Whether you are a content writer, blogger, web designer or a graphic designer, you will be frequently in need for quality stock images. Copyrights is always a concern especially if you don’t want to spend a fortune on buying high quality professional images that may be suitable for your use. Premium stock image websites such as ShutterStock or iStockPhoto can be pricey for your new business, freelancing business or a blog that is on budget or still behind the phase of monetization.
I decided to mention my top favorite free stock image websites because some of the free stock image websites that I tried have a small collection of photos and others don’t include search feature which makes it harder to find a relevant photo. So I skipped mentioning my least favorite ones and picked the 5 most useful websites that proved their quality & reliability.
1. PixaBay.com
With almost a million free stock images, PixaBay makes it to the top of my favorite free stock image websites. It is my first choice whenever I need a stock image. It has a simple search feature, editor’s picks section & the ability to browse photographers’ collections.
Almost all the images on PixaBay come with different dimensions to help you to pick what is suitable for your need. Also, no attribution required for almost every single image on the website.
2. Pexels.com
Pexels comes with an elegant interface, categorization & easy search. A large number of photographers upload their photos there. All the images are free for commercial use with no attribution required.
Pexels also has a Photoshop plugin available for free for designers who need easy &quick method to access the images on Pexels.
3. StockSnap.io
It is one my favorites. The pictures on StockSnap.io looks very professional & I usually find relevant photos there to what I am looking for. I picked the picture for this article from StockSnap.
The downside is that it doesn’t have multiple image resolutions but the available resolution is always high & you can resize it or crop it later.
It also has views, likes & downloads counters which helps you to know the trending & most viewed images.
4. PicJumbo.com
PicJumbo contains a good collection of photos but the most noticeable thing is the amazing collection of food photos. It can be the perfect source of photos for food blog or any food or nutrition business website/blog.
The photos on PicJumbo are all captured by the Czech photographer, Viktor Hanacek. Despite all the photos are taken by one photographer, you will be surprised by the variety of quality photos in this website.
5. FreeImages.com
It was the first free stock images website I found & I used to use it for a while. As described by FreeImages.com, they have over 390,000 images available to download for free. The only downside is that some photographers require attribution for using their images but still a few of them require that s be careful not to violate any copyrights. The interface is also not my favorite since it looks outdated compared to similar websites.
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