New stock
Free stock photos used to have a bad wrap, with many looking cheap, staged, and not how you’d like to represent your brand.
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Perhaps this was the case 10 years ago, but now the standard of stock images has soared to new levels.
The internet is filled with high-quality free photographs for your content, and many of these images are posted for free use by professional photographers.
We have curated a list of 25 excellent and free stock photo sites for social media images in this post. If you have a bit of budget, there’s always iStock and Shutterstock!
Note: Websites under the Creative Commons License allow you to modify and distribute any photo on the site without asking for permission, even for commercial purposes.
1. Unsplash
Unsplash offers users a beautiful interface to browse high-quality photos. If you are stuck on search ideas, try browsing the photos of the year and most downloaded photos.
Licensing: Creative Commons
2. StockSnap
StockSnap.io has a large selection of free high-resolution images. You can browse by popular searches, recently added, trending categories or simply enter your desired image into the search bar.
Licensing: Creative Commons
3. Burst (Shopify)
Burst is a free stock photo site that is powered by Shopify. Home to thousands of high-quality photos available for free download. They offer a cool feature that allows you to enter your email and get the top free stock photos sent to your inbox each week.
Licensing: Creative Commons
4. Pixabay
Pixabay has over 1.3 million images and videos shared by its community. They also offer vector graphics which is a great feature for creating content.
Licensing: Creative Commons
5. Picography
Picography provides stunning images to millions of people. It is one of the top sources for gorgeous, high-resolution, free photos.
Licensing: Creative Commons
6. Vecteezy
Vecteezy is an excellent resource for finding high-quality images for both personal and professional use. Search for photos, videos, and vectors, and even browser by trending categories.
Licensing: Creative Commons
7. Life of Pix
Life Of Pix offers a fine selection in their featured section. Explore the best photographers of the week, or have a look at the latest photos uploaded. Their website is very cool and displays large high-res images for your viewing pleasure.
Licensing: Creative Commons
8. Pic Jumbo
Picjumbo does things a little differently, delivering free stock photos directly to your email inbox every week.
Licensing: Creative Commons
9. Visual Hunt
Visual Hunt searches for the best free images from online sources and brings them together in one spot. Their website is clean and easy to use.
Licensing: Creative Commons
10. Negative Space
Negative Space is a community of photographers who want to share their work. And a community of online visitors who wish to use their beautiful, free high-resolution images without any restrictions.
Licensing: Creative Commons
11. Pexels
Pexels has over 40,000 free stock photos and approximately 3,000 new images added every month. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable, and quickly discovered through the discover pages option.
Licensing: Creative Commons
12. Magdeleine
Magdeleine allows you to browse by ‘dominant colour’, which is an excellent feature. The website is super easy to use and prides itself on quality photos over quantity.
Licensing: Creative Commons
13. Free Stocks
Free Stocks offers a massive selection of high-resolution photos. Their website isn’t as contemporary as the others listed above and could do with an update. Nonetheless, you will find some great images for your social media posts.
Licensing: Creative Commons
14. Kaboom Pics
Kaboom Pics offers a wide range of photographs, including architecture, fashion, food, landscapes, etc. They also regularly update blogs on topics such as photography, productivity and inspiration.
Licensing: Creative Commons
15. SplitShire
SplitShire is sponsored by Squarespace and has nearly 1000 photos available for free download. They have had over 2 million downloads and over 6 million page views in just two years.
Licensing: Creative Commons
16. Skitter Photo
Skitterphoto has an extensive collection of professional high-quality public domain photos. The best photos can easily be found under ‘admin’s picks’ to help you find a professional photo fast.
Licensing: Creative Commons
17. Shot Stash
Shot Stash is an easy to navigate website with thousands of free images. Browse by category, including abstract, nature, business, food, technology, etc. New images are added daily to keep your content looking fresh.
Licensing: Creative Commons
18. Free Range Stock
Free Range Stock offers high-quality photos and illustrations for commercial use. Their website is a little dated but still really easy to use.
Licensing: Creative Commons
19. ISO Republic
ISO Republic provides free stock photos for creative professionals. Since launch, they’ve published over 3,000 CC-licensed images, adding more every week.
Licensing: Creative Commons
20. Find a Photo
Don’t let Find a Photo’s basic website fool you. There are thousands of high-quality photos here to be found. You can browse by collection, colour, or entering keywords into the search bar.
Licensing: Creative Commons
21. Gratisography
Gratisography offers an extensive database of free stock photos. The website is a little cluttered but provides an excellent selection of images if you don’t mind searching through the noise.
Licensing: Creative Commons
22. FOCA Stock
FOCA Stock is a collection of stock photos from photographer Jeffrey Betts. This website does not have a large volume of photos like other stock websites, but some beautiful collections are to browse.
Licensing: Creative Commons
23. Styled Stock
Styled Stock offers feminine stock photography perfect for your next project. If you are a beauty, fashion or travel blogger, this website is for you.
Licensing: Creative Commons
24. Death to Stock
Death to Stock operates a little differently from other stock photo websites. A free sign up with your email, and they will send you free sets of images every month to inspire your social media posts. They also offer a premium service that allows you to search thousands of photos.
Licensing: Creative Commons
25. New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a collection of vintage photos from the public archives free of known copyright restrictions. Searching is a little difficult on this website. The best way is to browse by skipping through pages.
Licensing: Personal and non-commercial use