Completely Free Stock Photos

Completely Free For Commercial Use Stock Images

Stock photos can be a great way to visually get your message across to the viewer. However, buying these images can get quite expensive - especially on larger projects requiring a lot of images. If your projects budget can’t quite stretch far enough to cover all of your stock image requirements, you might find that you can pad out your collection by checking out some of these completely free stock image sites.

This post is going to go over the free stock photography websites that I personally use on a regular basis. I am in no way affiliated with these sites in any way – I just use their resources a lot and thought others might get some value out of them too.

1. Unsplash

Unsplash moves away from the standard generic corporate stock imagery and instead focuses on providing completely free artistic stock photos. While obviously not suitable for every application, this website is a great source of free images when you’re looking for something a little more interesting or quirky.

This website is usually my first stop when looking for free stock photos and has a great selection of fantastic images. Not only for the great quality and good selection, but also because it offers all of its images under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). This means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution.

2. MorgueFile

This website has been around for quite a while and hosts a massive collection of free images available.

The quality of the images can vary, however. MorgueFile includes older, lower-resolution images, professional, high quality photo shoots and everything in between. But don’t despair, the sheer quantity of images on offer means that it almost certainly has something to fit your needs.

3. Pixabay

Pixabay is another site offering free stock photos. Like MorgueFile, this website has a large collection of images, and has fairly strict quality guidelines, so the images are of a high standard and of course 100% free. Pixabay offers its images under CC0.

4. Startup Stock Photos

Startup Stock Photos was started to share some images being created for tech startups, and has since grown in to a nice collection of Startup and Tech related stock photos for you to use. If you're looking for images for any creative or tech-related business, this site has a selection worth checking out.

5. StockSnap

StockSnap curates a large collection of completely free stock photos. As this is a curated collection, the quality of these images is quite high. Not only that, but StockSnap exclusively collects images under CC0. This means no attribution is required, so you may use any of these images without worry.

6. Jay Mantri

Jay Mantri regularly updates his website with new stock photos. Similar in style to Unsplash.com, these images are great for someone looking for interesting or artistically shot photos, perfect for backgrounds or banner slides.

Jay Mantri also provides all of his images under CC0.

7. New Old Stock

New Old Stock is quite interesting. It site provides a collection of vintage photos and all images are Public Domain. If you're ever looking for retro or vintage photos, New Old Stock is the site you'll want to check out.

8. Pexels

Pexels has a large collection images and is worth checking out when looking for completely free stock photos.

There are a lot of other sites offering quality free stock photos, but these are just the ones I use. If you have another site you like to use, or if you yourself provide free stock images, let me know in the comments.