The Top 10 Best Websites for Free High Quality Stock Photos (2021)

Using stock photos for your projects doesn't have to be expensive, thanks to the many great websites that give you access to millions of stock images for free.

Coming up I'll show you the top ten websites with free high-quality stock images or use on websites, blogs, YouTube videos, or any other type of project that you're working on. The photos on these sites are free from any copyright restrictions which means you can copy, modify, and use these images without asking for permission.

1. Unsplash

Unsplash is one of the most well-known sites for free stock photos. They offer a large library of more than half a million high-resolution curated photos which are donated by talented photographers. To find groups of photos sorted by themes their collections offer a quick way to compile images for a project.

All the published photos on this site are released for free under the Unsplash license, their license is similar to the other sites. Before using any stock photo website it's best practice to read over their license to determine how their images can be used.

2. Stock Snap

Stock Snap was created by the good folks over at stock snap, with hundreds of new images added each week now for an interesting selection of high-quality photos to choose from. In addition to the search feature, it might be a good idea to look at their popular categories gather resources all photos on stock snap are made available under the Creative Commons CC0 license.

3. Pixels

Pixels have only been around since 2015 have become quite popular in a very short time, They offer hundreds of thousands of images that are handpicked from photos uploaded by their users or sourced from other free image websites.

Also, you get the choice to select the size that you need before downloading any photo. 

4. Life of pix

Life of pics was created by the Leroy advertising agency in Montreal is a great resource for some of the most stunning high-resolution photos that you'll ever find. With so many unique images life of pics should be near the top of your list when gathering new photos.

They have another site called the life of vids which is worth checking out if you need free stock videos, clips, and loops. The content provided on both sides is released under Creative Commons CC0 and therefore has no copyright restrictions.

5. Burst

Burst is a resource from Shopify that was created to help entrepreneurs make better marketing materials for their businesses. Just like all the sites mentioned in this article all of their non-copyrighted images are royalty-free and can be used for any marketing campaign that you can think of.

They provide you the choice of both high and low-resolution images depending on whether you're working on a graphic design project or just adding images to a website. Some of the photos on burst are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 while others are protected with their own photo license.

6. Free Range

Free Range is another site that should be at the top of your list when gathering images for a project. They have thousands of photos created from in-house photographers along with images from outside contributors that you won't find anywhere else.

When you find an image that you like you'll have a few download options to choose from and you can send your image to Pixlr to edit some of the images on free-range are licensed under equal license along with many that fall under Creative Commons CC0.

7. Kaboompics

Kaboompics which may be the least well-known in this article offers the cleanest user interface of any stock photo site that I've seen. What impresses me about this site is their search engine which includes a color picker to help find the perfect photo for your project. 

In addition to choosing the size for your download, a color palette is also included with the corresponding hex colors from that image. All photos on KABOOM pics fall under their own license.

8. Flickr

Most people don't think a flicker is a free stock photo website but it does have an extensive library of more than 3 million images in the Commons section that you can use for free if you know where to look.

Just the top of the page Explorer< then select the Commons< on that page a search bar is provided that will only search images available in the Commons. 

If you plan to use any of the photos from the Commons section on Flickr there are various participating institutions so it would be advised to read over the rights statements before using any of their images.

9. Wikimedia Commons

The Wikimedia Commons is another one that gets overlooked it now has over 50 million freely usable media including images, sounds, and videos. While much of the media on here is in the public domain there are various types of licenses used throughout the site which can be tricky for new users to find.

To find the license type select an image scroll down< In this example this image has a CC0< clicking on it will give you more details about that license.

10. Pixabay

Pixabay is the site I've used the most over the years for various projects. With one of the biggest collections of high-quality free stock photos, you're likely to find what you're looking for on this site. They're also a great resource for HD and 4k videos which can come in handy if you're needing a b-roll for a YouTube video.

When downloading any image there are various sizes to choose from. On Pixabay all of the images and videos are released under Creative Commons CC0.

If it did give it a thumbs up and share it with others if you use a free stock photo website not mentioned let me know about it in the comments.