The Ultimate List of 25 Free & Affordable Stock Image Websites

You’ve written the perfect blog article. It’s optimized perfectly You are going to tweet it every 9 seconds because the world should know that if you’ve done nothing else in this world, you have written the perfect post. You top it off by adding a grainy Google image photo that’s a little small and illegal to use due to copyright infringement.

Instead of that last sentence being true, turn to one of these 25 free stock image websites to find a great image for your post.

*Many of these sites’ images are licensed under the Creative Commons, which states that:

“The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.”

1. Unsplash 

Over 550,000 free (do-whatever-you-want) high-resolution photos brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.

2. jay mantri

Jay Mantri uploads (at least) seven photos each Thursday, most of which are landscape or urban/retro-themed. In addition to great blog post images, Jay Mantri is a great website for your desktop background or social media cover photos.  

3. Life Of Pix

Free high-resolution photos, no copyrights restrictions for personal and commercial use. New photographs added weekly! All images are donated to the public domain. Distributors are allowed to repost a maximum of 10 images without our written Life of Pix consent.

4. Pic Jumbo

Pic Jumbo features a lot of no-cost, quality images, and also a premium, pay-to-play option that gives the user access to a much more comprehensive archive. The advantage of using Pic Jumbo is its categories tool, allowing users to narrow their search a bit more than most of the others on this list.

5. morgueFile

morgueFile has no real theme to its image library, but does allow users to filter by most popular, most recent, last downloaded, and most downloaded. It has the most images of any of the sites we've come across, but isn't all that high-quality.

6. Gratisography

The world's quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures, comprised of the world's best, most creative images - photos you just won't find anywhere else. All completely free of copyright restrictions.

7. Splitshire

Splitshire’s library only features a few hundred images, but it does allow users to categorize what they’re looking for. It’s very eclectic – no rhyme or reason/theme to the images whatsoever.

"I created SplitShire with the simple aim of giving life to photographs that would have gone into oblivion without any utility. In the course of almost ten years of photography I have accumulated many files, thousands, who were in the hard disk gathering dust. So I began to upload the first 100 high-resolution photos that you can freely download and use for personal and commercial purposes."

8. New Old Stock

New Old Stock is a collection of “vintage photos from the public archives”. What separates it from the rest is that it's as much a social network as a free image archive. Users can make an account, and photos can be favorited, commented upon, and shared.

9. Snapwire Snaps

License and commission photos from 200,000 of the world's most talented photographers, 7 free beautiful photos every 7 days. 

10. Pexels

Pexels is a really great site. It's searchable, high-quality, and has a fair selection to choose from. The only downside is that most of the images have a 'vintage look,' that doesn't always fit what you're looking for. 

11. StockSnap.io

We'd like to give StockSnap.io a compliment sandwich. On the plus side, it's a searchable site, which is rare for free sites and very helpful to those who produce content at a fast pace or for specific clients/brands. However, it doesn't offer a very wide selection of photos. That said, the photos it does offer are really, really high-quality.

12. Startup Stock Photos

Free photos for startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, creators, & everyone else.

13. Death to the Stock Photo

"We work with our crew of passion-driven expert photographers around the world to produce photo packs monthly. Each pack explores a different narrative and aesthetic idea with 20+ photos shot solely for use in your projects and campaigns. All the images are edited and refined by our in-house production team before we pack them up and ship them directly to your Death to Stock library. Our photographers have worked for NIKE, SOHO HOUSE, ADIDAS, and VOGUE."

Monthly packages start at just $12/month

14. pixabay

Very good, searchable site. What it lacks in quality it more than makes up for in quantity. A broad keyword such as "animal" yields nearly 30,000 images, and something as specific as "hammer" yields over 300 images. Good stuff overall.

15. IM Free

High-quality. Categorized. Searchable. Huge selection. Need we say more?

10 More Free Stock Image Websites to Check Out