a variety of creative resources
How to find the best websites with 100% free stock photos
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Finding images that are free for commercial use isn’t as hard as it might sound, thanks to a number of sites that aggregate photos, illustrations, and vectors. These sites usually let you search and filter by keyword or category, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. But that doesn’t mean every stock photo site is worth perusing.
The best free stock image sites all meet the following criteria:
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They must contain images that can be used without payment for both commercial and personal purposes.
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I focused on sites that have at least in the thousands of photos, but I favored ones that offer images in the hundreds of thousands or more.
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A lot of free stock photo sites essentially offer the same pictures. I looked for sites that offered unique images so your content can stand out.
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If you plan to use stock photos for your website or branded content, you’ll need high-quality resolutions. Every site on this list offers at least one high-quality download size for its photos.
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And of course, the website itself should be fast, easy to navigate, and from this century.
When reviewing these sites, I visited each one and signed up for an account if necessary. I explored the site’s menus and conducted a number of searches to see what types of photos would come up. I reviewed the quality of the photos and took note of things like how advanced the search filters were, whether there were high-resolution download sizes available, and if there was anything uniquely useful about the stock photo site in question.
AI-generated images vs. stock photos: Which should you use?
AI is revolutionizing most online spaces, and stock photos are no exception. With the advent of generative AI, it’s possible to feed your exact specifications into an AI image generator like Midjourney and get a unique, often sophisticated, result. The ability to generate fresh new photos that match your exact needs might mean stock photos will soon become a thing of the past.
But AI image generation isn’t perfect, at least not yet. Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn how to create prompts to get the results they want—and even then, AI-generated photos aren’t consistent in quality or relevance. And while ethical and copyright-related issues are still up in the air around generative AI, some creators opt to use human-generated photos instead.
So stock photo sites are still useful—at least for now. As I was testing, I noticed that many stock photo websites have pivoted to AI-only photos, while others offer AI-generated pictures alongside standard stock photos. For the purposes of this article, I disqualified sites that offer only AI-generated images, but I kept an eye out for those that offer a mix of both. And I gave bonus points to sites that incorporated AI tools—including image generation—in a useful way.
The best free stock photo sites at a glance
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Best for |
Standout feature |
Number of free photos |
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|---|---|---|---|
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The widest variety of free stock images |
A lot of native apps and integrations |
Over 6 million |
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A variety of media types |
Professional-looking illustrations |
Over 5 million |
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Adding simple enhancements and overlays |
Easy integration with Canva |
Over 1 million |
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eCommerce companies |
Powered by Shopify, so very business-friendly |
In the thousands |
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A mix of AI-generated and stock photos |
Filter out AI-generated images |
In the thousands |
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A variety of creative resources |
Detailed search options |
In the thousands |
Best free stock photos site for a variety of photos and integrations
Unsplash (Web, iOS, Android)
With more than six million photos and multiple plugins, Unsplash is one of the most easily accessible and largest collections of stock photos available.
It comes with native apps like an iOS app, an Android photo picker, Apple TV and desktop wallpaper apps, and even a Chrome extension that randomly selects a background image when you open your browser. Unsplash’s API is also already natively integrated into popular tools like Figma, Notion, Trello, and Squarespace, letting you search and use high-quality stock photos without leaving your favorite platform.
The site is also easy to use: type a keyword into the search bar at the top of the page, and browse the results to find the best images for your purposes. And if you don’t know what you’re looking for, there are category tabs along the top of the homepage for inspiration.
Another feature that sets Unsplash apart from other free photo sites is its Collections section. Users of the site are able to create Collections—like “Christmas Traditions,” “Autumn,” and “Milkyway“—by curating photos they come across. If you want several similar photos of a specific theme, Unsplash may be your best option.
Best free stock photos site for a variety of media types
Pixabay (Web, iOS, Android)
Pixabay hosts more than 5 million photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos—all of which are free to use. Click Images next to the search bar to look for images by type, or you can search more granularly by becoming familiar with Pixabay’s advanced search options. Pixabay lets you search by photographer, orientation (i.e., landscape or portrait), size, and even color—and you can opt to include or exclude AI-generated images. The site also features an Editor’s Choice curation section, which highlights the best images chosen by the Pixabay team. Click the Explore dropdown menu in the upper-right corner of the site to see their selections.
Once you find what you’re looking for, it only takes one click to pull the image into Canva to edit or use as part of a design.
If you need a professional-looking illustration—i.e., a hand-drawn image or a computer-generated graphic—you should begin your search here. Royalty-free illustrations can be tricky to find on many free image sites, but Pixabay has loads of them. Just click Images, select Illustrations, enter in your search terms, and that’s that. You can also use Pixabay to search for vector graphics, videos, music, and even sound effects.
Best free stock photos site for adding simple enhancements and overlays
Pexels (Web, iOS, Android)
If you’re planning to use stock photos in social media graphics or other visual projects, it can be helpful to use a source that pairs easily with basic graphic design tools. Pexels offers a wide variety of free photos and videos to use in your next project, and the website is fast and easy to use.
You can also search by popular collections and by color (which is helpful if you’re planning to use a specific color palette in your final product). And Pexels’ partnership with Canva lets you edit stock photos—or use them as the base for a new design—with a click. The tool’s additional plugins also let you access and edit stock photos directly from within Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch.
