If you are building a website or a social media presence, you probably will need lots of photographs and other types of images. But buying commercial photos can be expensive. Some sites charge over $10 for an image, which can add up. Fortunately, many great stock photo sites offer free photos for commercial use. These sites provide a large collection of high-quality images. Here are 6 of the best:
1. Pexels
Pexels offers hundreds of thousands of high-quality free stock images that you can use on your own site, and they are constantly adding new ones. Pexels is known for its high-quality stock photography suitable for various purposes such as social media, blog posts, and commercial projects. They also offer a very generous license. You can use their images for any purpose — commercial or non-commercial — and you can modify them any way you like. What’s more, you do not even have to provide any type of attribution.
2. Unsplash
Unsplash offers more than a half-million free stock photos. Photographers around the world have gifted these high-quality, high-resolution photos that you can use any way you want — including for commercial purposes — and you do not have to provide attribution. Unsplash provides signed model releases for legal protection, safeguarding users from any legal risks or liabilities related to the use of the photos. They only ask that you do not compile and distribute photos from the site. Unsplash further has a great collections feature that makes it easy to find what you are looking for, with curated collections that are put together with a specific purpose and mission in mind.
3. Canva
Canva is a website that offers both free and commercial stock images. They provide signed model and property releases for every free photo, ensuring legal protection for users and their projects. Their free library includes millions of high-quality images that you can use for any purpose apart from redistribution. The site also offers some great free tools. This includes a web app that lets you easily create a variety of graphs. They also have an app that lets you edit images. They further provide tons of templates that you can use.
4. Pixabay
Pixabay has more than 1.5 million pictures, including photos, illustrations, and vector graphics, that you can freely use on your website. You can use these images for commercial purposes and without attribution. You can even distribute their images. All they ask is that you do not hotlink them. This means that you must put the images on your own site instead of directly linking to theirs. What is great about Pixabay is that they offer more than just photos. They have illustrations and vector graphics, too. They even have videos that you can freely use on your website.
5. StockSnap.io
StockSnap.io is a site that offers high-quality images that are available through a Creative Commons public domain license. They regularly release new photos, ensuring a fresh and diverse collection for users. This means that they are free to use in any way. You just can’t imply any person depicted in an image endorses your product or service. The site also has an excellent search tool, and it lets you know how popular a particular image is.
6. Burst
Burst is a division of Shopify that offers thousands of royalty-free images that you can use on your website, whether or not you use any of Shopify’s other services. What’s more, there are no restrictions whatsoever on how you use the photos. What makes this site stand out from the rest is that most of the photos have a commercial theme to them, which can make more useful for website builders.
