I’m surprised at the amount of free stock photo websites there are. I tend to use just a few on this list to find what I need, but sometimes there’s an elusive photo that I can’t find. I’m making this list as reference for myself (from making this post I’ve found some great new websites I’ll be using in the future!), but also in the hopes it helps someone else find what they are looking for. I’d recommend making a folder of bookmarks in your browser to each website that has pictures you like to save time searching in the future.

Here is the definitive list of many different free stock photo websites, hopefully these will have the pictures you are looking for.

edit Note

Always check the license for all the photos you use; some you can use however you’d like, but some can only be used for personal use, while others can only be used if you give attribution, but some you can use for both personal and commercial websites.

General Stock Photos

Pixabay 1 | License

Unsplash | License

Negative Space | License

Pexels | License

picjumbo | License

StockSnap.io | License

Burst | License

Stockvault | License

Freepik | License

Kaboompics | License

Life of Pix | License

CreateHER Stock | License

Embedded Getty Images | License; If you don’t mind the automatically added Getty Images attribution near the bottom of the image, you can embed these on your website for free.

SplitShire 2 | License

PikWizard 2 | License

Vecteezy 3 | License

rawpixel 4 | License

Free Stock Photos by Canva 4 | License

Depositphotos 4 | License

Freerange Stock 4 | License

MorgueFile 4 | License

Food Stock Photos

These are some stock photo websites that just have food stock images:

Foodiesfeed 3 | License; About 2000 food stock photos, and even some AI generated ones.

Vector Graphics

While this list is mostly stock photo websites, this is the first time I encountered Reshot and its library of vector graphics is amazing, and their license is great as well.

Reshot | License

Niche Stock Photos

Here are some websites that have a much narrower use case:

New Old Stock | License; Vintage photos (old pictures from Portugal, and even pictures from NASA!)

Startup Stock Photos | License; I wish I found this website years ago. From their website: “Free startup, office, and tech stock pictures ready for your next project.”

Gratisography | License; From their website: “Truly unique. Usually whimsy ;) Always free.”

Avoid These

FreeImages, freeimages .com; when you search for an image on their website, it automatically opens a new tab that sends you to istockphoto .com

  1. need to do a captcha to download images, unless logged in ↩︎

  2. might have to disable your adblocker (if you have one) to view and download images ↩︎

  3. need to wait a few seconds to download images, unless logged in ↩︎

  4. need to create an account to download images ↩︎