Best free stock photos site for eCommerce businesses
Burst (Web)
Burst is a free stock photo site powered by leading eCommerce platform Shopify. The platform offers thousands of free images you can use to strengthen your content, including a large selection of business-oriented photos (e.g., retail, eCommerce, money, and products). The site serves up 28 different categories, several of which are broken down into subcategories to make it even easier to find the images you need.
Browsing, searching, and downloading are standard fare, but as an added bonus, Burst and Shopify offer advice on things like how to turn your online business ideas into reality.
Best free stock photos site for specific photo sizes and sources
123RF (Web, iOS, Android)
Many of the stock photo sites I tested now offer AI-generated images, either alongside human-generated photos or instead of them. I found 123RF to be the most useful option because, while it does offer AI-generated stock images, you can choose to filter those results out. This feature makes your image search much easier since both types of content are gathered in one place for you—but you don’t have to wonder which is which.
If nothing suits what you’re looking for, you can create your own image with a prompt-based AI image generator. You specify the image size, style, color scheme, lighting, and composition—you can even add a reference image—and 123RF’s AI engine will generate three options for you to choose from.
Overall, the site is clean and easy to navigate. And 123RF also comes with plenty of additional paid features, including AI image generation, AI copywriting, premium audio and video, and an extensive font collection.
Best free stock photos site for a variety of creative resources
rawpixel (Web)
rawpixel is more than a stock photo site (although it has a wide variety of free stock images to choose from). It touts itself as a “creative home” for all kinds of visual projects, providing images, vectors, illustrations, public domain art, fonts, stickers, and more. If you’re looking for a one-stop source for your next creative endeavor, odds are that rawpixel has what you’re looking for.
As I was testing, I was also impressed with the in-depth and intuitive search features. You can order your search results by popular, new, or “curated” for you. You can also narrow down the content type, filter by price or file type, and even choose to exclude (or isolate for) AI-generated images.
Once you find the right visual element, rawpixel offers extensive built-in graphic design and editing tools to edit images, add text, overlays, and other elements, and otherwise turn a simple image into any kind of graphic you need.
The site is easy to navigate, and if you’re looking for inspiration, you can explore the Topics tab to find curated, themed design resources to get the creative juices flowing.
Other stock photo sites to consider
Free for personal use
A handful of websites offer a ton of great stock photos that are free for personal use but require a paid plan for commercial use. If you’re just looking for photos for a personal project, check these out:
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Freepik offers images, videos, vectors, AI images, icons, fonts, and more, along with extremely detailed filter options that let you narrow your search results by asset type, license, AI-generated, file type, and even color and orientation.
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Vecteezy offers a lots of different file types and extensive search filters, including asset type, color, AI-generated, and people—whether they’re included, how many are in the image, and even the type of shot (headshot, waist-up, full-length, or candid).
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Flickr doesn’t offer the same quality user experience as many other sites, but it does offer a massive quantity of photos, including much more authentic stock photo options.
Graphic design options
There are lots of tools focused primarily on graphic design that also offer a ton of stock images and other elements to use in your designs. If you’re planning to use stock imagery for social media graphics, marketing collateral, or other templated designs, here’s the one I’d suggest:
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Canva is the go-to graphic design software for a reason: it’s super easy to learn and use, with tons of made-for-social templates to get you publish-ready in a hurry. You can pull stock photos from sites like Pexels and Pixabay into Canva, or search Canva’s own extensive library and photos and other design elements from right within the design flow.
Niche style options
If you’re looking for a specific type of image, it’s worth seeing if there’s a niche site available. These sites might give you a wider range of options in the specific category you’re looking for:
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Foodiesfeed offers food photography, including both human- and AI-generated images.
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New Old Stock publishes vintage photos from the public archives. If you think old photos would match your brand, spend a few minutes scrolling through New Old Stock. Just be sure to double-check licensing requirements on individual photos for commercial use.
Paid options
If you’re looking for something a little more unique (and you have the budget for it), you could try a paid option. Here are the ones that have the most images and are super easy to use:
These sites are all very well-established resources for paid—but relatively affordable—stock photos. You can subscribe to any of these sites for around $30 per month for up to ten monthly image downloads.
If you’re publishing content on a regular basis, you’ll likely get the best results by using a combination of stock photo sites. Just be sure that you keep your branding consistent: using too many eclectic images can muddy your brand and make it hard to stand out from the crowd.
A note on copyrights
Why can’t you just scour the web for an image you like and publish it? Because creators own the rights to their images, and if you publish one of them without their approval, you may be guilty of copyright infringement. In a worst-case scenario, that could land you a $150,000 fine for each violation, and possibly even jail time. Of course, you’ll receive a cease-and-desist letter first, telling you to take the images down, but even still, you’ll waste time and effort removing them—in addition to the time and effort you wasted finding them in the first place.
But some creators are happy to share their images with others. Creative Commons offers a number of different licenses that creators can use to enable other people to leverage their work freely. Of course, it’s not all or nothing: some licenses allow for personal use, while others allow for commercial use. Some licenses require you to attribute images to creators, while others don’t. Some allow you to adapt or modify an image, while others require you to use it in its original form. When using an image licensed through Creative Commons, be sure to read the fine print and abide by the terms.
Related reading:
This article was originally published in December 2018 by Justin Reynolds, and has also had contributions from Nicole Replogle. The most recent update was in January 2025.