Free image banks, good idea or illusion?
Royalty-free photos or videos can change the entire design of your site. However, we too often see impersonal royalty-free images, already seen on 10 other sites, coming from the same free or paid image bank.
These photos are not only tacky and expensive. Fortunately, more and more sites are providing free, royalty-free image banks for commercial use.
These photos are very beautiful and are of very high quality. Why not take advantage of it for commercial purposes? They are more salesable, will attract more interest from your visitors and can change the design of your site.
In this article, we have compiled a list of resources to find the best free royalty-free image banks which will be useful to you.
Reminder on licenses for free image banks and royalty-free images
Many of these photos are under the Creative Commons license, they are copyright free.
What is the Creative Commons Zero license?
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of many public copyright licenses that allow works to be shared and distributed.
A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work they created.
Which means that you can copy, modify the image, for commercial purposes, without asking permission from the authors.
However, some photos require attribution. We have done our best to identify unlicensed images, but we advise you to do your own research and determine how these images may be used.
Here are the top 10 of the best free royalty-free image banks:
- Pexels
- Pixabay
- Unsplash
- StockSnap.io
- Picography
- Burst (by Shopify)
- MMT STock
- Gratisography
- FoodiesFeed
- Freestocks.org
1.Pexels
One of the best free image banks on the market !
Pexels provides high-quality, completely free photos under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. All photos are well categorized and labeled, allowing for easy consultation.
When using free images from Pexels, there is no need to request a link to the original source or ask for permission even if you use these images for commercial purposes on your site, blogs or social networks.
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2. Pixabay
Pixabay has over a million free photos, vectors, videos and art illustrations. All photos are published under Creative Commons CC0, no need to spend a single cent.
All free videos on Pixabay are published under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Therefore, there is no need to obtain permission from the creator to edit or use the content. Although on Pixabay there is no attribution necessary, it’s always best to credit the owner.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash offers a large collection of free, high-resolution photos and has become one of the best image resources. They publish 10 new images every 10 days.
The Unsplash team combs through new uploads and showcases the best photos on their homepage. All photos are published for free under the Unsplash license and can be reused for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
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4. StockSnap.io
StockSnap.io offers a large selection of beautiful free photos and high-resolution images under the CC0 license. The site also has a handy search function that makes it easy to navigate through thousands of images.
Moreover, the site tracks the number of views and downloads so you can find the most popular photos. StockSnap adds hundreds of images per day and all photos require no attribution.
5. Picography
Picography contains beautiful free photos submitted by Dave Meier and various other photographers. All photos are published under Creative Commons CC0. Enjoy!
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6. Burst (by Shopify)
Burst is a Shopify site that provides free stock photos for entrepreneurs. Some photos are under the Creative Commons CC0 license while others are under the Shopify photo license.
Burst was launched to help entrepreneurs create better products, sites and marketing campaigns. Most of the photos are unedited photos that have been taken internally and who have niche themes. You can also find more general photos.
7. MMT STock
A bank of free images different from the others.
MMT Stock is a collection of high resolution stock photos published by Jeffrey Betts. Jeffrey enjoys sharing photos of computers and workspaces as well as flowers and nature.
He publishes new photos every week. All photos are published under Creative Commons CC0.
8. Gratisography
Gratisography offers free high-resolution images that you can use for your personal and commercial projects.
This image bank has the particularity of offering fun images with very pronounced contrasts. New images are added every week and are copyright free. All photos taken by Ryan McGuire of Bells Design.
9. FoodiesFeed
This is the image bank for food lovers. If you have a blog or site that deals with food, take advantage of FoodiesFeed.
This site offers thousands of beautiful, realistic and free high-resolution images. The site publishes trendy images of dishes. You can use these photos in your marketing strategies to provide the best user experience to your visitors.
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10. Freestocks.org
Freestock offers a wide range of high-quality photos, all published under Creative Commons CC0.
As you can see, there are more and more free image banks. These sites are gold mines for marketers and bloggers. No more relying on expensive and cheesy photos! Your turn now.