We’re all publishing in so many forms. You always need free stock photos for your blog, social media, or even an ebook cover.
The days of using Google Image Search or any other search engine to find images to download are over. Apart from the quality aspect, there are problems with the ownership of images indexed on Google.
If you want free stock photos for commercial and personal use, you need to make sure that the images you use are copyright-free.
You should also check if there are any attribution required notes on the image license.
Always check image licenses
Most royalty-free stock images, even in public archives, are licensed under the Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons licenses are one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.
A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they have created.
There is also a Creative Commons cc0 license where owners of copyright- or database-protected content waive those interests in their works and place them as completely as possible in the public domain.
When looking for royalty-free photos for your blog, you should always check that you have the right to use a free stock photo for commercial purposes. Also, check if you need to credit the image source.
Royalty-free stock photography images are generally not high-resolution. Most sites offering a collection of free photos and images allow you to download a low-resolution version.
However, in most cases, these stock images are perfectly suitable for online use, such as blog posts or social media headers.
If you need an image for a book cover, you should always buy high-quality images with a high-resolution for print books.
But for ebooks, you can sometimes get away without a hi-res image. Do you need images or photo vectors for your blog posts?
You can get top-quality royalty-free images for almost any topic, including food, pet, landscape, people, vehicle, and place images, just to name a few.
About free stock photo sites
If you want to avoid the hassle of registering or signing up to use stock photo sites, there are many sites that do not require your name or email address.
Most often, like all sites offering free stuff, they are advertising-supported or have links to sponsored sites or products.
The sheer volume of sites now offering images is growing every day. I was amazed by how many new sites I found when I was doing my research for this post.
But my criteria for choosing to list a free image site below was that each site was genuinely free with no sign-up required.
Each site also had to offer an extensive range of quality images suitable for all types of blogs and social media use.
Most importantly, each site below uses CC0 Creative Commons licenses that are completely free for commercial use with no attribution required.
Let’s get you started by finding some new sites to find fantastic and beautiful free images for you without any copyright restrictions.
The sites below are in alphabetical order. Each example image is from the listed site.
So, take your pic! The list below offers thousands of free images from the best free stock photo sites.
25 Sites For Superb Free Images And Photos
1. Burst
2. Pikwizard
3. Foodiesfeed
4. Freestocks
5. Gratisography
6. Jay Mantri
7. Kaboompics
8. Life of Pix
9. Little Visuals
10. Morguefile
11. New Old Stock
12. Pexels
13. Picjumbo
14. Picography
15. Pixabay
16. Reshot
17. Shot Stash
18. Rawpixel
19. Stock Snap
20. Stock Vault
21. Free Images
22. Unsplash
23. ISO Republic
24. Skitterphoto
25. Wikipedia
If you are feeling generous
All of these sites offer fantastic free stock photos and images covering every possible theme or topic you could imagine.
Every one of them has a search function. So you will be able to find exactly what you are looking for in no time at all.
But if you use one site a lot, maybe you could consider crediting the photographer, or as some sites hint, buy them a cup of coffee.
These are all terrific resources for free. But it might be nice to return the favor once in a while.
You can use these stock images to create free ebook covers or make stunning featured images for your blog posts.
Do I have a favorite? Well, yes. For me, Pixabay is the pick of the bunch.
But whichever one you choose, you will probably find an image that suits your needs.
Related Reading: How To Add Text To A Picture, Photo or Image For Free
Thank you so much for the information are you also allowed to use these pictures on the pages inside of a book to make a children’s book for instance I’m just getting started publishing books thank you so much for sharing.
In many cases, you can, Brandi. But you should always check the license notes attached to any image you choose. If it says, “Free for commercial use, No attribution required,” you are okay. But sometimes, there are restrictions.
I don’t know, that is why I want to ask you one question.
can anyone use wiki images? is it under creative commons?
Images on Wikipedia and Wikimedia are usually Creative Commons. But you should check the licence on any image to be sure.
Awesome list, Derek. This is incredibly helpful. Saving!
You’re welcome! Glad you found the list useful.
Derek, this is amazing! As a blogger myself, finding images sometimes can be quite a hunt. I’ve used Unsplash, mainly, but wow, twenty-five sites? I’m about to go on blog overdrive and update every one of my own posts! Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure, Todd.